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  • Healthcare Ethics Has a Gap…

    By Ben Davies Last month, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported on a healthcare crisis in the country. If you live in the UK, you may have already had an inkling of this crisis from personal experience. But if you don’t live here, and particularly if you are professionally involved in philosophical ethics, see if you…

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  • Can a Character in an Autobiographical Novel Review the Book in Which She Appears? On the Ethics of Literary Criticism

    Written by Mette Leonard Høeg The common intuition in literary criticism, in art criticism in general and in the public cultural sphere is that it is wrong to engage in criticism of a work if you have a personal relation to its author. The critic who reviews the book of a friend, a professional contact…

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  • Peter Railton’s Uehiro Lectures 2022

    Written by Maximilian Kiener Professor Peter Railton, from the University of Michigan, delivered the 2022 Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics. In a series of three consecutive presentations entitled ‘Ethics and Artificial Intelligence’ Railton focused on what has become one the major areas in contemporary philosophy: the challenge of how to understand, interact with, and regulate…

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  • Google it, Mate.

    Written by Neil Levy There’s just been an election in Australia. In elections nowadays, politicians attempt to portray themselves as one of us, or at least as someone who is in touch with ‘us’ (whoever ‘we’ are). Hence the (apparently disastrous) pictures of Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich. Increasingly, journalists see testing politicians to…

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  • Cross Post: Tech firms are making computer chips with human cells – is it ethical?

    Written by Julian Savulescu, Chris Gyngell, Tsutomu Sawai Cross-posted with The Conversation Shutterstock Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford; Christopher Gyngell, The University of Melbourne, and Tsutomu Sawai, Hiroshima University The year is 2030 and we are at the world’s largest tech conference, CES in Las Vegas. A crowd is gathered to watch a big tech company…

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  • Returning To Personhood: On The Ethical Significance Of Paradoxical Lucidity In Late-Stage Dementia

    By David M Lyreskog About Dementia Dementia is a class of medical conditions which typically impair our cognitive abilities and significantly alter our emotional and personal lives. The absolute majority of dementia cases – approximately 70% – are caused by Alzheimer’s disease. Other causes include cardiovascular conditions, Lewy body disease, and Parkinson’s disease. In the…

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  • The Right To Tweet

    By Doug McConnell On January 6th, 2021 Trump was locked out his Twitter account for 12 hours after describing the people who stormed the US Capitol as “patriots”. A few days later, his account was permanently suspended after further tweets that Twitter judged to risk “further incitement of violence” given the socio-political context at the…

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  • Abortion, Democracy, and Erring on the Side of Freedom

    by Alberto Giubilini (crosspost: this article appeared with a different title in iaiNews) The leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice’ Samuel Alito foreshadows the overturn of the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling. Roe vs Wade grounded women’s (limited) right to abortion in the US in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and its…

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  • Hang Onto Your Soul

    By Charles Foster Image: https://the-conscious-mind.com I can’t avoid Steven Pinker at the moment. He seems to be on every page I read. I hear him all the time, insisting that I’m cosmically insignificant; that my delusional thoughts, my loves, my aspirations, and the B Minor Mass’s effect on me are merely chemical events. I used…

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  • Video Interview: Is Vaccine Nationalism Justified?

    High income countries have been criticised for hoarding covid-19 vaccines: they have been accused of ‘vaccine nationalism’. But what exactly is vaccine nationalism? Is it really wrong to prioritise one’s own citizens, and, if so, why? How can we do better when the next pandemic strikes? In this Thinking Out Loud interview, philosopher Dr Jonathan…

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