Global surveillance is not about privacy
It has now been almost two years since Snowden. It’s time for us to admit this has little to do with privacy. Global surveillance is not global only because it targets people all over the world. Global surveillance is done for and against g…
Read MoreShould remorseful offenders be punished less harshly?
New Book: ‘Remorse, Penal Theory and Sentencing’ (Oxford: Hart Publishing) If an offender is genuinely remorseful about the crime she committed, should she receive some small-but-non-trivial mitigation of her sentence? – i.e. should she be …
Read MoreAnnouncement: Winners of the Inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.
It is with great pleasure that we can announce the winners of the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2015. The winner of the Undergraduate Category is Xavier Cohen with his essay: How Should Vegans Live? The winner of the Graduate Cate…
Read MoreDeath and the Self
On Tuesday the 10th of March, Shaun Nichols delivered the 2015 Wellcome & Loebel Lecture in Neuroethics. You can listen to the lecture here. Nichols presented a range of intriguing empirical data on how our view of the self affects our …
Read MoreSelf-control and Public Policy.
I have just finished a series of lectures at the University of Oxford on the topic of self-control, the culmination of my first stint in Oxford as a Leverhulme visiting professor (for which I am very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust). My th…
Read MoreSmart pills vs. motivation pills – is one morally worse than the other?
Imagine a huge pile of unwashed dishes reminds you that you should clean your kitchen. Would you rather take a pill that increases your ability to clean very elaborately or one that helps you get off the couch and actually bring yourself to…
Read MoreShould We Reward Psychopaths?
Psychopaths frequently make the news and rarely for good reasons. Take, for instance, the recent case of Becky Watts, a 16-year old girl who was abducted and murdered in Bristol; her body parts were discovered by the police at a house in Ba…
Read MoreCountering Islamic Extremism
By Professor Peter Singer PRINCETON – Last month, US President Barack Obama hosted a three-day summit on “Countering Violent Extremism.” That term has already spawned a new abbreviation, “CVE,” used no fewer than 12 times in a Fact S…
Read MoreMy Brain Made Me Do It — So What?
By Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Duke University Vijeth: Where were you? You promised to drive me to the airport, but you never showed up, and I missed my flight. You haven’t even said sorry. Why did you let me down? Felipe: I w…
Read MoreSelf-consciousness and moral status
Many share an intuition that self-consciousness is highly morally significant. Some hold that self-consciousness significantly enhances an entity’s moral status. Others hold self-consciousness underwrites the attribution of so-called person…
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