Written by MSt student Mahdi Ghuloom Reports this year from May indicate that the college council of Trinity College Cambridge, has voted to divest from all arms companies (Mulla, 2024). Pressure has been rising from students on universities to conduct similar actions, often in a non-discriminatory set of demands. Some of course, have been focusing… Read More »Should There be Total Divestment From All Arms Companies?
Written by Professor Cinara Nahra One of the most important issues that arises in relation to artificial intelligence is how to handle it, that is, how to make AI something that can be developed for the good of humanity and not to promote its destruction. This is directly linked to the problem of aligning artificial… Read More »Guest Post: AI Alignment or Human Alignment?
Written by MSt in Practical Ethics student Dr Jeremy Gauntlett-Gilbert Human beings, as a species, love to tell stories and to imagine that there are person-like agents behind events. The Ancient Greeks saw the rivers and the winds as personalised deities, placating them if they appeared ‘angry’. Psychologists in classic 1940s experiments were impressed at… Read More »Caution With Chatbots? Generative AI in Healthcare
We were honoured to welcome Professor Elizabeth Harman, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values at Princeton University, to Oxford to deliver the 2024 Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics. The three-part lecture series, entitled “Love and Abortion”, took place in the H B Allen Centre, Keble College, on 25 April, 2 and 9… Read More »2024 Annual Uehiro Lectures: Professor Elizabeth Harman
Can we build and use AI ethically? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong discusses how this can be achieved in his new book ‘Moral AI and How We Get There’ co-authored with Jana Schaich Borg & Vincent Conitzer. Edmond Awad talks through the ethical implications for AI use with Walter in this short video. With thanks to the Atlantic… Read More »Moral AI And How We Get There with Prof Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
This essay was the winner of the Graduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2024. Written by Jakob Lohmar. Many people believe that we sometimes ought to produce one larger benefit rather than any number of smaller benefits. For example, many believe that in a choice between saving a human… Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: The Moral Importance of Low Welfare Species
This article was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Ayesha Chakravarti. I. Introduction Most feminists argue that “The personal is the political.” Is this true of people’s sex lives? In this essay, I will discuss the implications of having consensually inegalitarian sexual… Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Feminist in the Streets, Sadomasochist in the Sheets: Are You Morally Aligning Yourself With Women’s Subordination if You Engage in Consensually Inegalitarian Sexual Relationships?
This article received an Honourable Mention in the undergraduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by David Logan. Benign Carnivorism (BC) is a practice where a farmer (i) creates animals with pleasurable lives worth living, (ii) painlessly kills them after a significant proportion of their natural lifespan, and (iii)… Read More »National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: When Eating Meat is OK: A Defence of Benign Carnivorism
Please join us in congratulating all four of the finalists in the National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2024, and in particular our winners, Wyatt Radzin and Jakob Lohmar. We would also like to thank our judges, Prof Roger Crisp, Prof Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Dr Cristina Voinea. This, the final of the 10th Annual National Oxford Uehiro… Read More »Announcing the Winners and Runners Up in the 10th Annual National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2024 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Gabriel McWilliams. The concept of a virtuous character is a foundational tenet of the broader virtue ethics doctrine. It has, though, been subject to noteworthy objection. One such objection arises from the theory of… Read More »National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: To What Extent Has Aristotle’s Conception of a Virtuous Character Remained Relevant in the Face of Situationist Criticism?
