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New Year’s Reflection
written by Neil Levy It’s the time of year at which many of us take stock of how our lives are going. It is more or less arbitrary where we mark the end of the year, but because the convention is shared, our lives have a rhythm that is marked by the calendar, and the
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Bigotry and the Academic Abortion Debate
By Alberto Giubilini Oxford Martin School and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanitites, University of Oxford For further discussion on this topic by Dr Giubilini see his oped in The Irish Times Last month I was invited by Oxford’s Students for Life (OSFL), the pro-life student organisation at the University of Oxford, to take part
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Video Series: Larry S. Temkin on Peter Singer, Effective Altruism and Our Obligations to the Needy
What does Peter Singer’s famous ‘pond example’ tell us about our obligations to the world’s needy? Is rescuing a child drowning in a shallow pond really the same as donating money to effective aid organisations? Is it okay to spend large amounts of money on ‘dramatic rescues’ (e.g. after an earthquake, to find perhaps one
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Video Series: Is AI Racist? Can We Trust it? Interview with Prof. Colin Gavaghan
Should self-driving cars be programmed in a way that always protects ‘the driver’? Who is responsible if an AI makes a mistake? Will AI used in policing be less racially biased than police officers? Should a human being always take the final decision? Will we become too reliant on AIs and lose important skills? Many interesting
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Guest Post: The Real Problem With Human Head Transplantation
Written by Michael S. Dauber, MA In 2015, Sergio Canavero announced that he would perform a therapeutic head transplant procedure on a human subject by December 2017. Since then, he has recruited the assistance of surgeon Xiaoping Ren and switched from Valery Spiridonov to an anonymous Chinese patient whose medical condition remains undisclosed. The procedure, which
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Paddington Bear and the Evangelicals
By Charles Foster Last night, long after everyone else I know, I went with the kids to see Paddington 2. As everyone agrees, it’s wonderful. It’s a modern morality tale. There is plainly a big appetite for morality. Interestingly, though, it is a Christian morality tale.1 Paddington’s behaviour neutralizes violence. In the face of
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In Defence of Impulsivity
Written by Dr Rebecca Brown It has become commonplace to identify a lack of impulse control as a major cause of poor health. A popular theory within behavioural science tells us that our behaviour is regulated via two systems: the fast, impulsive system 1 (the ‘impulsive’ or ‘automatic’ system) and the slower, deliberative system 2
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Cross Post: Sacred Places and Traditions with Lea Ypi
Suppose a religious community regards a site – with, say, a stone circle – as sacred. It has for centuries been used as a place of prayer and contemplation. The land is owned by the state and they want to sell it off to build apartment blocks. You might think that the deep attachment the
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Video Series: John Harris Defends Gene-Editing in Human Embryos
Novel gene editing technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9, allow scientists to make very precise changes in the genome of human embryos. This could prevent serious genetic diseases in future children. But the use of gene editing in human embryos also raises questions: Is it safe? Should prospective parents be free to choose the genetic characteristics of
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Super Soldiers, Civ-Mil Relations, and the 21st Century Coriolanus
Written by Michael Robillard “Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.” ― William Shakespeare, The Tragedy