Alexander Pruss's Blog

Infamously, Aristotle thought that in animal reproduction (including the human case) the male contributed form and the female the matter. I...

Here’s another try at an account of life. Maybe: x is alive if and only if x has a non-derivative self-representation. Consider: Anyth...

The usual way to argue that an action is permissible is to argue that the arguments against the action’s permissibility fail. But it would b...

Accounts of biological life characterize it by lists of features such as “reproduction, metabolism, functional organization, growth, respons...

God made everything. He did so timelessly eternally, and is fully responsible for everything that exists. He is not just a first cause, but ...

Alice and Bob are Elbonians, a despised genetic minority. It seems that unless the level of mistreatment that members of this minority suffe...

Start with this consequence of the essentiality of origins: The identity of an individual depends on the exact time of her coming-into-exist...

You can appreciate Monet's Woman with a Parasol in person through your own unaided vision. But perhaps you need eyeglasses. If you use ...

Andrea Dworkin argued that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is always wrong because it involves a violation of the woman's b...

Suppose that you are hooked up to a button which, if pressed, will induce in you a desire for a flash of green light followed by...

Non-coital reproduction (at least if it is to satisfy standard medical ethics rules) such as in-vitro fertilization requires the c...

Consider: We cannot permissibly intend to produce a person for reasons that do not include the specific person's own good. We ca...

Breathing is intrinsically directed at oxygenation even if we're breathing helium. But if one knows it's helium, it may not be poss...

Al, a single father of young Beth, found himself destitute. To give Beth hope for a future life, he agreed to have Charlie adopt...

I was once rather amused by an undergraduate in my Philosophy of Love and Sex class who complained that the sexual ethics material...

Suppose a couple uses contraception but conception nonetheless occurs. Then it is true that the couple have put obstacles in the...

Today I am giving this talk on sexual ethics at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

In my previous post I suggested, using amateur astronomy as an example, that an engagement in an activity can have a value over an...

I've discussed this kind of argument before . But I kind of like the following formulation. I am not endorsing the argument...

In procreating, we are about as God-like as we can be. But, as C. S. Lewis has forcefully argued based on a number of cases in ...