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“Ravines and Sugar Pills: Defending Deceptive Placebo Use” – New Open Access Publication
A placebo can be understood as a medical intervention that lacks direct specific therapeutic effects on the condition for which it has been prescribed, but which can nonetheless help to ameliorate a patient’s condition. In March 2013, a study by Howick et al. suggested that the vast majority of UK general practitioners (GPs) have prescribed…
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Is it worth saving human lives at the cost of mistreating animals?
Guest Post: Emilian Mihailov, Research Centre in Applied Ethics, Univeristy of Bucharest The most persuasive argument for experimenting on animals is probably the claim that it is only through such research, that we save human lives. This does not imply that we don’t have any moral duties towards animals. Because they are not mere objects…
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Bucharest – Oxford Workshop in Applied Ethics: Workshop Summary
Guest Post: Toni Gibea, University of Bucharest. The Bucharest-Oxford Workshop in Applied Ethics, which took place in Oxford on the 1st of December, brought together researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Bucharest to discuss new research across a variety of topics in applied ethics. The workshop consisted of three main sessions:…
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Milk Round success is tragic, culpable failure
Several times this term I’ve staggered out onto Oxford station, cramped and queasy from Cattle Class, and seen packs of sleek suits ooze out of First Class, briefcases in their hands and predatory gleams in their eyes. ‘Let’s go hunting’, one floppy-haired account manager said to his confederates. They climbed into cabs, which they saw…
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Earth: Priceless
Christmas is the season when prices, costs and value are on everybody’s mind. At least when trying to estimate how much a present is worth to a friend or family member (and the value of our own happiness at their happiness): is it really worth the price in the store? Lee Billings recounts a fascinating…
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Mindfulness meditation and implicit bias
A recent study purports to demonstrate that mindfulness meditation techniques can reduce implicit biases. Affecting all manner of interpersonal interactions, implicit biases are unconscious attitudes or associations that influence our understanding, behavior and decisions. Implicit biases can be revealed using implicit association tests (IATs), which often measure the degree to which a participant associates particular…
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On the Appropriate Place of Self-Interest in Our Actions
Guest Post by Jos Philips With Christmas and the new year fast approaching, Jos Philips reconsiders what role self-interest may legitimately play in what we are doing. Recently, a class of students of mine were discussing a well-known article by Peter Singer (‘The Singer Solution to World Poverty,’ New York Times Sunday Magazine, 1999). In…
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Should we intervene in nature to help animals?
Guest Post by Catia Faria It is commonly believed that our obligations towards other human beings are not restricted to abstaining from harming them. We should also prevent or alleviate harmful states of affairs for other individuals whenever it is in our power to do something about it. In animal ethics, however, the idea…
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Optional whether to give, therefore optional where to give?
You might think that if it’s not wrong not to donate to charity, then it’s not wrong to give to whatever particular charity you choose (as long as no harm is done). I’m going to argue against this view. Very often, it is wrong to give to an ineffective charity, even when it’s not wrong…
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Should we criminalise robotic rape and robotic child sexual abuse? Maybe
Guest Post by John Danaher (@JohnDanaher) This article is being cross-posted at Philosophical Disquisitions I recently published an unusual article. At least, I think it is unusual. It imagines a future in which sophisticated sex robots are used to replicate acts of rape and child sexual abuse, and then asks whether such acts should be…