Who looks back in the mirror?

This is a panel session I took part in at the How The Light Gets In philosophy Festival in Hay back in May called "Who looks back in the mirror?" with Simon May, Henrietta Moore and Barry C. Smith, chaired by Martin Jacques. (Video can be slow to load)

Mapping the Moral Minefield

This is a video of the Levinthal Lecture I gave at the CUP conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on ethics and the pharmaceutical business.

CUP XII - Levinthal Lecture - Julian Baggini from OpenEye Scientific Software on Vimeo.

Review - The Bodhisattva's Brain

Buddhism seems well placed to capitalise on pent-up demand in the spiritual market. It appears to promise all the goodness of religion without the harmful supernatural additives. Even better, scientists in white coats are increasingly being wheeled out to show that it is clinically proven to increase happiness, improve attention and reduce stress. Add a charismatic CEO in the form of the Dalai Lama and you have a brand set not so much to conquer the world as win it over with loving kindness. But is Buddhism really as amenable to the modern mind as it is claimed?

Review of two books on Buddhism in yesterday's Observer

Review - Humanity 2.0

What does it mean to be human? To have the capacity to ask the question, perhaps. However smart a chimp might be, none has had the audacity to leave its troop and ponder what it means to be Pan troglodytes.

Review of Steve Fuller's Humanity 2.0 in the FT Weekend (22/23 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Work

There is nothing valuable in work per se. Indeed, Bertrand Russell went so far as to claim that “immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous”. If we work more than we need to, we deprive ourselves of the time and opportunity for learning, self-development, relationships and many other things that make for a better world.

Latest column in the FT Weekend magazine (22/23 October)

The Culture Show - BBC Two

I presented a video essay on 1984 for Friday's show (21 October). Available to watch again here until Friday.

Sam Harris on Science and Morality

In the latest microphilosophy podcast I talk to Sam Harris about his claim in The Moral Landscape that science can determine human values. Download from this link or iTunes.

Heathen's Progress 4: The autonomy of science

Last week, I argued that although science and religion clearly can be compatible, they often make for far less comfortable bedfellows than most believers sanguinely maintain. There is, however, another side to the story of science's relation to belief: the idea held by many atheists that science is not only on their side, but is their best buddy. The uncomfortable truth for believers and atheists alike is that science is a loner who never shies from revealing embarrassing truths about anyone who tries to claim ownership of it.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series.

Heathen's Progress 3: Religion's truce with science can't hold

The fact that science is compatible with religion turns out to be a comforting red herring. The less comfortable wet fish slapped around the face is that how easily science and religion can rub on together depends very much on what kind of religion we're talking about. If it is a kind that seeks to explain the hows of the universe, or ends up doing so by stealth, then it is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab. If it is of a kind that doesn't attempt to explain the hows of the universe, then it has to be very careful not to make any claims that end up doing just that.

Latest in Comment is Free Belief series (posted 14 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Suffering

There are very few things, if any, which are unambiguously good or bad in the long run. That’s because a whole life is not a simple aggregate of its parts, but a blend. To take a culinary analogy: vinegar by itself is sour and unpleasant but, combined with the right other ingredients, it can lift a dish to new heights.

Latest column in the FT Weekend Magazine (15/16 October)

Singapore Writers Festival - 22/23 October

Participating in three events over two days. Full details here.

The Ego Trick - Leicester, 16 October

Talking about The Ego Trick at The Leicester Secular Society at 6:30. Full details here.

Humanist Society of Scotland - Edinburgh, 15 October

I'll be giving a talk “No true humanist? Walking the walk your way” during the afternoon of the HSS 2011 Conference, "So you call yourself a Humanist?" Full details here.

A video of this talk is now available here.

microphilosophy@foyles - Steve Fuller, 13 October

In conversation with Steve Fuller & Darian Meacham about Fuller's new book at 6:30. How will we ascribe status to human life in a 'post-human' and 'trans-human' world? Have we gone from asking whether humans needed to be social to realize their nature, to whether the social needs to be human at all?
This Festival of Ideas event is part of a regular series of live discussions with Julian Baggini recorded at Foyles for the microphilosophy podcast series.Full details here

In-conversation with Martin Parr - Bristol, 11 October

Event at M-Shed tonight with Magnum photographer, Martin Parr, which is alas sold out.

Heathen's Progress 2: How not to be a dogmatic fundamentalist

We need to get beyond a false set of assumptions that divide people up into the dogmatic and the reasonable, the nasty and the nice. There is no automatic virtue in softly advocating accommodating beliefs, nor any vice in strongly advocating clear, divisive opinions.

Second in Guardian Comment is Free series

How Steve Jobs changed capitalism

Capitalism looks different because of what Jobs's company achieved. His company challenges both lazy market orthodoxies and idealistic anti-capitalist critiques. In general terms it is true that all these challenges have found voice and expression in our culture elsewhere. But with Jobs they were given a clearer, louder expression, backed up by the incontrovertible evidence his life and company produced.

Article in todays' Guardian (G2)

Heathen's Progress 1: Stalemate

A plague on all their houses: all parties in the God debate are guilty of becoming entrenched in unsustainable positions. For there to be movement, all are going to have to recognise their failings and shift somewhat. The battlelines need to be redrawn so that futile skirmishes can be avoided and the real fights can be fought. This is the first in a series of articles which together will attempt to do just this. Over the coming months, I'll be fleshing out the charges I have made and suggesting what the right responses to them should be.

Start of a new series at Comment is Free Belief (30 September)

Brian Taylor's Big Debate - BBC Radio Scotland

I was on the panel for this Question Time style programme, broadcast live from the Wigtown Book Festival on 30 September

The Shrink & The Sage: Pride

All forms of pride involve a kind of pleasure we get when we make a positive appraisal of something whose qualities reflect on us. How then, can it be that we often derive our pride from the merit of others, even when our own contributions are minimal or non-existent?

Latest column in FT Weekend magazine (1/2 October)

The Shrink & The Sage: Life Partners

In a sense, all wonderful lives do involve a life partner. It’s just that it could be a pursuit that fulfils us, not a person who makes us happy.

Column in FT Weekend magazine (23/24 September)

On Tolerance

Furedi’s more than merely tolerable book should be welcomed not because it is entirely right, but because tolerance does matter, and received ideas about what it means need to be challenged fiercely and intelligently, even if also wrongly.

Review of Frank Furedi's On Tolerance in the FT Weekend (17/18 September)

The Politics of Happiness - Kingston, 6 October

Talk at the Kingston Philosophy Cafe at 6pm. Details here.

Why I Am a Reluctant Humanist - Bath, 4 October

Talk at the Bath Royal Literary and Philosophical Society at 7.30 pm. Details here (click on image of poster on right hand side of page).

North Lanarkshire Words 2011 Festival - 3 October

Talking about The Ego Trick at North Lanarkshire's Words 2011 Festival of Books and Writing, at Cumbernauld Library, 7pm. Details here.

Wigtown Book Festival - 2 October

Talking about The Ego Trick at 3pm. See here for more details.