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Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Oxford Uehiro Centre Prize in Practical Ethics: ‘Rational Departure’: What Does Stoicism Reveal About Contemporary Attitudes Towards Suicide?

This essay received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category.

Written by Ed Lamb, St. Anne’s College

Abstract

The Stoics’ approach to suicide appears to differ remarkably from our own. By contrasting these two views, I will explore why a difference in circumstances, epistemic claims, and value ascribed to life itself provides justification for our believing that suicide is wrong where the Stoics did not. I take suicide as the act of taking one’s own life both with intent and by using only one’s own capacities. After considering how the Stoic account of suicide brings into relief the reasons which lie behind our own view, I will outline two valuable insights which arise from the comparison: first, that the conditions many hold as required for euthanasia to be permissible are actually very similar to those the Stoics’ required for suicide; second, that the Stoics’ open and rational confrontation of mortality reveals how our own reticence towards it is tragically inadequate.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Centre Prize in Practical Ethics: ‘Rational Departure’: What Does Stoicism Reveal About Contemporary Attitudes Towards Suicide?

Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021

Please join us in congratulating all of the finalists in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021, and in particular our winners, Imogen Rivers and Lily Moore-Eissenberg. As the Uk continues to be in lockdown due to the pandemic, the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was again held as a Zoom… Read More »Congratulations to our Winners and Runners up in the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2021

Announcement: Finalists of the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and Final Presentation

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Please join us in congratulating all of the finalists in the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

The 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Final Presentation

 

HT21 Week 8, Wednesday 10th March, 5pm – 6:30 pm.

The Presentation will be held via zoom webinar, the registration details of which are below.Read More »Announcement: Finalists of the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and Final Presentation

Reminder: 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics – Entries Due By Tuesday 9th February

A reminder that the closing date for entries to the 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics is fast approaching. Graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled at the University of Oxford in any subject are invited to enter the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics by submitting an essay of up to 2000 words on any topic relevant to practical ethics.  Eligibility includes visiting students who are registered as recognized students, and paying fees, but does not include informal visitors.  Two undergraduate papers and two graduate papers will be shortlisted from those submitted to go forward to an online public presentation and discussion, where the winner of each category will be selected.

The winner from each category will receive £300, and the runner up £100. Revised versions of the two winning essays will be considered for publication in the Journal of Practical Ethics, though publication is not guaranteed.

To enter, please submit your written papers by the end of Tuesday 9th February 2021 to rocci.wilkinson@philosophy.ox.ac.uk. Finalists will be notified on Tuesday 23rd February of selection. The online public presentation will take place in 8th Week, Hilary term 2021, on Wednesday 10th March, from 5pm. Please save this presentation date, as you will need to attend if selected as a finalist. Read More »Reminder: 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics – Entries Due By Tuesday 9th February

Announcement: 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled at the University of Oxford in any subject are invited to enter the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics by submitting an essay of up to 2000 words on any topic relevant to practical ethics.  Eligibility includes visiting students who are registered as recognized students, and paying fees, but does not include informal visitors.  Two undergraduate papers and two graduate papers will be shortlisted from those submitted to go forward to an online public presentation and discussion, where the winner of each category will be selected.

The winner from each category will receive £300, and the runner up £100. Revised versions of the two winning essays will be considered for publication in the Journal of Practical Ethics, though publication is not guaranteed.

To enter, please submit your written papers by the end of Tuesday 9th February 2021 to rocci.wilkinson@philosophy.ox.ac.uk. Finalists will be notified on Tuesday 23rd February of selection. The online public presentation will take place in 8th Week, Hilary term 2021, on Wednesday 10th March, from 5pm. Please save this presentation date, as you will need to attend if selected as a finalist. Read More »Announcement: 7th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: An Account of Attitudinal Duties Towards Injustice

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This essay received an honourable mention in the Graduate Category

Written by University of Oxford Student, Brian Wong

Injustices are ubiquitous around us. From authoritarian regimes’ crackdown on human rights, to exploitative trafficking of illegal migrants, to human-induced destruction of rainforests upon which indigenous groups depend – injustices are negative states of affairs violating moral commitments and duties caused by some level of human agency. Our ability to resist injustices are inevitably constrained, but I argue that even the least able amongst agents still possess attitudinal duties – duties to cultivate and possess particular attitudes towards injustice. Attitudes are mental states; here I focus specifically on explicit attitudes – attitudes that are accessible by introspection and non-automatically/reflexively generated.[1] I open with a pair of cases providing the intuitive preliminaries, prior to offering three interrelated arguments for attitudinal duties, namely from i) functional similarity, ii) relational justice, and iii) aptness. After outlining the plausible contents of such duties, I conclude by examining two objections – i) self-defeasibility, and ii) enforceability.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: An Account of Attitudinal Duties Towards Injustice

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: What, if Anything, is Wrong About Algorithmic Administration?

