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Effort, psychological continuity, human enhancement and superintelligence
One argument against human enhancement is that it is cheating. Cheating others and oneself. One may be cheating oneself for various reasons; because one took the easy path instead of actually acquiring a certain capacity, because once one enhances one is no longer oneself, because enhancements are superficial among others. I would like to try…
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Guest Post: A feminist defence of the nanny state
Written by Anke Snoek Macquarie University In Australia Senator David Leyonhjelm http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-declares-war-on-nanny-state/story-fn59niix-1227415288323 has won support for a broad-ranging parliamentary inquiry into what he calls the ‘nanny state’. A committee will test the claims of public health experts about bicycle helmets, alcohol laws, violent video games, the sale and use of alcohol, tobacco and pornography. “If…
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Doping: Alive and Well in the Tour But You Won’t Hear About It
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my argument for legalising doping in sport, aiming to focus resources on harm reduction rather than zero tolerance. Key safeguards in this approach are (1) doping carried out under the supervision of a doctor, and (2 ) checks on athletes to ensure they maintain normal physiological…
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Reincarnation and discrimination
by Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatalethics In California, in the last week, there have been further motions in a long running lawsuit relating to a brain-dead child. Oakland teenager Jahi McMath died after a tonsillectomy in December 2013. However, her parents rejected the medical diagnosis of brain death, and despite a Californian court providing judicial backing for…
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Guest Post: Housing in Australia– Investment Vehicle or Social Institution?
Written by Christopher Chew Monash University JOURNALIST: Treasurer, do you accept that housing in Sydney is unaffordable and the only way we’re going to make it affordable is if real house prices in real terms actually fall over the near term? TREASURER JOE HOCKEY: No. Look, if housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no one would…
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Guest Post: Genetics education, genetic determinism, and the trickle-down effect
Written By Johanna Ahola-Launonen University of Helsinki In bioethical discussion, it is often debated whether or not some studies espouse genetic determinism. A recent study by Tuomas Aivelo and Anna Uitto[1] give important insight to the matter. They studied main genetics education textbooks used in Finnish upper secondary school curricula and compared the results to…
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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…