#ethicsfirst 03• Is going to a festival ever ethical?
by Dr Jim Walsh, CEO of Conway Hall Yes. But not for the reasons you might suspect. There are, of course, green considerations to be made regarding travel, food consumption and a whole host of decisions regarding personal hygiene measures and single-use plastics. These are indeed ethical issues. However, I want to discuss a different […]
Hierarchy and the Political Economy
Introduction: The term Political Economy has been expunged from contemporary discourse; politics and economics are regarded as separate, specialist subjects. However, like wealth and power, the two are inextricably linked. This was well understood in the past: most great thinkers were polymaths, eg. Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci. Today we have “specialists” and information is […]
Open Borders: Unconditional Hospitality
Unconditional hospitality is a central idea in contemporary ethical philosophy and it has important implications for psychology. Its political equivalent is the notion of open borders as a utopian critique of nationality and national identity. We can become good hosts by temporarily interrupting the self and our habitual concerns about ‘me’ and ‘mine’ and also by reframing […]
The Robots are Coming
Recent advances in automation are stripping out all manner of jobs: not just those of clerks, typists and warehouse workers. Almost any job involving a programmable process is vulnerable. Should we rejoice, and anticipate their emancipation from labour; or should we be very afraid for the basis of our society? Chris Bratcher thinks the latter. […]
What are Professional Ethics?
The origins of this talk lie in a presentation entitled The Future of Conway Hall Ethical Society – Direction or Drift? to the Ethical Society on 15 March 2015 (subsequently printed in the April 2015 edition of the Ethical Record), in which two principal questions were raised:- What is meant by ‘Ethical’ What should an […]
Explore the History of Secularism, Humanism and Freethought!
After 18 months the Alternatives to Religion cataloguing project reaches its conclusion this week. The project has unearthed the histories of three influential non-theistic organisations, making their archives freely accessible for the first time.
National Secular Society members in Nottingham on 5 June 1949
National Secular Society members in Nottingham on 5 June 1949 attending the Society’s Annual Conference.
Thinking on Sunday – Climate Change – the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein Global anthropogenic CO2 emissions continue their inexorable rise. The science shows that there is the increasing likelihood that the world is heading towards an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet despite the multitude of research papers, articles, […]
“The English Voltaire”
Thomas Paine, the political activist, philosopher, author, political theorist and revolutionary, is one figure who appears in all three archives of the Alternatives to Religion Project – National Secular Society, British Humanist Association and Conway Hall Ethical Society.