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How do medical professionals decide on treatment options for children?
Following widespread media coverage about the court case where baby Charlie Gard’s parents were told that his life support would be removed against their wishes, Dominic Wilkinson appeared on BBC’s Newsnight to discuss the factors that doctors take into account when making such difficult decisions. Short Video Full Programme
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Cross Post: Why we should tax meat that contains antibiotics
Alberto Giubilini, University of Oxford The use of antibiotics in meat production is a major contributor to one of the biggest threats facing human health in the 21st century: antibiotic resistance. Finding a solution to this requires us to start taking responsibility for our actions. While one person eating meat has an imperceptible effect on…
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Cross Post: IAI debate, ‘Doing Right and Feeling Good’
Zero Degrees of Empathy author Simon Baron-Cohen, philosopher Peter Dews and Oxford Transhumanist Anders Sandberg dispute how to be good. We think empathising with others is the route to a better world. But studies show that empathy encourages us to help one named child over ten anonymous others. Is morality perhaps not about empathy at…
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YouTube interview: Shelly Kagan on Animal Ethics
Should we increase the cognitive capacities of fish if we can? If we enhanced a chimpanzee so that it had the same cognitive capacities as us, would it have exactly the same moral status as us? Is it morally preferable to kill a mouse or to destroy a robot? Could there be beings with a…
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New Year resolutions and tripartite human nature
Written by Charles Foster ‘I do not understand my own actions’, grumbled St. Paul. ‘For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not…
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The Ethics of Regulation
The New York Times just ran a fairly lengthy article that reported the use of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug, in a controlled experiment aimed at reducing anxiety and depression in cancer patients. (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/health/hallucinogenic-mushrooms-psilocybin-cancer-anxiety-depression.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news) A few days earlier the New York Times ran a story on trials using MDMA (i.e., ecstasy) to treat post traumatic stress…
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Cross Post: Why you might want to think twice about surrendering online privacy for the sake of convenience
Written by Carissa Veliz DPhil Candidate in Philosophy, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford This article was originally published in The Conversation Just a click away once you tick this too-long-to-read privacy agreement. Shutterstock It is inconvenient to guard one’s privacy, and the better one protects it, the more inconvenience one must endure.…
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Cross Post: Liberal or conservative? Most of our beliefs shift around
Written by Prof Neil Levy, Senior Research Fellow, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford This article was originally published on The Conversation What? Okay, that sounds good. Justin Lane/EPA One common reaction to the election of Donald Trump (and perhaps to a lesser extent, the Brexit vote) among liberals like me is an…
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Cross Post: Solomon’s frozen judgement
Written by Anders Sandberg This post was originally published on Andert II A girl dying of cancer wanted to use cryonic preservation to have a chance at being revived in the future. While supported by her mother the father disagreed; in a recent high court ruling, the judge found that she could be cryopreserved. As the…
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Functional neo-Aristotelianism as a way to preserve moral agency: A response to Dr William Casebeer’s lecture: The Neuroscience of Moral Agency
Written by Dr Anibal Monasterio Astobiza Audio File of Dr Casebeer’s talk is available here: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT17_Casebeer.mp3 Dr. William Casebeer has an unusual, but nonetheless very interesting, professional career. He retired from active duty as a US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and intelligence analyst. He obtained his PhD in Cognitive Science and Philosophy from University of…