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In defence of drinking alone
By Rebecca Roache and Hannah Maslen Yes they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness But it’s better than drinking alone – Billy Joel, Piano Man Drinking alone is often frowned upon. Those who do it can be quite defensive about it—as illustrated by a Reddit thread entitled ‘Why do people think drinking
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Guest Post: Performance enhancers and smart drugs in e-sports
Written by Toni Gibea Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest My aim is to show that the decision made by ESL (Electronic Sports League) to ban Adderall in e-sport competitions is not the outcome of a well-reasoned ethical debate. There are some important ethical arguments that could be raised against the ESL decision
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1 in 4 women: How the latest sexual assault statistics were turned into click bait by the New York Times
by Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp) * Note: this article was originally published at the Huffington Post. Introduction As someone who has worked on college campuses to educate men and women about sexual assault and consent, I have seen the barriers to raising awareness and changing attitudes. Chief among them, in my experience, is a sense of skepticism–especially
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Guest Post: ENHANCING WISDOM
Written by Darlei Dall’Agnol[1] Stephen Hawking has recently made two very strong declarations: Philosophy is dead; Artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. I wonder whether there is a close connection between the two. In fact, I believe that the second will be true only if the first
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“The medicalization of love” – podcast interview
Just out today is a podcast interview for Smart Drug Smarts between host Jesse Lawler and interviewee Brian D. Earp on “The Medicalization of Love” (title taken from a recent paper with Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, available from the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, here). Below is the abstract and link to the interview: Abstract What is love? A
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Drinking at Schiphol with the fount of bioethics
A couple of weeks ago, in an airport bar, I met the foundation of modern bioethics. I was crawling back to London: he was heading to JFK. ‘I usually fly First’, was his opening, as we sat on those vertiginous stools. ‘So I’m usually in the Lounge. But it’s good to be reminded how the
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Vagueness and Making a Difference
Do you make the world a worse place by purchasing factory-farmed chicken, or by paying for a seat on a transatlantic flight? Do you have moral reason to, and should you, refrain from doing these things? It is very unlikely that any individual act of either of these two sorts would in fact bring about
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Guest Post: Mental Health Disorders in Prison: Neuroethical and Societal Issues
Guest post by Barbara Sahakian, FMedSci, DSc, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, and president of the International Neuroethics Society. This article was originally published on the Dana Foundation Blog, and can be read here: http://danablog.org/2015/07/28/mental-health-disorders-in-prison-neuroethical-and-societal-issues/ More than half of all prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem.[i] In
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Guest Post: The food environment, obesity, and primary targets of intervention
Written By Johanna Ahola-Launonen University of Helsinki Chronic diseases, their origins, and issues of responsibility are a prevalent topic in current health care ethics and public discussion; and obesity is among one of the most discussed themes. Usually the public discussion has a tendency to assume that when information about health lifestyle choices exist, the