Ethics

A Sting for Absolutes

by Lena Groeger
June 5, 2010

Sam Harris can sting. Well known for his sharp criticisms of religion, this social gadfly has picked a new target: moral philosophy. His recent TED talk and later articles about the science of morality (here and here) have caused a bit of a ruckus in philosophical circles as well as a feisty response from the general public. His main claim is simple enough: science can give us answers to moral questions. Not just inform our moral judgments or help us get what we want out of life, but actually tell us what we ought to value. In his words, values are a certain kind of fact.

Mining your past to justify your terminal care: the idea of a ‘retrospective QALY’

by Charles Foster
June 3, 2010

There is no end to human suffering. There is a distinct end to the amount of money that governments will spend on reducing it. Someone has to make decisions about healthcare resource allocation. I am very glad it’s not me.

Many tools are used in the decision-making process. Not many emerge well from a viva with a philosopher.

Individual clinicians use intuition, experience, NICE
guidelines, the fear of hospital accountants and, no doubt, prejudice and the
tossed coin. But policy makers do not have the luxury of being able to account
only to their consciences and the local man in a suit. They have to say something in the minutes about the
reason for funding procedure X but not procedure Y. The real reason might be:
‘My grandma, whom I loved very much, had procedure X, and it did her good’, but
they can’t say that.

The Fiction of Affliction in Addiction

by Practical Ethics
May 26, 2010

by Julian Savulescu

Walter argues that addiction is:

1. a disorder of self-control that comes in degrees. It is essentially pathological self-control, like compulsive hand-washing, where the addict has limited control in some circumstances but not enough self-control.

2. a mental disease.

Bennett Foddy and I have argued that while addicts may have poor self-control and act imprudently, poor self-control and imprudence are not diseases. They are features of the human condition. People become addicted to all sorts of things: heroin, alcohol, nicotine, gambling, sugar, sex, the internet and food. What is common to all these addictions is that involve the reward system. Heroin may be more potent at activating this system than sugar, but they all act in a similar way. There are differences in degree, not kind.

Is “playing God” just a meaningless phrase?

by Alexandre Erler
May 26, 2010

In a
recent piece for Prospect magazine, Philip Ball denounces the “playing God” objection, often made
against some proposed uses of biotechnology, as a “meaningless, dangerous
cliché”. More specifically, Ball mentions the objection in relation to Craig
Venter’s creation – already discussed on this blog – of the first microorganism
with a wholly synthetic genome. Though many people from the press have raised
the “playing God” issue in their coverage of Venter’s achievement, “no one”,
Ball writes, “seems in the least concerned to enquire what this phrase means or
why it is being used”.

Chillin’ with the Texas Board of Education

by Simon Rippon
May 25, 2010

The Texas Board of Education recently approved changes to the state's high school social studies curriculum. The Board also has responsibility for reviewing and approving textbooks for use in Texas schools according to whether they meet its curriculum standards, so its move will effectively force textbook publishers to revise their presentation of American history. The curriculum revisions are controversial because many observers believe that they are motivated by, and reflect, an extreme conservative view of American history.

Today we lost the drug war

by Anders Sandberg
May 22, 2010

What does synthetic biology mean? Quinn Norton argues it means the end of the drug war: synthetic biology might be able to do the wonderful things (as well as the dangerous things) envisioned by Venter and others, but it definitely can produce drugs. It is also much easier to produce chemicals than fix the environment or make bioweapons. As Quinn notes:

"It’s still hard to grow drugs in medium. But the whole point of this
project is to make it easier. Who will be motivated to put in the work
to make it happen? Especially if it’s so bad for organized crime? Drug
addicts, frankly. You think they look like street junkies with DTs, but
a fair number look like scientists, because they are. Drugs will
finally be p2p, and governments and drug lords alike will find out what
it’s like to be media companies and counterfeiters in a world of
lossless copying and 100Mb pipes. Junkies will be victims of their
success, and if we don’t get serious about treating addiction instead
of trying to fight chemicals, it’s going to look a lot more bloody and
horrid than the RIAA’s lawsuit factory. This is just one vision of what
this kind of disruption looks like when people get a hold of it."

Playing God for the first time…

by Practical Ethics
May 20, 2010

With his new paper Craig Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity’s history, potentially peeking into it’s destiny. The challenge is to eat the apple without choking on the worm.

A nick for Nick, but nix to nicks for Nickie?

by Dominic Wilkinson
May 18, 2010

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has come under fire for a policy statement that has a more nuanced approach to female circumcision (FC) than its previous absolute opposition. The new policy proposes that the law be changed to allow pediatricians to perform a ritual ‘nick’ as a compromise where families request female circumcision. The AAP document strongly opposes all female circumcision that would lead to physical or psychological harm, but suggest that pricking or incising the skin of the external genitalia in females is less harmful than ear piercing. This has led to outrage from groups who oppose female circumcision in all forms.

A steamy calamari: trans-species eroticism and disgust

by Anders Sandberg
May 17, 2010

Imagine a naked, beautiful person of your preferred gender. Now imagine that they sensously fondle a sausage. They gently caress it, they lick it, they eventually insert it somewhere…

While no doubt some of my readers have been turned off at this point, I think few would argue that depicting this scene is significantly more immoral than depicting the scene sans sausage. While one might have various concerns with pornography, self stimulation or the waste of food, most modern people would regard the scene as harmless "food play". In fact, sexual and erotic uses of food are widespread and at least in their milder forms regarded as pretty tame fetishes.

What about pictures of playing around with a calamari? Well, at least the UK legal system appears to find them objectionable. A man was accused of possessing "extreme porn images", including images of humans and animals having sex, and the news media focused on a particular image involving a dead cephalopod (it is not entirely certain whether it was a squid or an
octopus). Leaving aside the legal issue of what constitutes obscenity, what about the ethical issue? Is there really anything wrong with having sex with a dead cephalopod? Or having pictures of the act?

Is anti-ageing worth it?

by Anders Sandberg
May 14, 2010

The Telegraphs proclaims that Anti-ageing drugs 'will fuel euthanasia'. The origin of the story was a lecture by Dr David Gems at UCL. He pointed out that if people were to live much longer healthy lives more would choose to end them themselves, and that centralized control of birthrates might become necessary. Francis Fukuyama argued at a conference in Aarhus last week that life extension also implies problems with age graded hierarchies and generational turnover. Some people, like Fukuyama, find these potential social consequences serious enough that life extension research should be discouraged. But are they strong enough?