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Should ethics be taught in schools?

Should ethics be taught in schools?

 

In New South Wales, Australia, classes on secular ethics have been offered to some students as an alternative to religious studies since 2010. A programme called ‘Primary Ethics’ is now taught to around 20,000 students in more than 300 schools. It introduces discussion of moral issues in a systematic way and provides an educational experience for students who were previously not provided with a taught alternative.

Should schools, particularly government schools, teach ethics? Or does doing so violate an important principle of government neutrality on matters moral and spiritual?

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Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Giving Ourselves Away, by Callum Hackett

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This essay, by Oxford graduate student Callum Hackett, is one of the six shortlisted essays in the graduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

‘Giving Ourselves Away: online communication alters the self and society’

Invention is a fertile source of new ethical problems because creating new tools creates questions about how they might be used for better or worse. However, while every invention has its unique uses, the questions we must ask of them are often the same. For example, the harnessing of water and steam in the Industrial Revolution raised the same concern as robotics in contemporary manufacturing for how mechanization affects the economic empowerment of the working class. Naturally, there are fewer underlying ethical problems than there are inventions that cluster around them, but here I wish to explore the possibility that the mass adoption of the internet has brought with it a new problem with which we are just starting to engage. Specifically, while the internet poses a series of difficult questions, I will consider the implications of certain characteristics of online communication for the self, society and politics.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Giving Ourselves Away, by Callum Hackett

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: May the state limit the free speech of individuals who advocate against vaccines intended to combat infectious disease? by Miles Unterreiner

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This essay, by Oxford graduate student Miles Unterreiner, is one of the two finalists in the graduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Miles will be presenting this paper, along with three other finalists, at the 12th March final.

May the state limit the free speech of individuals who advocate against vaccines intended to combat infectious disease?

“Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.”

-Hubert H. Humphrey

 

Philosophical arguments concerning freedom of speech have traditionally focused upon which types of expression the state apparatus may justly limit, and under which circumstances it may do so. The state has therefore been the locus of history’s most celebrated works on the subject, including John Milton’s Areopagitica (1644), chapter 20 of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), and perhaps most famously J.S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859). Mill’s argument in favor of the free exchange of ideas remains today the most lasting and the most relevant, and his formulation of the “harm principle” – that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” – continues to undergird significant components of law and policy in industrialized democracies today.[1]Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: May the state limit the free speech of individuals who advocate against vaccines intended to combat infectious disease? by Miles Unterreiner

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: If one is genuinely concerned with the welfare of non-human animals, should one seriously consider the disenhancement of intensively-farmed livestock as a possible method of reducing animal suffering? by Catrin Gibson

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This essay, by Oxford graduate student Catrin Gibson, is one of the six shortlisted essays in the graduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

If one is genuinely concerned with the welfare of non-human animals, should one seriously consider the disenhancement of intensively-farmed livestock as a possible method of reducing animal suffering?

It is generally agreed that suffering is bad. However, a countless number of non-human animals each year undergo tremendous suffering in order to meet the human demand for animal products, and this demand is currently increasing. The Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts that meat consumption will rise from 37.4kg per person worldwide (1999/2001) to 52 kg per person worldwide by 2050. The recent development of ‘intensive’ or ‘factory’ farming has greatly increased productivity, so it is likely that there will be an increase in the proportion of factory-farmed animal products to meet this demand. In factory farms, large numbers of livestock are kept indoors in relatively small spaces and suffer from horrific production diseases as a result. These are pathologies that occur due to the methods of livestock production; for example, chickens kept in large numbers have a tendency to cannibalism. Therefore, it is likely that there will be a significant increase in animal suffering in the near future.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: If one is genuinely concerned with the welfare of non-human animals, should one seriously consider the disenhancement of intensively-farmed livestock as a possible method of reducing animal suffering? by Catrin Gibson

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Arguing About Guns by C’zar Bernstein

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This essay, by Oxford graduate student C’zar Bernstein, is one of the six shortlisted essays in the graduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Arguing About Guns

 

In this paper, I’ll argue, first, that people have a prima facie right to own guns. Second, that it is far more controversial than people usually suppose that gun ownership does more harm than good, given the extant criminological evidence.

Rights are trumps that are supposed to hold in the face of negative consequences.[1] Prima facie rights are rights that admit to being outweighed by countervailing considerations. However, because rights are supposed to trump negative consequences, one cannot merely point out that there are negative consequences as a reason to suppose that the right is overridden. She must establish that the negative consequences outweigh the trump-value of the right. Thus, if there is a prima facie right to own guns, anti-gun philosophers must show (i) that gun ownership does more harm than good, and (ii) that the negative consequences are sufficient to override the right to own guns. I’ll argue that there is a lot of good evidence to doubt that (i) is true. I shan’t, however, argue that (i) is probably false, which would require a much more extensive examination of the evidence.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Arguing About Guns by C’zar Bernstein

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Is prohibition of breast implants a good way to undermine harmful and unequal social norms? by Jessica Laimann

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This essay, by Oxford graduate student Jessica Laimann, is one of the two finalists in the graduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Jessica will be presenting this paper, along with three other finalists, at the 12th March final.

