Suicide can be a rational choice

"Some argue that anyone who judges that they are better off dead has got to be mistaken. They're depressed but they don't realise it, or they have misjudged what the future is likely to hold. This is deeply patronising to the many men and women who have decided that life with their terminal conditions is not worth living. To say that they are just mistaken is to say we are better judges of the value of other people's lives than they are themselves. This is not compassion but arrogance."

Article in today's Independent

Ecobuild - 2 March

Taking part in a panel discussion on what makes a sustainable community, with Peter Head, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones and David Blunkett, chaired by Sarah Montague. 11.30, as part of Ecobuild 2010 at Earls Court. Full details here.

Bath Lit Fest - 27 February

Giving a talk on Should You Judge This Book by Its Cover? at 6.15 at the Guildhall. Full details and booking here.

Sir Nicholas not simply a first-class twit

Right now, I'm trying to do what at least one Tory MP believes is impossible: get some work done in the standard class carriage of a British train. According to Sir Nicholas Winterton: "If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the whole time, there would be noise, there would be distraction." The right honourable member for Macclesfield has been widely pilloried for his remarks, but as anyone who has been in the same position as I am right now knows, he has a point.

Latest post at the Guardian Comment is Free, published on Friday 19th

Does suffering improve us?

"There are some questions that are persistently treated as though they were ethical, spiritual or philosophical when actually, they're just plain factual. "Does suffering improve us?" is one of them. There are some theoretical issues around what "improvement" and "suffering" mean, but the answer comes mostly not from intellectual reflection but empirical observation. And that answer seems to be a pretty unequivocal no."

Latest post at Guardian Comment is Free Belief

Oxford Think Week - 25 February

Talking on Freedom, Respect and Religion at Wadham College at 7.30

In a pluralist society of many faiths and none, liberalism requires freedom of and respect for different beliefs. However, the scope and limits of both have been bitterly contested. In particular, secularism has been criticised for demanding that people leave too many of their personal beliefs out of the public square. In this talk, I'll be revising and defending secularism as the best way to manage disagreement on fundamenal issues in democratic societies.

Full details here

Debate on Catholic morality - Durham, 19 February

I'm speaking for the motion "This House Believes that Catholic morality has no place in the 21st Century" at the Durham Union this Friday (19 February), although as is usual in such debates, I find the wording a little too clear-cut for my liking. Full details here.

Dealing with abuse

"What’s the right way to deal with abuse? Take the moral high ground and reply as a paragon of calm reason? Or treat people with the same disrespect they showed you? It probably depends, of course, but here’s a really striking case study, courtesy of Ben Goldacre."

Latest post at Talking Philosophy.

February podcast

February's Philosophy Monthly is now out. In this programme, I’m reporting on the debate surrounding the growth of the well-being agenda, and talking to the winner of the Lakatos Prize for the philosophy of Science, Samir Okasha, about evolution.

Click here to listen or download now, or download from

How to Live

"Human beings are great believers in lies after death. It starts with undertakers, who prepare bodies to look like sleeping angels rather than rotting, pallid corpses. It ends with biographers, whose own noble lie is to turn the reality of life as one darn thing after another into a fantasy of a coherent narrative with a meaning."

Review of Sara Bakewell's How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, publihsed in last weekend's FT (30/31 January)