Arguments, not assignments.
Themed issues of original essays, short arguments, and dialogues across ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and philosophy of science.
Read the argument, then the objection.
Is Consent Enough to Make an Unequal Arrangement Just?
A defence of the view that procedural consent cannot, by itself, legitimate a bargain struck under conditions of unequal power.
Is Ignorance Ever a Form of Integrity?
Why choosing not to know can sometimes preserve moral agency rather than diminish it.
What Do We Owe the Machines We Build?
An argument against grounding artificial moral status in behavioural mimicry alone.
Can a Democracy Be Too Democratic?
A defence of institutional friction against the demand for perfect legislative responsiveness.
Do Future People Have Rights?
The puzzle behind climate obligations owed to people who do not yet exist to hold them.
On Believing What You Cannot Prove
Two editors argue, in alternating voice, over whether justified belief requires evidence at all.
Full issues, including every piece above, are available as PDFs in the archive.
The Counterargument.
A published essay can be paired with a formal, published objection written by someone else — naming the specific move in the argument being contested. You read the claim and the strongest challenge to it side by side, not the claim alone.
It is the reason pieces are revised before they are accepted: an argument that has only ever been agreed with has not yet been tested.
An argument is published
One clear central claim, defended in the author’s own words.
An objection is written
A second writer names the exact premise or inference they contest.
You read them together
Claim and challenge appear side by side — not the claim alone.
Five ways to make an argument.
Essay
A sustained argument for one central claim.
Short
A compact argument, made in fewer words.
Counterargument
A formal objection responding to a published essay.
Dialogue
Two voices working a question through in alternating turns.
Response
A reply to the current Dialectic Question.