The Philosopher Justice

 What is the mind?  And how is it different from the brain?  The difference between mind and matter has been an  ongoing philosophical topic since the ancient Greeks.  The mind is something subjective, subject to our passions.  It’s not a thing, but our self-reflecting ongoing experience that is about things and about ourselves. It can focus on what is possible, what happened before, what might happen, and what should happen, whereas the brain is a thing, a physical organ that is none of the above.  We only need be conscious of our brain if it affects our mind when something goes wrong, as, when we get hit on the head or we have a stroke.  But that’s not the whole story because it is obvious that brains are necessary for our minds to function at all . The existence of the brain doesn’t explain what’s going on in our mind, because the mind is “about” things, it “contains”  thoughts and sensations which together have meaning for us and refer bo...

  People moralize when they use morality as a weapon against people they disagree with.  Some principles are in dispute:  is homosexuality wrong?  We can obviously disagree about this.  Many, if not most people, see morality through the lens of religious belief.   Although the Bible has some prohibitions of homosexual behaviour, it also has prohibitions against wearing fibres mixing wool and linen together.  And like mixing fibres together,  homosexuality is not a major theme of the  holy scriptures.  It isn’t one of the ten commandments.  Jesus never mentions it, although Paul condemns certain kinds of behaviour.  It’s not really a thing in the Bible. You can go through the whole Bible and you will find very little about homosexuality.  It is definitely not an important Biblical theme. Nowadays there is a strong feeling among many of us that homosexuality doesn’t do any harm, unless by harm you mean ruining a parent’s exp...