Where is the dog?

Time travel If you could, would you go back in time? Where to? When? Would you take anything with you? Knowledge? A flask of tea? Or would you just go back to have a look? There's some very interesting ethical questions about time travel. Assuming you could, would it be justifiable to disturb the timeline? Would stopping a tyrant like Hitler, for example, be defensible? Doing that might save millions of lives. But it would also pull the rug from under the various Human Rights Conventions and ideas about liberty and control on state power that sprung up in direct reaction to Hitler's reign. A tough one. And here's another: if you could disturb the timeline and create a mini-multiverse with two possibilities, would your choice to go back in time and create a different timeline have any moral value anyway? On the basis that the original result would still have taken place in one universe? At best, would your choice be morally neutral? Maybe that's not how ti

How much do you need to know? As ever, Disney continues to pioneer moral and epistemological philosophy in its 2007 film Enchanted. In one scene in the film, the (very, very fab) Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey (I can never remember their characters' names) go for a walk in the local park. Controversially for Disney, Patrick is seeing someone else at this particular point. In a going out with another girlfriend sense. And, he has a child from an unsuccessful marriage. Tricky stuff Anyway, at this particular point in our story, Amy asks Patrick how does he know that he is in love with his girlfriend. Tricky and interesting stuff. Admittedly, Amy does rather make a song and dance of the whole thing: Knowing All this got me thinking about the epistemological classic: what does it mean to "know" something? There's a good discussion about this sort of thing by Dr Scott Sturgeon in the first chapter of AC Grayling's Philosophy . It's a good book

Moonwalking I love a good conspiracy theory. One of my favourites is the one about the Titanic : it was a massive insurance job. Aliens And there's plenty conspiracies about aliens of course. Although they're not quite as fashionable now as they were in the mid-1990s when the x files was on telly. Which was good and definitely "space" ( see Dog Blog 5 ). I liked the first film too: Bees. And aliens. I have a conspiracy theory of my own. Was the popularity of alien conspiracy theories, in part, a reaction in America to the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991? There's nothing like a common enemy to help define a group. When the Commies started to think about democracy, the conspiracy theorists swapped them for the US Government. One of the main threads to the conspiracies being that the US Government, and NASA of course, are in collusion with these aliens. And lying to the citizens. Imagine. A coverup. A conspiracy of the highest order. A new e

Multi-dimensional morality Recently, I've been thinking about how much time people have to make decisions about things. And, being the Dog, particularly about decisions which have significant moral content. Like the philosophical classic: kill 1 person to save 50? Or, a more day to day example, what about lying? Or, whether to give blood? Or stop eating burgers? Or other meat? Or what about giving part of your income to charity? Or - seriously - giving up Heinz tomato ketchup and going for supermarket own brand? This also made me think about the way we make practical moral choices. Do we look at that kind of decision making too three dimensionally? Three dimensions When we're wondering what to do in a situation, I think we often take into account: (1) ourselves, (2) the person(s) our decision will immediately effect, and (3) what the wider society might make of it. There's overlaps between (1) , (2) and (3). And a lot of things to think about in each. I

Space Right. Enough of this philosophy rubbish. Here’s what really matters: space. At the cinema. And going to see space with my pal Martin after we’ve both been for a curry. It’s a tradition. It’s fab. In a word (or, technically, two): it’s space. "Space" for me is a film with the following characteristics: Usually, a science fiction or fantastic premise I'd also include supernatural films, but not pure, totally scary, horror. And not films about Christmas. Cartoons are in a fairly grey area, unless they are set in space, like Final Fantasy. Again, usually, set in space But, the film need not be, provided it has all of the other characteristics listed here. Phenomenon for example would have a good chance of being included within “space”. Special effects And ideally lots of them. Gadgets and computers are always good too. An entertaining plot But, the plot can be fairly rubbish, provided the special effects are really, really good. Like The

Genies in court Looks like a Saudi family is taking a genie to court. It must be true. It was on the BBC. Seriously. I think the case would be a civil action if it happened here in the UK. And the standard of proof in our courts for that sort of thing would be on the "balance of probabilities". Which means the person suing the genie would have to prove, amongst other things, that the genie existed. Inter alia As an aside, lawyers usually say "amongst other things" to avoid saying "inter alia" , which lawyers here used to use, and pretty much means the same thing. But they got told off for saying that because it was Latin, and makes lawyers sound like they think they're superior to Johnathan Average and his Friends. Which, of course, they do. Would the Saudis win in the UK? I doubt the evidence would stack up if the case were heard here. But you never know. You might get very credible witnesses and completely coherent evidence from t

Robot crickets New Scientist is reporting a story about Pentagon backed researchers creating cyborg crickets. Will these crickets speak too? Would they say "I vant your clothes, your boots and your jam"? Will they take over the world? And maybe do a lot of time travelling just to make whatever they're planning to do really complicated to follow? You can see the New Scientist story here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327165.900-cyborg-crickets-could-chirp-at-the-smell-of-survivors.html And there's plenty of other stories in New Scientist about experiments on animals. Mice for example: http://www.newscientist.com/search?doSearch=true&query=mice . Scientists do lots of experiments on mice. They give them cures for cancer, improve their intelligence, extend their lifespans. Maybe one day these super mice will bite back and give us a good bashing. Or maybe they'll rise above that and just give us a nice piece of cheese. Like a good ched