Animals

• The ethics of pet food.

Causation

• Ignore the headline.  Philosopher Stephen Mumford argues that causation does exist independently of our thoughts on it.

Ethics

• Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you?

Mind

• The mind is a computer.

Pornography

• There’s still conflicting studies arguing whether pornography dulls sexual pleasure, degrades women, or ruins relationships.  This is a good article sifting through the research and her conclusion is that pornography is simply a way to express a certain fantasy.

Race

• Legacy of slavery still impacts education in the south.
• If you demonstrate “black lives matter,” others will too.
• Why we are not “cured” of racism.

Relationships

• What Gaslighting is, how to be aware of it, and what to do about it.
• When people thought about their personal goals, they were more likely to pass up opportunities to improve their romantic relationship, such as forgiving their partner’s transgression.  (h/t Useful Science)
• Showing overconfidence makes one more romantically desirable, and also make competitors not worth competing with one.
• In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS effectively legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.

Religion

• Kenneth Einer Himma argues that if you believe in the traditional Christian concept of hell and salvic exclusivism, then it is morally wrong to have children.
  • There have some responses to Himma’s paper.  Himma responds back.

Sexuality

• I don’t remember if I shared this before, but it’s worth seeing again:  A Gentleman’s Guide to Rape Culture.
• If the Supreme Court allows gay marriage, what’s next?  Accepting queer life.  My favorite quote: “My hope is that marriage equality queers marriage, rather than straightening queers—that we reinvent it and keep reinventing it, and sexuality is finally acknowledged as having no inherent moral value except, perhaps, when it is ignored.”