Living in Plato’s Cave
Roger Crisp writes … Plato’s allegory of the Cave (Republic 514a-517a) is perhaps the most famous image in the history of philosophy. Socrates describes a group of people living underground, bound so that they can see only in front of…
Read MoreSmoking and yellow teeth
With at least one airline announcing this week that it was stepping up screening on Yemeni passengers, I want to return to a topic I’ve touched on before: profiling. What interests me is ‘rational profiling’. If a security guard believes, f…
Read MoreIs your mobile phone part of your body?
by Rebecca Roache The Frontline reports that sensors carried on the body of mobile phone users could soon be used to boost the UK’s mobile phone network coverage. If only half of the 91% of the UK population who owns a mobile phone&#…
Read MoreWould you shock your brain to cope with culture shock?
In a paper published this last Friday, university of Oxford researchers showed that electrical stimulation may help people learn numbers faster (see Julian Savulescu’s post for Why Bioenhancement of Mathematical Ability Is Ethically Importa…
Read MoreHow Many Lives Should I Save?
by Julian Savulescu Toby Ord is a brilliant young Oxford post doc. He has established Giving What We Can. On the website, you can calculate how many lives you could save by giving to the most effective charities he has evaluated. He calcula…
Read MoreDeath Aquatic
Can science tell us how chefs should treat lobsters? The Independent this week implies it can. It seems that this is important to diners who want reassurance that their dinner has not been killed in a “barbaric” manner. Science may of cours…
Read MoreRetaining privacy: the EU commission and the right to be forgotten
Do we have a right to be forgotten? That was the question posed to me by BBC Newsnight in the light of the EU Commission's latest draft framework for data protection policies. EU Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding stated that “The …
Read MoreWhy Bioenhancement of Mathematical Ability Is Ethically Important
by Julian Savulescu In a paper just released today, Cohen Kadosh and colleagues (Cohen Kadosh et al., Modulating Neuronal Activity Produces Specific and Long-Lasting Changes in Numerical Competence, Current Biology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.cub…
Read MoreWhat is a pet worth?
by Russell Powell Imagine that you leave your sprightly canine companion to the vet for a routine teeth cleaning, only to learn that due to spectacular negligence on the part of the veterinary staff, he was confused for another terminally i…
Read MoreWhy god isn’t really a teapot.
By Lisa Furberg Russell’s teapot is an analogy intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove the existence of god. The argument roughly goes something like this: If I were to claim that…
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