Matthew S.W. Silk

Given worries regarding political representation and the Supreme Court, it may be time to reconsider the purpose, function, and makeup of our judges.

Foreign affairs predicaments like this highlight the difficulty in assessing the trade-offs between incomparable values in situations of uncertainty.

The retraction of three papers on treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine reflect a crisis in the scientific community: how to handle data from private companies. What reforms are necessary to avoid such data-based scandals in the future?

The question of where we are, how we got here, and what we should do now is more complex than our current conversation admits.

In the absence of a substantial ethical code of conduct, it's difficult to assess the weight that economic recommendations should have in the realm of public policy.

Just as with scientific hypotheses, the social and political beliefs that survive this crisis should be those that have actually borne fruit.

Given the suffering the pandemic will cause the poor and the uninsured, the wealth disparity may be an issue of national security.

Defining what "reasonable" looks like in times of crisis can be extremely difficult, but managing dramatic shifts in supply and demand requires us to continue to think of others.

The Coastal GasLink pipeline standoff highlights a number of concerns of legitimacy and puts pressure on different entities' claim to the right to rule.

How precise are our meanings and how precise is our usage? We use terms like "social construct" and "socialist," but can intend very different things by them.

What is the proper metric to use in deciding another species' fate? What do we need to know in order to justify extinction?

The epistemic impact of Google and Facebook's monopoly on information and communication poses a very real problem.

When even the presentation of facts is non-neutral, how can journalism retain any claim to objectivity?

A new dating app uses DNA comparison to give users information about potential offspring inheriting a genetic disease. What kind of message are we sending?

Does wartime humor indicate a numbness to the violence of war or does it simply betray rising anxieties about an uncertain future?

The potential for oversight is limited, but a policy of self-policing asks too much. How should we regulate AI research?

Romoser's claims concerning the existence of life on Mars raise questions about the requirements for having justified beliefs.

Given the profound societal effect that scientific studies can have, are there kinds of research that shouldn't be done or results that shouldn't be published? Can scientific censorship be justified?

What are our responsibilities at the ballot box? What does it mean for a vote to be insincere? Do we have an obligation to vote our conscience at the ballot box?

Environmental ethics butts up against religious convictions: should climate change realities alter our beliefs about how to honor the dead?