Part two, Philosophy Now, Further Analysis and Discussion.

Do you want to start with your question?

Sure.

So, Rick, we're just going to ask you a couple of questions that are kind of taking some of the philosophical content we've talked about and relating it to, like, modern issues that are in the media at the moment and trying to apply some of the philosophical kind of theories and feel free to drop any ones you want.

Okay, so the first question was about something that happened in the media recently that I think is quite an interesting example and can be phrased into a sort of thought experiment. So for those not aware, last week, the UK government, the French government and the American government bombed Syria. This was due to a chemical attack that the Syrian government apparently inflicted

on its own people. And I think this raises a really interesting philosophical and ethical question

because this attack by the French, British and American governments was done quite quickly.

And in the UK, it was done without a vote in Parliament. And the reason I'm posing this is

because we actually did it in our school debate club on Thursday, which is that, Rick, do you think that military action, which can have, you know,

quite impactful results on people, you know, resulting in loss of life, etc. Do you think that

those sorts of actions should be put forward without a vote in Parliament? In general, definitely not.

However, I can imagine there are circumstances when military action is pointless and less taken immediately.

So therefore, Parliament might want to grant, or the law might want to grant a general permission for a government to act immediately without reference back to Parliament under

those circumstances, although the circumstances themselves would have to be quite clearly

described when giving that kind of permission. And obviously there would also have to be debate afterwards by Parliament

of whether the government had used that power, delegated by Parliament,

responsibly, correctly.

So I'm going to play a bit of devil's advocate because it's fun.

So how would you respond then if someone said that, okay, so having a vote before is essential in a case in an emergency?

How someone may say, okay, but the democratic process is very slow, very arduous in terms of this vote. You know, it could take potentially days and then you might get the vote that, you know, you should do it anyway, in which case you've just lost it a couple of days, you've lost some time there. Do you feel like there's strong arguments kind of for and against this? I mean, is there maybe a danger if the government has a veto over what Parliament says, if they can just perform military action straight away, you know,

taking the Syrian conflict out of it for a second? Or philosophically, do you think that maybe

government should have this power in an emergency? Well, let's see. What's the best we could

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