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  • National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: The Ambiguous Ethicality of Applause: Ethnography’s Uncomfortable Challenge to the Ethical Subject

    This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Written by University of Manchester student Thomas Long Abstract This essay presents, first and foremost, the recollections of a doctoral anthropologist as they attempt to make sense of a moment of embodied, ethical dissonance: a moment…

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  • National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Why the Responsibility Gap is Not a Compelling Objection to Lethal Autonomous Weapons

    This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Written by Tanae Rao, University of Oxford student There are some crimes, such as killing non-combatants and mutilating corpses, so vile that they are clearly impermissible even in the brutal chaos of war. Upholding human…

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  • National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: What is Wrong With Stating Slurs?

    This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2023 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Written by Leah O’Grady, University of Oxford   This essay will argue that it is wrong to use slurs in a non-derogatory context due to the phenomena of constitutive prohibition, put forward by Alexandre and…

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  • Who Gets to Be a Person?

    Written by Muriel Leuenberger   The question of who gets to be a person is one of those old but never outdated classics in philosophy. Throughout history, philosophers have discussed which human beings are persons, when human beings start to be persons, when they are no longer the same person, and whether non-human beings can…

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  • Demoralizing Ethics

    by Roger Crisp This may be an odd thing for a moral philosopher to say, but I think that morality is not fundamentally important. In fact, I think it would be helpful if we stopped using, or at least drastically cut the use of, moral language in philosophical ethics, unless we are engaged in some…

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  • Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and doctors’ conscientious commitment to provide abortion

    Alberto Giubilini, University of Oxford  Udo Schuklenk, Queen’s University Francesca Minerva, University of Milan  Julian Savulescu, National University of Singapore and University of Oxford (reposted from the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog ) The reversal of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the Constitutional protection of…

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  • Is Authenticity Coherent?

    By Neil Levy Authenticity is a widely espoused ideal; often under that name but also under other labels. People take pride in being individuals, set apart from the crowd, in not following the herd, in thinking for themselves. To be accused of conformism stings. 

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  • The Authentic Liar

    Written by Muriel Leuenberger A modified version of this post is forthcoming in Think edited by Stephen Law.   Authenticity is a popular ideal. Particularly in the western world, authenticity has developed into a prevailing ideal since its rise in Modernity.[1] The search for authenticity is a common trope in film and literature, countless self-help…

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  • Guest Cross Post: Extremism And The Sensible Centre

    Written by Tony Coady , Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor at the Australian Catholic University, Honorary Fellow in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics in Oxford. There are a plethora of terms in widespread political and social use that often obfuscate more than they elucidate. One of those…

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