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Guest Post: Impractical ethics
Written by Constantin Vica Postdoctoral Fellow, Romanian Academy Iasi Branch Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest This post is not, as one might expect, about that part of ethics which is not concerned about practical issues, e.g. meta-ethics. Neither is it about moral philosophical endeavors which are incomprehensible, highly conceptual and without any adherence
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Guest Post: Real change in food systems needs real ethics
Written By Paul B. Thompson W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University This blog is a cross-posting from the OUPblog. Please see the original post here: http://blog.oup.com/2015/06/food-systems-need-real-ethics/ In May, we celebrated the third annual workshop on food justice at Michigan State University. Few of the people who come to these
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There is a duty not to be boring
Someone has just said to me: ‘You’re really boring today’. It is, of course, something I commonly hear. And it was undoubtedly true. But it made me wonder if there was any moral significance to my personal boringness. Should I repent of it, or is it morally neutral? I’ve concluded, I’m afraid, that it’s culpable.
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Announcement: Journal of Practical Ethics Volume 3, Issue 1
Journal of Practical Ethics. Volume 3, Issue 1. June 2015 Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Fairness F. M. Kamm Journal of Practical Ethics, 3(1): 1-14 Read Online | Download PDF The Elements of Well-Being Brad Hooker Journal of Practical Ethics, 3(1): 15-35 Read Online | Download PDF | Podcast Motives to Assist and Reasons to Assist: the
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Adding Happy People
Almost every week there’s a headline about our planet’s population explosion. For instance Indian officials confirmed recently that India is projected to overtake China in just over a decade – to become the most populous country on Earth. Many are worried that the planet is becoming increasingly overpopulated. Whether it is overpopulated, underpopulated, or appropriately
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Guest Post: CARING ROBOTS
CARING ROBOTS Written by Darlei Dall’Agnol[1] Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina As we humans find ways of enhancing our physical, intellectual, emotional and other capabilities and, as a result, our lifespan expands, caring for the elderly becomes more challenging and complex too. We may postpone aging, but perhaps not forever and serious care will be
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Guest Post : Synthetic Biology: Taking care of the public image
Written by Prof. Antonio Diéguez Universidad de Malaga The public image of science is usually subjected to distortions tending to blur the nuances and to generate monolithic assessments. The mass media contribute to a large extent to the creation of disproportionate expectations in the next and spectacular benefits provided by scientific research, or on the
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The Moral Significance of Animal Suffering
Recently I attended a fascinating Society for Applied Philosophy lecture by Shelly Kagan, entitled ‘What’s Wrong with Speciesism?’. Kagan began the lecture by explaining how, while teaching a course involving some of Peter Singer’s writings on non-human animals, he had begun to doubt the view, defended by Singer, that other things equal the suffering of animals
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Pandas, Humans, and Evolution: What is the state of nature?
Pandas are notoriously picky eaters: they only eat bamboo. But a recent study has found that pandas are actually poorly adapted for their diet. Pandas apparently evolved from omnivorous bears. Whether as a consequence of a decrease in the availability of prey or an increase in bamboo, however, they shifted to an exclusively vegetarian diet
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Guest Post: Prostitution, harm, and disability: Should only people with disabilities be allowed to pay for sex?
* Note that this entry is being cross-posted at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog. By Brian D. Earp Introduction Is prostitution harmful? And if it is harmful, should it be illegal to buy (or sell) sexual services? And if so, should there ever be any exceptions? What about for people with certain disabilities—say—who might find it difficult or even