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The Virtuous Homophobe
A few days ago, Kim Davis was released from jail, where she had spent the past few days. Davis, as you probably recall, is the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples (more technically, for contempt for refusing to obey an order to grant such licenses).…
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Post-Vacation Musings: How rude should I be to my mother?
Written by Andreas Kappes A couple of years ago, my mother flew in from Germany to visit and help us with looking after my daughter during a school break. One night, I can’t remember the exact circumstances, she angrily told me: “Stop being so polite”. I might have thanked her for something that in her…
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Guest Post: Pervitin instead of coffee? Change in attitudes to cognitive enhancement in the 50’s and 60’s in Brazil
Written by Marcelo de Araujo State University of Rio de Janeiro CNPq – The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development How does our attitude to drugs in general shape our reaction to “smart drugs” in particular? Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katharine Brem have recently published a systematic review of 24 studies on the…
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The moral limitations of in vitro meat
By Ben Levinstein and Anders Sandberg Almost everybody agrees factory farming is morally outrageous, with several billions of animals living lives that are likely not worth living. One possible solution to this moral disaster is to make in vitro meat technologically and commercially viable. In vitro meat is biologically identical to real meat but cultured…
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Less cooperation, please
Written by Joao Fabiano Since the idea of enhancing human morality was proposed – and perhaps long before then – there has been a great deal of scientific research directly or indirectly inspired by the goal of improving human moral dispositions. Manipulations which result in increased levels of cooperation, prosociality or altruism are often seen…
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Guest Post: Must we throw out the brain with the bathwater? Marc Lewis on addiction
Written by Anke Snoek Macquarie University When neuroscience started to mingle into the debate on addiction and self-control, people aimed to use these insights to cause a paradigm shift in how we judge people struggling with addictions. People with addictions are not morally despicable or weak-willed, they end up addicted because drugs influence the brain…
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Guest Post: Smart drugs, Smart choice
Written by Benjamin Pojer and Daniel D’Hotman Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Science, Monash University Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford A recent review published in the European Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology (1) on the efficacy and safety of modafinil in a population of healthy people has found that the drug…