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Neil Levy

“Cognitive Enhancement: Defending the Parity Principle”, St Cross Special Ethics Seminar by Neil Levy

Last Thursday Professor Neil Levy has defended his Parity Principle for analysing the ethics of cognitive enhancement at the St Cross Special Ethics Seminar. Such principle would oppose a common form of objection against enhancement which claims that there is a worrying asymmetry between enhancement and traditional means to human improvement. Conversely, Neil contends that the function is all that matters morally when comparing enhancement with traditional means and that comparing isofunctional modifications reveals that there are little unique problems with enhancement. The Parity Principle leads to a useful analysis of several proposed critiques of cognitive enhancement.Read More »“Cognitive Enhancement: Defending the Parity Principle”, St Cross Special Ethics Seminar by Neil Levy

Neil Levy on Addiction

In a fascinating paper presented at the St Cross Ethics Seminar in Oxford, on 27 March 2014, Professor Neil Levy (Oxford and Melbourne) sought to solve the following puzzle about addicts: on the one hand, addicts are thought to lack control, but on the other they appear to engage in the kind of reason-responsive behaviour typical of rational agents (for example, many addicts for a small financial incentive will avoid the objects to which they are addicted).

Levy’s central claim was that addicts do lack control, but that this lack of control consists in a lack of control over belief-formation, leading to a change of mind – or ‘judgement-shift’. So addicts are rational in so far as they are acting on the basis of their current beliefs about what is best for them. Read More »Neil Levy on Addiction