“The Medicalization of Love” – call for peer commentaries – DUE SEPT 1
Announcement: The paper, “The Medicalization of Love” by Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu, has been accepted for publication at the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. Scholars interested in submitting…
Read MoreCan we solve the world’s problems by offering a large enough prize?
On the 22nd of October 1707, more than 1400 British sailors died when a British naval fleet sank in stormy weather off the Isles of Scilly. The disaster was later attributed to failings in navigation and sailors’ difficulty in determining t…
Read MoreDoes it matter that there’s cocaine in our water supply?
Scientists from the Drinking Water Inspectorate have recently discovered benzoylecgonine in water samples at four test sites, a finding that is thought to be a result of high levels of domestic cocaine consumption. Benzoylecgonine is the me…
Read MorePersonal Genome Project UK email disaster: If you can’t guarantee privacy, at least try to ensure trust
It’s not often that you can write on a topic in ethics whilst rolling around laughing, so I shall take this rare opportunity to make a few comments on the ludicrous breach of privacy that occurred last night when the Personal Genome Project…
Read MoreOn the ‘right to be forgotten’
This week, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice held that a Directive of the European Parliament entailed that Internet search engines could, in some circumstances, be legally required (on request) to remove links to persona…
Read MoreRevenge – an unjust necessity?
Recently, I have come to seemingly hap hazardously stumble over a series of texts and events that all circulate around what I always considered base and somewhat repulsive desires to hurt fellow human beings on what is considered good groun…
Read MoreIs Home Birth Really As Safe As Hospital Birth? “Woman-centred Care” vs “Baby-centred Care”
Imagine that you and your partner are having a baby in hospital. Tragically something goes wrong unexpectedly during birth and the baby is born blue. He urgently needs resuscitation if there is to be a chance of preventing permanent severe …
Read MoreDo people have a right to be bigots?
Last month Australia’s Attorney-General said in parliament that “people have the right to be bigots”. The remark came in the context of a debate about the government’s proposed amendments to sections of the country’s Racial Discrimination …
Read More‘Hello Kitty’, Society, Utopia
Several people have asked me why I wrote a post to defend Avril Lavigne’s music video ‘Hello Kitty’. I’m a little bemused by the question, as I thought my main motive was self-explanatory: it is a part of philosophers’ job…
Read MoreReporters Shouldn’t Embrace Bias
For a long time, objectivity and impartiality were perceived to be noble and uncontroversial goals for journalists. Objectivity is straightforwardly appealing – we want information that is accurate and undistorted by reporters’ personal po…
Read More