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Rewarding what matters: Status in academic ethics

Rewarding what matters: Status in academic ethics

By Charles Foster

Not everything matters equally. If academic ethics is to be useful – if, indeed, it is to be ethical – it should address itself more to the things that matter most than to things that matter less.

It is hard to imagine a pair of sentences more uncontroversial – no, downright trite – than the two above. And yet not only are these basic principles not acknowledged, they are often reversed: often the manifestly least important work in academic ethics gets the most applause and recognition. This may be because it is more arcane and therefore perceived as requiring greater cleverness.

This needs to stop, and that demands a system whereby important and useful work is incentivised by enhanced status and funding.Read More »Rewarding what matters: Status in academic ethics

Be Excellent: How Ancient Virtues can Guide our Responses to the Climate Crisis

Written by Roger Crisp

After world chiefs and youth leaders gathered in September in New York at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, many of us as individuals are left feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Making big personal changes can appear costly in terms of happiness. And anyway, why should I bother when any difference I can make will be negligible? As we contemplate our future, we can seek insight from the great philosophers of the ancient world to guide our choices. Read More »Be Excellent: How Ancient Virtues can Guide our Responses to the Climate Crisis

Hornless Cattle – Is Gene Editing The Best Solution?

In this talk [AUDIO + SLIDES], Prof. Peter Sandøe (Philosophy, Copenhagen University), argues that, from an ethical viewpoint, gene editing is the best solution to produce hornless cattle. There are, however, regulatory hurdles. (Presented at the workshop ‘Gene Editing and Animal Welfare’, 19 Nov. 2019, Oxford – organised by Adam Shriver, Katrien Devolder, and The… Read More »Hornless Cattle – Is Gene Editing The Best Solution?

Pub Bores and Politics

Written by Stephen Rainey

Pub bet: I bet you can’t button your coat up. You smell a rat, but go along with it, fastening you coat to see what’s up. I claim a victorious pint of plum porter because you close your coat starting with the top button and moving down. You didn’t button your coat up but down.

A pub bet works, to the extent that it does, by subverting a conventional meaning of some phrase or word. We know buttoning up has nothing to do with direction, but there is a direction word in the phrasal verb. Cheeky subversion leads to endless mirth. 

There’s clearly no ethical problem in the minor subversion and misleading that characterises a pub bet. For bigger, or for real bets, we’d be concerned if subversion like this went on. The genie that granted wishes on a tight, close, literal meaning of words used, rather than on the basis of what the wisher probably wanted, would be a scary being. 

Read More »Pub Bores and Politics

The Good Place, the Bad Place, and the Ugly Consequences

written by Gabriel De Marco

I recently started to watch The Good Place again, a sitcom by NBC which takes place in the realm of the supernatural. The show has taken us to the good place (somewhat like heaven, where good people go after they have shuffled off their mortal coil), the bad place (the opposite of the good place), and a few others. Although the show is mainly a comedy, it manages to be funny while discussing many interesting ethical questions, and explicitly introducing a variety of ethical views and principles.

In this world there is a system, call it The System, that determines who goes to the good place and who goes to the bad place. The details of The System have never been fully clear, which turns out to be an important part of the show. Yet, there are some things we do know about how The System works. First, it assigns positive or negative points to actions. The points assigned to a given action seem to be a function of a variety of factors, including its use of resources, the intentions behind it, its effects on others. (It has also been suggested in a recent episode that if the only reason one performs an action is to make one’s points go up, one will not receive points). Whether a person ends up going to the good place is a matter of what their overall score is, and this overall score seems to be the sum of the points assigned to one’s actions.

Read More »The Good Place, the Bad Place, and the Ugly Consequences

Bad Ads And Stereotypes

Written by Rebecca Brown

In June this year, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) brought into effect a ban on harmful gender stereotypes in advertising. In response to public outcry about adverts such as the 2015 ‘Are you beach body ready?’ campaign by Protein World, and growing discomfort with outdated depictions of gender roles in the media, the ASA undertook a project to consider whether existing regulation is fit for purpose. They concluded that “evidence suggests that a tougher line needs to be taken on ads that feature stereotypical gender roles and characteristics, which through their content and context may be potentially harmful to people.” (ASA, 2017: 3)

Read More »Bad Ads And Stereotypes

Interview with Julian Savulescu on Genetic Selection and Enhancement

Should we use genetic testing to choose what type of children to bring into the world, and if so, how should we choose? Is it acceptable to choose a deaf child? Should we choose our children on the basis of non-disease traits such as intelligence if that were possible ? Does genetic selection put too… Read More »Interview with Julian Savulescu on Genetic Selection and Enhancement

Panpsychism and Moral Status

Panpsychism is the view that sentience is ubiquitous in the world. Some people find it attractive because it sidesteps the challenge for dualists of explaining why there are two radically different types of things in the world, physical things and mental things.  And panpsychism seems to avoid some of of the challenges that face physicalist… Read More »Panpsychism and Moral Status

Video Interview: Peter Singer on The Global Kidney Exchange Programme

In this interview with Katrien Devolder, Peter Singer defends the Global Kidney Exchange (GKE) programme, which matches donor–recipient pairs across high-income, medium-income, and low-income countries. The GKE has been accused of being a form of organ trafficking, exploiting the poor, and involving coercion and commodification of donors. Peter Singer refutes these claims, and argues that… Read More »Video Interview: Peter Singer on The Global Kidney Exchange Programme

Journalistic Ethics and the Mandy Rice-Davies Principle

Written by Neil Levy

It is an entrenched and central principle of journalistic ethics that the subjects of stories must have an opportunity to respond to them; comment must be sought. These comments are then published in any resulting story.

For example, the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics requires journalists to “[d]iligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing”. The Canadian Association of Journalists’ Statement of Principles for Investigative Journalism sets down a similar requirement slightly more fully:

We will give individuals or organizations that are publicly criticized an opportunity to respond. We will make a genuine and exhaustive effort to contact them. Where possible, we will give them an opportunity to respond before the story is published or broadcast.

While the principle does not mandate that the comments provided are published, in practice they almost always are, if only to show that the principle has been abided by. I want to suggest that this practice should be abandoned.Read More »Journalistic Ethics and the Mandy Rice-Davies Principle