Call for Registration – GOOD DONE RIGHT: a Conference on Effective Altruism
7-9 July 2014, All Souls College, Oxford Speakers include: Derek Parfit (Oxford), Thomas Pogge (Yale), Rachel Glennerster (MIT Poverty Action Lab), Nick Bostrom (Oxford), Norman Daniels (Harvard), Toby Ord (Oxford), William MacAskill (Cambr…
Read MoreCricket and mental illness
There is a lively debate in the philosophy of psychiatry over what makes a condition a disease. The debate is particularly heated with regard to addiction: it is a moral failing, a brain disease or something else altogether? People who hold…
Read MoreTrouble Brewing? The Ethical Significance of Synthetic Yeast
Back in 2010, I blogged about Craig Venter’s creation of the first synthetic organism, Synthia, a bacteria. Now, in 2014, the next step has been made by a team at John Hopkins University, the use of synthetic biology in yeast, which, whilst…
Read MoreNeil Levy on Addiction
In a fascinating paper presented at the St Cross Ethics Seminar in Oxford, on 27 March 2014, Professor Neil Levy (Oxford and Melbourne) sought to solve the following puzzle about addicts: on the one hand, addicts are thought to lack control…
Read MoreThe automated boycott
The dating site OKCupid displays a message to visitors using the web browser Firefox asking them to change browser, since “Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples”. The reason is tha…
Read MoreThings I’ve learned (so far) about how to do practical ethics
By Brian D. Earp Follow Brian on Twitter by clicking here. Things I’ve learned (so far) about how to do practical ethics I had the opportunity, a few months back, to look through some old poems I’d written in high school. Some, I thought,…
Read MoreGiving alcohol to alcoholics: not as controversial as it seems
A Dutch program pays chronic alcoholics in beer for cleaning the streets and parks. A Canadian homeless shelter provides their alcohol clients with six ounces of white wine every 90 minutes. Giving alcohol to alcoholics, it seems counterpro…
Read More
Computer vision and emotional privacy
A study published last week (and summarized here and here) demonstrated that a computer could be trained to detect real versus faked facial expressions of pain significantly better than humans. Participants were shown video clips of the fac…
Read MoreThe future of punishment: a clarification
By Rebecca Roache Follow Rebecca on Twitter here I’m working on a paper entitled ‘Cyborg justice: punishment in the age of transformative technology’ with my colleagues Anders Sandberg and Hannah Maslen. In it, we consider how punishment pr…
Read MoreCan solitary confinement be justified?
This month an article published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) outlined the results of a study on self-harm amongst jail inmates in New York City. Data on all jail admissions between January 2010 and October 2012 was analys…
Read More