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A shocking discovery about thinking?
You’ve probably already seen the story. Participants in an experiment were asked to sit and think. The only distraction available was the possibility of giving themselves a mild electric shock. One third of women and two thirds of men shocked themselves to pass the time. One man shocked himself 190 times.
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Thank You Luis Suarez!
The world cup is winding down, and a lot of astonishing, surprising things happened throughout the tournament. But nothing offered more to people interested in morality than when Luis Suarez, Uruguayan football star and Premier League player extraordinaire, bit Italian football player Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup match between Italy and Uruguay. Which is…
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The pill to banish painful memories—forget it!
It is a curious feature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that the media regales readers and viewers almost daily with exciting details of breakthroughs in medical science: new cures, reversals of previous certainties about old remedies (and then, often enough, later reversals of the reversals), astonishing information about our brains and numerous…
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Sex with corpses might be philosophically cool. But it’s still not a good idea.
It is reported that Jimmy Savile crept at night into the mortuary at Leeds General Infirmary and committed sex acts on corpses.1 So what? Well, for a start, assuming the acts involved penetration, he had committed a serious criminal offence.2 But shouldn’t we grow up? Shouldn’t we let live, and let the live love the…
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Historical crimes, historical sentences?
Rolf Harris has been sentenced to five years and nine months in prison for sexual offences he committed at various points in the 60s, 70s and 80s. There has been public outrage at the supposed leniency of his sentence, which will now be reviewed by the Attorney General to determine whether it will be sent…
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Tony Coady – Trusting Emotion, Trusting Reason: A False Dichotomy
In his recent seminar (a recording of which can be found here), Australian philosopher Tony Coady seeks to criticize the entrenched dichotomy of ‘emotion’ and ‘reason’. He argues that this rigid division is outdated and unsophisticated, and that its persistence is limiting the quality of both philosophical debate and wider scientific investigation. Coady opens his…
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Manipulations: Is it time to rethink the ethics of news?
The purpose of this blog is, as you know, to comment on ethics in the news. It is written here just above: “Practical Ethics – Ethics in the News”. In this post, I am going to diverge from this purpose, and address a somewhat different topic. Numerous recent events that have been reported in the…
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European Guidelines: How much cinnamon can go in our buns, and what kind of dignity do we want at the end of life?
Over on the Ethox blog Angeliki Kerasidou and Ruth Horn discuss the European Union and the need for cultural understanding between member states, with a focus on the concept of dignity at the end of life. The results of the recent European elections revealed the disconnection between member states and the European Union. Populist anti-European parties…
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Quebec legalises assisted-death: should other states follow?
Last month Quebec legalised assisted-death. The new law allows ‘medical aid in dying’ for adults at the end of life who suffer “constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain” as a result of a “serious and incurable illness”. The passage of this law makes Quebec the first jurisdiction in Canada to allow assisted-death or euthanasia.…