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Who’s this ‘we’, Dr Soon? Unconscious Action and Moral Responsibility
A paper in Nature Neuroscience by Soon, Brass, Heinze and Haynes has demonstrated that it is possible (in the case of a simple decision about pressing buttons) to predict what the decision will be and when it will happen several seconds before the decision is consciously “made”. Does this demonstrate that our free will is…
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These are not the probabilities you are looking for
There has been an increasing buzz in the papers regarding the impending launch of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Some of this concerns the possibility that it will lead to a disaster which destroys the world. This certainly sounds unlikely, and people who seriously suggest this are typically brushed aside with official calculations about the…
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Three arguments against turning the Large Hadron Collider on
In response to Anders Sandberg’s post on the Large Hadron Collider. The physicists responses to worries about the risks posed by the LHC make it unclear whether they understand the moral issue. They may have the power, but they do not have the liberty to hazard the destruction of all present and future goodness. Nobody…
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The Pregnant Man, And Other Conceptual Curiosities
Recent weeks have given us several occasions to reflect on the nature of parenthood. First we had the unavoidably salacious reports about the first pregnant man, Thomas Beatie—who turned out to be a woman who has had a sex change operation (in fact, the operation only involved the removal of breast glands to flatten her/his…
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Policy, Uncertainty and Global Warming
The Australian today contains a link on its front page to an article entitled ‘Academic cool on warming’(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23509775-2702,00.html) together with a link to a recent speech by the retired Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra Don Aitken entitled ‘A Cool Look at Global Warming’ (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/aitkin.pdf). Aitken urges agnosticism regarding the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global…
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Expert advice
Last Friday, on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions?, one of the questioners picked up a theme that had appeared many times in the media during the week. ‘What is the point’, he asked, ‘of asking for advice from an expert independent panel of advisers and then disregarding it?’. He was referring to leaked information that…
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The stresses of 24 hour creative work: How much would Aristotle blog?
New York Times writes about the stressful lifestyle of for-pay bloggers. The bloggers get rewarded for being prolific and quick to comment, but since the Internet never sleeps they feel a pressure not to sleep either. The result is physical and emotional stress that never lets up – especially since often the home is also…
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The case against love: A recent legislation on incest
Germany’s highest court recently upheld the law making incest a criminal offence that can be prosecuted with up to 2 years. It thereby rejected an appeal from a man who has four children with his sister. The pair fell in love when they met for the first time at adult age, after being brought up…
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Helping human-animals to die
Euthanasia for animals is commonplace, and is widely accepted as a morally acceptable response to animals whose suffering is unable to be relieved. But, with the exception of a few places such as the Netherlands, Belgium and the US state of Oregon, euthanasia for humans is legally prohibited. But is it speciesist to make a…
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Junk science reporting
Science constantly gives rise to new information, new technologies, and new ethical dilemmas. To keep abreast of such changes, we need good science reporting in the newspapers, television and online. However there is a fundamental disconnect between the way science works and the way the media works which leads to big problems in mainstream science…