PHILOSOPHERS' CORNER

Unnecessary Necessities

During the pandemic, you may have been watching Schitt’s Creek. Its characters inspired this month’s pandemic puzzle, which is about how to figure out the ideal balance between feeling like you need a lot to be happy, and feeling like you need very little.

Covid and the Veil of Ignorance

As I’ve struggled to find a film to write about, I thought I’d write about a feature of Covid that is particularly philosophically relevant: you can be infected but be asymptomatic. So you must make decisions under uncertainty, not knowing whether you are sick or contagious—victim or vector.

[AUDIO] Do the Privileged Have Special Obligations?

Most of us recognize that, due to the circumstances we were born into, we are given certain advantages or disadvantages in life that others do not have. However, the further question of whether those with privilege have special obligations to the disadvantaged remains controversial.