Too long in gestating: an overdue inquiry into the Abortion Act
Whatever your view of abortion, there are too many abortions, and too many of them are too late. Even abortion’s fiercest advocates don’t pretend that it’s a Good Thing – just the lesser of two evils. In 2010 there were 189,574 abortions in…
Read MoreJeff McMahan on What Rights Can be Defended by Means of War
On the evening of Thursday 7 February, Jeff McMahan, Honorary Fellow of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and Professor Philosophy at Rutgers University, delivered an insightful and fascinating Astor Lecture at the University of…
Read MoreYet Another Reason to Legalise Doping in Sport: Organised Crime
Unsurprisingly, the Australian Crime Commission has found widespread use of performance enhancing drugs in sport in Australia and the involvement of organized crime in its distribution. I have given many arguments for why it would be better…
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The double standard of objections to drone strikes against US citizens
On Monday, NBC News released a bombshell memo from the US Department of Justice justifying the killing of American citizens who are believed to be senior al-Qaida leaders. That in itself is not necessarily news – the US famously used a dron…
Read MoreAlexandre Erler – ‘Sleep and Opportunity for Well-Being’ – Talk Podcast
Many of us are guilty of sleeping more than we really need to. Moreover, some people just need more sleep than others. In this talk, (which you can listen to here) Alexandre Erler argues that this means that many of us (who sleep excessivel…
Read MoreAnthony Skelton: ‘Two Conceptions of Children’s Welfare’ – Talk Podcast
In the latest St. Cross Ethics Seminar (which you can listen to here) Anthony Skelton investigates how we should construct an adequate theory of welfare for children.
Read MorePolitical Authority?
An underlying assumption of much debate on this blog is that the government has the right to boss people about and the question at issue is merely which bit of bossing about the government should be doing. Despite the fact that the left are…
Read MoreIs progressivism the biggest threat to science?
In the latest New Scientist, Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell attempt to redress what they see as an imbalance in perceptions of how political views affect attitudes to science. It is widely held today – in the wake of books like The Re…
Read MoreDon’t stay up and decide: sleep deprivation and the culture of late night summits
Would you trust a minister of finance explaining how he just fixed the latest euro-zone deal if he came out of the summit chambers tipsily waving a glass of wine? No? What about if he gave a press conference after an all-night session? Most…
Read MoreValues for Geoengineering Governance
Geoengineering as a response to anthropogenic climate change is of increasing interest to members of the scientific community. The challenges of developing technologies powerful enough to manipulate the global climate are considerable and …
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