What do we owe each other in this crisis? Let’s tackle one aspect of this question. A person might think as follows: If I know I am sick, then I understand why I am obligated to self-quarantine.

Do you think you have a soul? The modern scientific impulse is to dispense with supposedly occult or “spooky” notions like souls and spirits, and to understand ourselves instead as wholly and completely part of the natural world, existing and operating through the same physical, chemical and biological processes that we find anywhere else in the environment.

Ancient Rome was a wildly diverse and exotic place. As I tell the students in my college classes, if you want to get a feel for what Rome was like, watch Star Wars.

Consciousness is the felt quality of experience. When you see a wave cresting on a beach, smell the aroma of freshly baked bread, or feel the pain of stubbing your toe, you are having conscious experience.

Humans may not be Earth’s most intelligent beings for much longer: the world champions of chess, Go, and Jeopardy! are now all AIs. Given the rapid pace of progress in AI, many predict that it could advance to human-level intelligence within the next several decades.

Democracy establishes relationships of political equality, ones in which citizens equally share authority over what they do together and respect one another as equals.