Is prohibition of breast implants a good way to undermine harmful and unequal social norms?

 

1           Introduction

Some individuals decide to inflict harm on themselves. Examples range from smoking or fasting, up to self-mutilation or suicide. In liberal moral theory, paternalistic interventions, that is, interventions with an individual’s choices for the individual’s own good, are considered prima facie morally wrong. Clare Chambers agrees with the liberal presumption against paternalism. However, she argues that some self-harming choices do permit interference due to the circumstances in which they occur. These are choices made in the context of unequal and harmful social norms, which fulfil the following three conditions (see Chambers 2008, 265):

  • The practice is significantly harmful to the individuals who engage in it.
  • Individuals engage in the practice in order to attain benefits which are norm-dependent – the benefits are linked to engagement in the practice only in virtue of social conventions.
  • The social norm that links the practice to the benefits undermines social or political equality.

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Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can a Contractarian Rationally Donate to Charity? by Benedict Hardwick.

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This essay, by Oxford undergraduate student Benedict Hardwick, is one of the four shortlisted essays in the undergraduate category of the inaugural Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Can a Contractarian Rationally Donate to Charity?

 Charities Act 2011:

1.1 For the purposes of the law of England and Wales, “charity” means an institution which is established for charitable purposes only.

2.1 For the purposes of the law of England and Wales, a charitable purpose is a purpose which…is for the public benefit.

Although a moral theory, contract theory is concerned with rational decisions rather than “good” or “right” decisions. ‘Rational actions’ are here conceived, following Gauthier[1] (rather than, say, Scanlon) as maximising one’s own personal utility and so the theory already assumes that there are no rational justifications for purely altruistic/non-utility-maximising behaviour (“purely” because it is possible to maximise one’s utility by maximising that of someone else’s – but this is not what we would call “purely” altruistic). This is no bad thing since I believe such justifications are at best unnecessary complications and at worst demonstrably false, but that debate will not be had here. Instead I shall here show that charity, the supposed epitome of good moral action, is not good at all.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Can a Contractarian Rationally Donate to Charity? by Benedict Hardwick.

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Shortlisted Graduate and Undergraduate Essays

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The Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was announced on this blog on the 26th November 2014.  By the 25th January a large number of high quality essays had been submitted and the judges had a difficult time narrowing the field down to a shortlist, which we now publish here:Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Shortlisted Graduate and Undergraduate Essays

Is there a middle ground in being pro-choice?

For a long time, Ann Furedi (chief executive of bpas) has been advocating women’s right to choose regarding their pregnancies. She is quite radical with regard to this pro-choice principle. For example, she questioned the 24-week limit of abortion, saying that every limit is arbitrary, and women have good reasons when they request an abortion after the 24-week limit. She defends gender selection. She argues that abortion is justified when the continuation of the pregnancy is likely to cause injury to the mental or physical health of the woman and having a child with an undesired gender could cause such suffering. According to her, you are either pro-choice or you are not. You can’t reject women’s right to choose when you don’t like her choice and still be pro-choice. There is no middle ground. What is at stake is the principle of moral autonomy with respect to reproductive decisions. If we set limits to this principle, then we violate the principle all-together. We should trust women to make their own decisions, as only they best know their own circumstances.

Left to make their own moral judgements, some women will inevitably make decisions that we would not; perhaps even those we think are ‘wrong’. And we must live with that: tolerance is the price we pay for our freedom of conscience in a world where women can exercise their human capacity through their moral expression. We either support women’s moral agency or we do not. (…) We can make the judgement that their choice is wrong – but we must tolerate their right to decide. There is no middle ground to straddle.

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How to Be Free: Objectification and the Noumenal World An Impression of Neil Levy’s First Leverhulme Lecture

Y Lim

When I was a medical student and doctor, there were a few legendary teachers at the Alfred Hospital. The greatest of these was a general physician called Y Lim. He was the Sherlock Holmes of bedside clinicians. He would take groups of medical students to see a patient and diagnose the patient “from the end of the bed”, just by observing carefully the paraphenalia around the patient’s bed, the medication and the movement of the side of their chest.

He was highly sought after as tutorials with Y Lim spelt success in the clinical examinations. I never had him but my friends in the year before did. At the end of their last tutorial, just before the final examinations, they asked him, “Y Lim, how do we do well in the short and long cases? How can we become a doctor?”

Y Lim replied, “Look like a doctor. Talk like a doctor.”

Three Ordinary Agents

Consider the following 3 people (philosophers call them “agents” because they do stuff, like secret agents do stuff secretly). They are all based on real life characters.

Read More »How to Be Free: Objectification and the Noumenal World An Impression of Neil Levy’s First Leverhulme Lecture