With apologies to speakers and attendees, the above lecture has had to be postponed to next term. A new announcement will be posted shortly with the new details. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience. POSTPONED: Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics 2013 Venue: Lecture Theatre, Philosophy Faculty, Radcliffe Humanities Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford,… Read More »Postponed: Wellcome Lectures in Neuroethics 2013
Recent scientific developments suggest that it may become possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. It has been suggested that this will lead to the development of a range of new fertility treatments as well as new strands of research. More speculatively, some have argued that it may
In a feature article forthcoming in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Robert Sparrow discusses the possibility that stem cell technologies might be used to facilitate what he calls ‘in vitro eugenics’; the deliberate and selective breeding of multiple generations of human embryos in vitro. The Editors of the Journal of Medical Ethics now invite submissions for a special issue addressing the ethical questions raised by Sparrow’s paper and by stem cell-derived gametes more generally.
Read More »Journal of Medical Ethics special issue on the ethics of stem cell-derived gametes
Our moral reactions are easily influenced by a variety of factors. One of them is anxiety. When people are confronted with disturbing experiences like mortality salience (i.e., being made aware of their own eventual death), they tend to affirm their moral beliefs. As a result, they feel inclined to punish moral transgression more harshly than they would without feeling fundamentally threatened. For example, in a now classical study people who objected to prostitution were asked to suggest a penalty for a woman arrested for prostitution. Participants who were led to reflect on their own mortality beforehand proposed a far higher bail than participants who thought about a less anxiety inducing topic. Such belief affirmation effects can also be evoked by psychologically disturbing experiences less severe than mortality salience. Hence, anxiety aroused by different situations can make our moral reactions more pronounced.
There is another case in the news where someone is making a legal bid to allow his doctors help him to die. These cases are always heartrending. It’s a cliché that hard cases make bad law. But it’s a cliché because it’s true. If we look at individual cases, there are often very strong grounds… Read More »Thoughts on assisted suicide
How strongly wedded are people to their political preferences? The received wisdom amongst political journalists and pollsters is that most people can be counted on to vote for one major party or another, and only a relatively small percentage of people swing elections. It is these people – swinging voters, as they called in Australia – who decide elections. At very least, as an election approaches most have made up their mind and can’t be persuaded to shift.
Suppose most people are committed to a major party, at least in the days preceding an election. Is this a matter of policy agreement or of something more like identification or tribal allegiance? A recent paper casts some light on this question, and along the way suggests that people might be more open to shifting allegiances than we might have thought, at least if approached in the right way.Read More »Politics as tribal allegiance
To what extent do self-interest and altruism conflict? In my latest Quartz article, I suggest that they conflict less than you might think.
Read More »Doing Well by Doing Good: Careers that benefit others also benefit you
Advocates of even the mildest gun control reform in the US were dealt a serious blow yesterday, as the Senate failed to enact an expansion of background checks for gun purchases online and at gun shows. Some have been quick to gloat over the result, while others were taken aback that the Senate could so blatantly ignore the will of the American people. A number of polls have indeed shown massive support for background checks on gun purchases (upwards of 90%) – according to one survey, the proposal is even more popular than kittens. This level of support predates the Sandy Hook massacre. Political analysts will go to great lengths to explain how such a popular measure was voted down (the strength of the National Rifle Association’s lobbying efforts play a large part, no doubt), but we can also ask whether it should have been – in particular, independent of the merits of the bill, whether politicians should not have flaunted the will of the people. Read More »Popular Opinion and Gun Rights
He never expressed doubt in anything, I think that was his – one of his strengths. He never expressed doubt. Once he’d made his mind up that something was right it was right. – General Pinochet’s personal driver, commenting on their private conversations about politics and his own admiration for the late dictator. I was… Read More »A Leader Without a Doubt
By Kei Hiruta Political activists are laughing everywhere. They mock the powerful and ridicule the corrupt, whether the target is a Middle Eastern dictator, a North American CEO, or a recently deceased British Prime Minister. On the streets we see the comical and the absurd in service of a demand for greater transparency and accountability.… Read More »Two Cheers for Laughtivism
Some researchers in the US recently conducted an ‘experiment in the law as algorithm’. (One of the researchers involved with the project was interviewed by Ars Technia, here.) At first glance, this seems like quite a simple undertaking for someone with knowledge of a particular law and mathematical proficiency: laws are clearly defined rules, which can be broken in clearly defined ways. This is most true for strict liability offences, which require no proof of a mental element of the offence (the mens rea). An individual can commit a strict liability offence even if she had no knowledge that her act was criminal and had no intention to commit the crime. All that is required under strict liability statutes is that the act itself (the actus reus) is voluntary. Essentially: if you did it, you’re liable – it doesn’t matter why or how. So, for strict liability offences such as speeding it would seem straightforward enough to create an algorithm that could compare actual driving speed with the legal speed limit, and adjudicate liability accordingly.
This possibility of law as algorithm is what the US researchers aimed to test out with their experiment. They imagined the future possibility of automated law enforcement, especially for simple laws like those governing driving. To conduct their experiment, the researchers assigned a group of 52 programmers the task of automating the enforcement of driving speed limits. A late-model vehicle was equipped with a sensor that collected actual vehicle speed over an hour-long commute. The programmers (without collaboration) each wrote a program that computed the number of speed limit violations and issued mock traffic tickets.Read More »Strict-ish liability? An experiment in the law as algorithm
