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“Focus Pocus” and Beyond: consumer brain computer interfaces for health, self-improvement and fun
In September 2011 ,the most advanced computer game to use a consumer brain computer interface (BCI) will go on sale. Its name is Focus Pocus (see video trailer here, its awesome) and it is aimed at children with ADHD so that they might use gamification to train their brains to improve focus and impulse control.…
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The Myth of Elite Sport
In an interesting article, “Why we’re the best”, Oliver Poole writing in the Evening Standard yesterday claims: Culture, environment and genes are all cited as reasons for sporting success. But it is practice that really makes perfect. He cites evidence that it not some genetic advantage that makes Kenyan runners so great but the fact…
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Danegeld
by Ole Martin Moen, Ph.D. student in philosophy at University of Oslo and upcoming visitor at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Since February, the Danish sailor Jan Quist Johansen, his wife, Birgit, and their three children, Rune, Hjalte and Naja, have been held hostage by Somali pirates. After a failed rescue attempt in March, the family has been…
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Creating Non-Human People
Last week, the Academy of Medical Sciences released a report calling for better regulation of experiments involving animals containing human tissues or genes. One specific claim made by the report is that experiments which entail “modifying non-human primates to create human-like awareness or behaviour” should be banned. Was it right to call for such a…
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Considering the Instrumentalization and Exploitation of Elite Athletes
Why did Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye not wear helmets during their boxing fight a few weeks ago? Actually, they do tend to wear them during training, but obviously not when an official boxing match takes place. Why not? Presumably, it is because wearing helmets could foster tactical fights and finally turn them into unspectacular…
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Enhanced Consequentialism: Up, Up… and Away?
Last week Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal featured a fun, and genuinely thought-provoking, cartoon. Click below to see the cartoon at FULL SIZE, then come back to hear my take on it: Poor Superman, trapped in a spiral of consequentialist logic! If one really is as powerful as Superman, then it’s no use pleading for a…
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What is the point of being a doctor when conscience overrules professional duties?
A new study recently published on the Journal of Medical Ethics and reported by the newspapers explored the attitude towards conscientious objection of 733 medical students from four different UK medical schools (Cardiff University, King’s college London, Leeds University and St George’s University of London).The results of this survey are interesting and deserve to be…
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The unexpected turn: from the democratic Internet to the Panopticon
In the last ten years ICTs (information and communication technologies) have been increasingly used by militaries both to develop new weapons and to improve communication and propaganda campaigns. So much so that military often refers to ‘information’ as the fifth dimension of warfare in addition to land, sea, air and space. Given this scenario does…
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Announcement: An international conference on human embryo research
The following guest post is an announcement by David Albert Jones, director of the Ansombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford www.bioethics.org.uk How do we decide what protection to extend to the human embryo? On 8 September 2011 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre is hosting a conference ‘Human embryo research: law, ethics and public…