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When politicians are undemocratic, there’s something to learn
Politicians often do things which are blatantly undemocratic, in that they poll poorly and are thus presumably against the will of the people: bailing out banks, nixing referendums on the EU, protecting the city of London, negotiating often unpopular free trade agreements, increasing certain taxes or cutting certain services. When this happens, the first question
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Female Philosophers and Sexual Harassment
I’ve been reading, for a research project, about a group of remarkable philosophers who were educated in Oxford during and after World War II: some went on to teach at Oxford. They include Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Mary Warnock. Several of them, it transpires, were taught classics by a brilliant and
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Can Olympics costs be ethically justified?
I am not a consequentialist, and so I am generally not prone to applying utility-maximization tests to every policy. Yet even I found my greatest-good-for-the-great-number buttons pressed by the news this week that the British government will invest £41million in opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. This comes on top
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To 1750 – or beyond?
At the current Conference of the Parties in Durban, Libya proposed an ambitious scheme which, it claims, will not only halt, but reverse global warming. (See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0f852f8c-1d00-11e1-a26a-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1fff3AXgX) Effectively, the “Libyan Climate Change Initiative” will turn the Sahara desert, and perhaps the Arabian and other deserts, into a giant wind-farm. But not your average of wind-farm. This
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The subtle line between conscientious objection and sabotage
The Washington Post recently reported the news of a dozen of nurses from a New Jersey hospital who claimed the right not to assist a patient before and after an abortion.
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Water, food or energy: we won’t lack them
The world is full of problems. Pollution is a problem. The destruction of the coral reefs, the eradication of the rain forests, the mass extinction of animal species are problems, and tragedies. Loss of biodiversity is a problem. Global warming is a problem. Poverty and the unequal distribution of resources are major problems. But lack
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Banking as an ethical career
The High Pay Commission today published a report denigrating the salaries of executives in the city. This isn’t unusual: it’s common to see the high pay of bankers and other city workers is reviled in the media. But there’s a flip side to bankers’ earnings, which often gets neglected. Wealth, of course, can be spent
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Gender Competition Preserves Natural Traits of Competitive Sports
Written by Roman Gaehwiler In western communities the degree of gender equality and emancipation represents an important indicator to level sophistication and liberalism. In sports, however, sexual discrimination is taken for granted. As a result of strict sex segregation, there’s no opportunity for women to measure their abilities with male opponents. Consequently, either sport seems
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What Moral Virtues Should We Enhance?
Yesterday evening in front of a record audience in the OxfordMartinSchoolbuilding, Dr. Molly Crockett delivered the Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: “Moral enhancement? Evidence and challenges” (a podcast of the lecture will soon appear in the events archives here) In her engaging talk, Dr Crockett spoke of the emerging body of neuroscience research she and others
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The NHS should Stop Wasting Money on Homeopaths and Homeopathic Hospitals and should Offer Placebo Pills to Patients Requesting Homeopathic Treatments
The NHS spends three to four million pounds per year on homeopathic remedies, despite conceding that there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies actually work. They justify this expenditure on the grounds of patient choice: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/July07/Pages/nhs-homeopathy.aspx. In a post on this subject, on August 20th 2010, I took the view there is something right about