“Morality is just social convention, so torture isn’t wrong.” Hearing that thought was a sobering recent experience, especially when you’re trying to get people to care and worry about existential risks. But that’s just a vivid and extreme …

Today, if a gay couple wants to have a child, they have two main options: Either (1) they adopt a child or (2) they get an egg from a donor, have it fertilized in a laboratory, and have a surrogate mother carry and give birth to their child…

On Friday, Dr. Ralph Steinman died. On Monday, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. This posed a problem for the Nobel committee. Per the award foundation’s bylaws, prizes may not be awarded posthumously. The committee met in emergency sess…

Today, my colleague Michael Mansfield QC appears in a mock trial in the Supreme Court that considers the crime of ‘ecocide’. The project is the brainchild of lawyer Polly Higgins. Ecocide is defined as: ‘The extensive dama…

By Charles Foster Three years ago Ana Mejia bore a son, Bryan Santana. To her surprise he had no arms and only one leg. I should have been warned about this, she recently told a Florida court. It was negligent not to warn me. Had I been war…

Like many in the UK, I was gripped last week by the reports from Wales about the search for four trapped miners, and saddened to hear of their deaths. Readers outside the UK perhaps heard nothing, or very little, about this story, thought i…

Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution posted about how the software company Turnitin is not just helping schools detect student plagiarism, but also providing WriteCheck, a tool for checking that a paper is non-infringing. Are they providing…

“Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.”  – Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life As our wealth increases, more and more of us undergo cosmetic surgery: From tummy tucks, breast enlargements and n…

In collaboration with the BBC’s Radio 4 show ‘The Philosopher’s Arms‘, we are running a series of short opinion surveys on the Practical Ethics blog as a way of promoting discussion on issues in practical ethics. Thi…