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Art and Moral Taint

Art and Moral Taint

It was reported yesterday that the Tate gallery has decided to remove prints created by the artist Graham Ovenden following his conviction for child sex offences (on Tuesday 2nd April). Ovenden’s conviction itself raises difficult moral questions which I shall not address here. Ovenden is (or at least was) a celebrated portrait artist; he admitted to taking pictures of and painting nude children in the course of creating his portraiture, claiming that, in doing so, he was aiming to capture children in what he termed their “state of grace”.  Although he vigorously denied allegations of paedophilia over the course of the trial, Ovenden was found guilty of six counts of indecency and one count of indecent assault.

There may well be room for debate about whether Ovenden is a paedophile or just a harmless, albeit esoteric, artist. However, I shall not address this question here; I shall assume throughout (rightly or wrongly) that the court is warranted in describing Ovenden as a paedophile. Rather, I am interested in the Tate gallery’s response to the conviction, and more generally, the questions about the nature of art to which it gives rise.Read More »Art and Moral Taint

So what if I would agree?

Previous posts in this line here  and  here

The next justification of political authority that Michael Huemer considers in his book The Problem of Political Authority is what is called Hypothetical Social Contract Theory. The broad idea is that what justifies political authority is that you would agree to government coercion were you not the irrational, selfish and ignorant fool that you are. My inclination when addressed in such a manner is to say, so what? Grant that I am the irrational, selfish and ignorant fool that you say I am, why does what I would agree to if I were otherwise make it right for the government to force me to do what I don’t want to do?Read More »So what if I would agree?

Is it rational to have children?

Laurie Paul’s fascinating paper on the rationality of choosing to have children has already received a great deal of attention in the blogosphere. Perhaps everything worth saying has already been said. But I wanted to point to some evidence that we ought not place the kind of weight on people’s experiences, in the context of assessing how their choices have gone, that Paul suggests we should.

Read More »Is it rational to have children?

The Cultural Cost of Placebo

A recent poll says that nearly all General Practitioners in the UK have given placebos to at least one of their patients. The story can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21834440   Everyone loves placebos. If you are a scientist, placebo shows an incredible feat of the human body, and interesting interactions between our psychology and the biology… Read More »The Cultural Cost of Placebo

Julian Savulescu and Robert Sparrow debate the ethics of designer babies

Last year, Julian Savulescu of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics here at Oxford debated Robert Sparrow of Monash University on the issue of using techniques like embryo selection to ensure one’s children have the best life possible.  Savulescu has notably defended not only the permissibility but the obligation to select for the best children, while Sparrow has been more critical of enhancement via embryo selection.  The transcript of their debate is now available, and their exchange helps clarify a key source of disagreement between proponents and critics of embryo selection – whether parents should be maximizing their children’s well-being, or simply giving them a good enough life.  At its core, the debate is less about the intricacies of new technologies like preimplantation genetic diagnostics (PGD) and more about the ethics of parenting.  I’ll summarize some of the key points of the debate below, but I encourage readers to have a look at the transcript to get a sense for how the dialectic plays out as well as how each interlocutor deals with a wide array of objections.Read More »Julian Savulescu and Robert Sparrow debate the ethics of designer babies

Announcement: Journal of Medical Ethics – Special Issue on Circumcision

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The Ethics of Male Circumcision

by Brian D. Earp. Special Issue Edited by Julian Savulescu, Brian D. Earp and Bennett Foddy.

The Journal of Medical Ethics is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a Special Issue, ‘The Ethics of Male Circumcision’ — to be published in full in the coming days. Selected papers have already been posted Online First and can be seen by clicking here. Contributions cover a wide range of perspectives, and were invited from leading legal scholars, bioethicists, political theorists, pediatricians, and medical historians with expertise in this area. All essays were subjected to rigorous peer review. A list of main contributors and highlights from the arguments showcased in this Special Issue can be found below.

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Male Circumcision and the Enhancement Debate: Harm Reduction, Not Prohibition

This blog is a brief response to ‘Out of Step: Fatal Flaws in the Latest AAP Policy Report on Neonatal Circumcision’ by Steven Svoboda and Robert Van Howe, and the AAP Task Force on Circumcision’s Response. This is part of a special issue summarised by Brian Earp.

 

Around one third of men worldwide are circumcised. It is probably the most commonly performed surgical procedure. Circumcision is also one of the oldest forms of attempted human enhancement. It is and has been done for religious, social, aesthetic and health reasons.

Circumcision has a variety of benefits and risks, many of which are discussed in this issue.  There is some dispute about the magnitude and likelihood of these benefits and risks. Some argue that the risks outweigh the benefits and circumcision should not be performed on children who are not competent to make their own decisions.

If it were true that the risks of circumcision clearly outweighed the benefits, great harm has been done and is being done globally through this procedure. Around one third of men have been harmed. This is an extraordinary public health injury. Presumably, some would be entitled to compensation.

The fact that few people think that there is not such a bad situation affecting millions of men indicates that most people implicitly believe that circumcision is not a significant harm, if a harm at all. (This is an example of the kind of argument called modus tollens. If p, then q. Not-q, therefore not-p.)

It is reasonable to conclude either that:

1) It is not clear from existing evidence whether the risks of properly performed circumcision outweigh the benefits, or vice versa.

Or

2) If circumcision is against the interests of an infant, it is only mildly so.

In general, people should make their own decisions about body modification and human enhancement when this is possible. Such an approach speaks in favour of waiting until a child is adult to make his or her own decision about circumcision. And procedures which are not clearly in a child’s interests should not be performed on that child. However, religious and other social exclusion may make delay in circumcision psychologically harmful.

It would be a mistake to ban circumcision, given its importance to many people. A dangerous “black market” would be created. As with other forms of potentially risky human enhancement, the best policy is one of harm reduction, not prohibition. Non-medical circumcision should be discouraged, but not prohibited(for further discussion see ‘Rational Non-Interventional Paternalism: Why Doctors Ought to Make Judgements of What Is Best for Their Patients’and ‘Liberal Rationalism and Medical Decision-Making’).

Read More »Male Circumcision and the Enhancement Debate: Harm Reduction, Not Prohibition

Sponsoring student adventures, with added charity.

Last weekend’s work was greatly enlivened for me by keeping track of the updates for Trinity Jailbreak. The challenge: 37 student teams had 36 hours to get as far from Trinity College Dublin as possible, without spending any money. They were, however, allowed to blag, persuade, and get corporate sponsorship to aid their “getaways”. Pre-contest,… Read More »Sponsoring student adventures, with added charity.