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Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Why Is Virtual Wrongdoing Morally Disquieting, Insofar As It Is?
This essay was the winning entry in the undergraduate category of the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by University of Oxford student, Eric Sheng. In the computer game Red Dead Redemption 2 (henceforward, RDR2), players control a character in a virtual world. Among the characters represented by computer graphics but not
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Pandemic Ethics: Covid-19 Shows Just How Much of Ethics Depends on (Good) Data
Written by Hazem Zohny In times of crises, the archetypal ethicist sits in the proverbial armchair and hums and haws, testing out intuitions about an action or policy against a jumble of moral theories. Covid-19 shows why the archetypal ethicist is as useless as antibiotics are for viral infections. This is because virtually all the
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Pandemic Ethics: Who gets the ventilator in the coronavirus pandemic? These are the ethical approaches to allocating medical care
By Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson Cross-posted from ABC Online Imagine there are two patients with respiratory failure. Joan is 40, normally employed with two children and no other health conditions or disabilities. Mary is 80, with severe dementia, in a nursing home. In the Western world, doctors are gearing up for an explosion of
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Politics, Ethics, and Shutting Down in the Face of Covid-19
Written by Stephen Rainey Recently, I wrote about some possible limits of democratic politics in the context of climate change science. The idea was that politics could owe debts to citizens that might prompt suspension of established, and in themselves desirable, norms under certain circumstances. Coronavirus presents more such circumstances, so it’s worth revisiting those
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Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2020
Please join us in congratulating all of the finalists in this unique final for the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics, and in particular our winners, Eric Sheng and Maya Krishnan. In an Oxford Uehiro Centre first the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was held as a Zoom webinar event. The Finalists in each
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Cross Post: Coronavirus: The Conversation We Should Have With Our Loved Ones Now – Leading Medic
Written by Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford This article was originally published on The Conversation Waiting is never easy. Sometimes the period when you know that something bad is coming is almost harder than when it finally arrives. Across the health service, there is an enormous and unprecedented effort underway to prepare for the coming
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Pandemic ethics: Never again – will we make Covid-19 a warning shot or a dud?
by Anders Sandberg The Covid-19 pandemic is not the end of the world. But it certainly is a wake-up call. When we look back on the current situation in a year’s time, will we collectively learn the right lessons or instead quickly forget like we did with the 1918 flu? Or even think it was
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Coronavirus: Dark Clouds, But Some Silver Linings?
By Charles Foster Cross posted from The Conversation To be clear, and in the hope of heading off some trolls, two observations. First: of course I don’t welcome the epidemic. It will cause death, worry, inconvenience and great physical and economic suffering. Lives and livelihoods will be destroyed. The burden will fall disproportionately on the
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Pandemic Ethics: Infectious Pathogen Control Measures and Moral Philosophy
By Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas Listen to Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas on Philosophical Disquisitions discussing Covid 19 and the Ethics of Infectious Disease Control, a podcast interview that was inspired by this blog. Following the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, a number of jurisdictions have implemented restrictive measures to prevent the spread of this