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This essay received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category.

Written by University of Oxford student, Angelo Ryu.

 

Introduction

 The scope of modern administration is vast. We expect the state to perform an ever-increasing number of tasks, including the provision of services and the regulation of economic activity. This requires the state to make a large number of decisions in a wide array of areas. Inevitably, the scale and complexity of such decisions stretch the capacity of good governance.

In response, policymakers have begun to implement systems capable of automated decision making. For example, certain jurisdictions within the United States use an automated system to advise on criminal sentences. Australia uses an automated system for parts of its welfare program.

Such systems, it is said, will help address the costs of modern administration. It is plausibly argued that automation will lead to quicker, efficient, and more consistent decisions – that it will ward off a return to the days of Dickens’ Bleak House.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: What, if Anything, is Wrong About Algorithmic Administration?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: If Doctors Could Administer a Treatment That Would Move a Patient From a Vegetative State to a Minimally Conscious One, Should They Do So?

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This essay was the runner up in the graduate category of the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Written by University of Oxford student Matthew Minehan.

INTRODUCTION
Sally is a healthy young woman who suffers catastrophic brain trauma. Over many months, her doctors subject her to functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (fMRI) scans and other assessments that leave them in no doubt that she is in a vegetative state. While she shows sleeping and waking activity patterns, her body is operating on ‘automatic’ and she has no consciousness. She is “incognizant, incapacitated and insensate” (Fenwick 1998, p.86).

Sally’s doctors are aware of a new treatment that, if administered, would move her from the vegetative state to a minimally conscious one. This new state would involve fractured consciousness, a lack of awareness of her condition, an inability to direct her own life and an incapacity for complex thought. Because Sally has no known next of kin and issued no advance directive, the decision on her treatment is left to her medical team.

Should the doctors in this hypothetical scenario administer the treatment to Sally?Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: If Doctors Could Administer a Treatment That Would Move a Patient From a Vegetative State to a Minimally Conscious One, Should They Do So?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can it be Wrong For Victims to Report Crimes?

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This essay was the winning entry in the graduate category of the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Written by University of Oxford student, Maya Krishnan.

 

Introduction

Late one night in Managua, Nicaragua, a man punched Leslie Jamison in the face and then ran away with her camera. Jamison called the police. Forty minutes later, a police truck pulled up with a man in the back. A sense of discomfort informs Jamison’s subsequent narration of the incident in her essay collection, The Empathy Exams (2014). Jamison found herself occupying a morally fraught role: that of a white American in Nicaragua who got the police to try to hunt down a likely significantly poorer man. Had she done something wrong by calling the police?Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can it be Wrong For Victims to Report Crimes?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can Science Ethically Make Use Of Data Which Was Gathered By Unethical Means?

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This essay was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the 6th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Written by University of Oxford student Toby Lowther

In this paper, I discuss the question of whether science can ethically make use of data which has been gathered by unethical means in seeking scientific and medical advances to alleviate future suffering. This is an ever-controversial issue of practical ethics, and although the American Medical Assosciation provides firm guidelines on the matter (AMA, 1995), the ethical question remains complex. I will begin by laying out the core issue: the conflict between the desire to censure unethical practices used in gathering such data and the desire to use all data available to bring about the greatest good for society. I will present arguments either side, leading to an ethical stalemate, before presenting how issues of practical consideration for scientific methodology resolve the conflict. I conclude that science cannot make use of data gathered by unethical means, because such data cannot ethically be replicated, and reproducibility is necessary for the validity of the scientific method. I leave open the question of whether it is ethical for the findings of such unethical experiments to guide future, ethical research.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can Science Ethically Make Use Of Data Which Was Gathered By Unethical Means?