Mind wars: do we want the enhanced military?
Jonathan Moreno presented a special lecture the 18th about “Mind Wars”, the military applications of neurotechnology. Here are some of my notes and comments inspired by this stimulating lecture.
Read MorePopulation Ethics and Indeterminacy
How should we compare a decrease in average quality of life with a gain in population size? Population ethics is a rigorous investigation of the value of populations, where the populations in question contain different (numbers of) individ…
Read MoreNancy Cartwright on the Limits of RCTs
Guest Post by Bill Gardner @Bill_Gardner Many researchers and physicians assert that randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are the “gold standard” for evidence about what works in medicine. But many others have pointed to both strengths and lim…
Read MoreShouldering the burden of risk
By Dominic Wilkinson @NeonatalEthics The UK supreme court last week awarded a woman £5 million in compensation after her obstetrician failed to warn her of a risk that she would have difficulty delivering her baby. Over on the JME Bl…
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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…
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