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Ecological Rationality: When Is Bias A Good Thing?
By Rebecca Brown Many people will be broadly familiar with the ‘heuristics and biases’ (H&B) program of work, made prominent by the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s. H&B developed alongside the new sub-discipline of Behavioural Economics, both detailing the ways in which human decision-makers deviate from what would be expected of
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Why Epistemologists Should Sniff
By Charles Foster There are lots of big and clever books about epistemology. It’s a complex business. Although one can do some epistemology (some icy thinkers say all) without making any empirical claims about what the senses show (and hence how the senses work), such empirical claims are essential for the discipline to get any
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Health vs Choice? The Vaccination Debate.
On Sunday 3 November, OUC’s Dr Alberto Giubilini participated in a debate on compulsory vaccination at 2019 Battle of Ideas Festival (Barbican Centre, London). Chaired by Ellie Lee, the session also featured Dr Michael Fitzpatrick (GP and author, MMR and Autism: what parents need to know and Defeating Autism: a damaging delusion); Emilie Karafillakis (Vaccine Confidence Project); and Nancy McDermott (author, The Problem with
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Video Interview: Rebecca Roache on Passive Aggression
What is passive aggression? Why is it so annoying? What message does the person being passive aggressive try to convey? Is it usually better to speak our mind about what bothers us, or to be passive aggressive? Is it sometimes better to just swear at people? In this interview with Dr Katrien Devolder (Oxford Uehiro
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Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships
Announcement: Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu’s new book ‘Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships‘, published by (Stanford University Press) is now available. Is there a pill for love? What about an “anti-love drug”, to help us get over an ex? This book argues that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA—the active ingredient in Ecstasy—may help ordinary couples
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Climate Ought to Change Politics
Written by Stephen Rainey In the midst of global climate change set to devastate entire ways of life, and ultimately on track to render the biosphere uninhabitable for all but the most adaptable organisms, it seems timely to question how political legitimacy relates to matters of scientific fact. While it seems mostly desirable that groups
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Institutional Conscientious Objection
by Roger Crisp In a recent work-in-progress seminar at the Oxford Uehiro Centre, Xavier Symons, from the University of Notre Dame Australia, gave a fascinating and suggestive presentation based on some collaborative work he has been doing with Reginald Chua OP, from the Catholic Theological College, on institutional conscientious objection.
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Announcement: New Issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics Available Open Access
We are pleased to announce Volume 7 Issue 3 of the Journal of Practical Ethics, our open access journal on moral and political philosophy. You can read our complete open access archive online and hard copies can be purchased at cost price following links from each issue. The Duty to Remove Statues of Wrongdoers Helen