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Reflective Equilibrium in a Turbulent Lake: AI Generated Art and The Future of Artists
by Anders Sandberg – Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford Is there a future for humans in art? Over the last few weeks the question has been loudly debated online, as machine learning did a surprise charge into making pictures. One image won a state art fair. But artists complain that the AI art
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Guest Post: The Ethics of the Insulted—Salman Rushdie’s Case
Written by Hossein Dabbagh – Philosophy Tutor at Oxford University hossein.dabbagh@conted.ox.ac.uk We have the right, ceteris paribus, to ridicule a belief (its propositional content), i.e., harshly criticise it. If someone, despite all evidence, for instance, believes with certainty that no one can see him when he closes his eyes, we might be justified to
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In Defense of Obfuscation
Written by Mette Leonard Høeg At the What’s the Point of Moral Philosophy congress held at the University of Oxford this summer, there was near-consensus among the gathered philosophers that clarity in moral philosophy and practical ethics is per definition good and obscurity necessarily bad. Michael J. Zimmerman explicitly praised clarity and accessibility in philosophical
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The Moral Elephant in the Room – Patient Morality in Psychiatry
Cross-post from the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog. By Doug McConnell, Matthew Broome, and Julian Savulescu. In our paper, “Making psychiatry moral again”, we aim to develop and justify a practical ethical guide for psychiatric involvement in patient moral growth. Ultimately we land on the view that psychiatrists should help patients express their own
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We Need To Have A Conversation About “We Need To Have A Conversation”
By Ben Davies When new technologies emerge, ethical questions inevitably arise about their use. Scientists with relevant expertise will be invited to speak on radio, on television, and in newspapers (sometimes ethicists are asked, too, but this is rarer). In many such cases, a particular phrase gets used when the interview turns to potential ethical
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The Weaponization of Bullshit
by Neil Levy It’s not often that philosophers come to broader public attention, but Harry Frankfurt managed it with his 2005 book On Bullshit. The book made the best-seller lists and led to a Daily Show appearance. On Bullshit had a more recent resurgence with the advent of the Trump presidency, as people sought to
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Awareness of a Nudge is not Required for Resistance of a Nudge
Written by Gabriel De Marco and Thomas Douglas This blog post is based on our forthcoming paper: “Nudge Transparency is not Required for Nudge Resistibility,” Ergo. Consider the following cases: Food Placement. In order to encourage healthy eating, cafeteria staff place healthy food options at eye-level, whereas unhealthy options are placed lower down.
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Video Interview: Prof Erica Charters on when does (or did) the Covid-19 pandemic end?
In this ‘Thinking Out Loud’ episode, Katrien Devolder (philosophy, Oxford) interviews Erica Charters, Professor of the Global History of Medicine at the University of Oxford about how we know, or decide, when the covid-19 pandemic ends. Professor Charters explains why the end as well as the beginning of a pandemic are murky, and what past
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We Should Regulate Politicians’ Public Statements Like Advertisements
Written by Hazem Zohny There are strict regulations in place to stop businesses falsely advertising their products or services — why not the same for politicians? Lizz Truss and Rishi Sunak are currently trying to appeal to the Conservative party members who will determine the UK’s next prime minister in September – why can they
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First synthetic embryos: the scientific breakthrough raises serious ethical questions
synthetic mouse. Weizmann Institute of Sciences Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford; Christopher Gyngell, The University of Melbourne, and Tsutomu Sawai, Hiroshima University Children, even some who are too young for school, know you can’t make a baby without sperm and an egg. But a team of researchers in Israel have called into question the basics