To categorize people into different groups seems to be not only a fundamental function of human cognition, but also of our whole society: child vs. grownup, man vs. woman, black vs. white… Based on such categorizations, we assign righ…

The Daily Mail likes to ‘out’ teachers as porn stars. It did so again last week. The standard response to the discovery that a teacher stars in adult films or ‘moonlights’ as a stripper is to sack him or her, even if (as in one case) two de…

For those of us doing Catholic moral theology, we most often hear and read the name “Peter Singer” invoked by our colleagues in a dismissive way.  Indeed, if one can somehow show that another’s argument is heading in a Singer-like direction…

FIFA want referees to be tested for drugs: delegates at FIFA’s medical congress were told by FIFA officers that referees in the future might be tested for doping. “We have to consider referees as part of the game,” said FI…

By Charles Foster Richard Dawkins is at it again in the Guardian. It’s the familiar stuff: a fluent, funny, whingeing litany of jibes about genocidal Israelites, filicidal Gods and benighted Tennessean Creationists. We’ve all heard it all b…

Most of us think that intention has great significance in practical ethics. If you barge into me, my reaction will be very different if I believe you intended to do so from the case in which I think it was an accident. And if you believe th…

Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: The brain disease model of addiction: Assessing its validity, utility and implications for public policy towards the treatment and prevention of addiction Wayne Hall, NHMRC Australia Fellow, University of Qu…

Casual observation suggests that among scientists researching geoengineering technologies there is a marked difference in attitude between Americans and continental Europeans. The United Sates is the home of the idea of the technofix, so Am…

Professor Tony Coady is Professorial Fellow in Applied Philosophy and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University. He is currently visiting the University of Oxford as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Appli…