George Berkeley

A few weeks ago, this column explored that ancient puzzle “How do you know you actually exist?”, one of the defining questions of philosophy. In doin(...)

Western civilisation has been slow to take seriously the suffering of animals. For “slow” read thousands of years, and yet we’re only starting to get (...)

The idea of philosophy becoming a core discipline in the Irish education system once seemed like a pipe dream. But now there is a short course on the(...)

I recently overheard a couple of young boys arguing over who had scored the most goals during a football kick-around. “I scored infinity,” boasted the(...)

A scientific explanation of the “hard problem” of how the material structure of the brain underpins consciousness would represent a major coup for sci(...)

The inability of most teenagers to complete a sentence without interjecting the work “like” at least once is usually considered a bad habit.  And(...)

It is a curious fact that Ireland, despite its over 1,500 years of Christianity, has produced only one speculative thinker with the reputation of bein(...)

Every generation flirts with utopian ideals. A hundred years ago, we had Patrick Pearse’s nationalistic vision of a self-sustaining Ireland born of b(...)

Light House Cinema, Saturday 20th, 6.30pm, 128 min Film, Samuel Beckett’s sole excursion into the medium, was, by the playwright’s own account, a f(...)

The great comedian Buster Keaton was not an Irish-American (or not much of one, anyway) contrary to what many people think. But he did start his caree(...)