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Why it matters if people are racist: A Response to Neil Levy’s Leverhulme Lectures
Author: Fergus Peace, BPhil student, University of Oxford Podcasts of Prof. Levy’s Leverhulme lectures are available here: http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT16_LL_LEVY1.mp3 and http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT16_LL_LEVY2.mp3 It’s only a little more than forty years ago that George Wallace won the contest for Governor of Alabama by running ads with slogans like “Wake up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama” and “Do…
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Video Series: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on Moral Artificial Intelligence
Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke University and Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow) plans to develop a computer system (and a phone app) that will help us gain knowledge about human moral judgment and that will make moral judgment better. But will this moral AI make us morally lazy? Will it be abused? Could this moral AI take…
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Does the desire to punish have any place in modern justice?
Professor Neil Levy, visiting Leverhulme Lecturer, University of Oxford, has recently published a provocative essay at Aeon online magazine: Human beings are a punitive species. Perhaps because we are social animals, and require the cooperation of others to achieve our goals, we are strongly disposed to punish those who take advantage of us. Those who…
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The Allure of Donald Trump
The primary season is now well underway, and the Trump bandwagon continues to gather pace. Like most observers, I thought it would run out of steam well before this stage. Trump delights in the kinds of vicious attacks and stupidities that would derail any other candidate. His lack of shame and indifference to truth give…
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A jobless world—dystopia or utopia?
There is no telling what machines might be able to do in the not very distant future. It is humbling to realise how wrong we have been in the past at predicting the limits of machine capabilities. We once thought that it would never be possible for a computer to beat a world champion in…
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What is the relationship between science and morality?
Quick announcement: A podcast interview between Brian D. Earp (a.k.a. myself) and J. J. Chipchase for Naturalistic Philosophy has just been released: we talk about the relationship between science and morality, the is/ought distinction, free will, the replication crisis in science and medicine, problems with peer review, bullshit in academia, and Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, among other things. Check it…
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The unbearable asymmetry of bullshit
By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) Introduction Science and medicine have done a lot for the world. Diseases have been eradicated, rockets have been sent to the moon, and convincing, causal explanations have been given for a whole range of formerly inscrutable phenomena. Notwithstanding recent concerns about sloppy research, small sample sizes, and challenges in replicating major…
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Video Series: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on Group Responsibility
Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke University and Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow) argues that a group can be responsible for its actions even if no individual from within that group is responsible for those actions.