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Announcing the Winners and Runners Up in the 8th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics
Please join us in congratulating all four of the finalists in the National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2022, and in particular our winners, Matthew Price and Lily Moore-Eissenberg. This, the 8th Annual Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics was, for the first time, held as a National competition. From 5:30pm on the 15th…
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Video Interview: Julian Savulescu on the Selective Restriction of Liberty During the Pandemic
Many people accept that, to protect public health, it is sometimes acceptable, or morally obligatory, to restrict people’s liberties. But there’s a lot of disagreement about how far these restrictions should go, and whom they should apply to: everyone, or certain groups of people only? In this Thinking out Loud interview, Professor Julian Savulescu (Uehiro…
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The Aliens Are Coming
By Charles Foster It’s said that 2022 is going to be a bumper year for UFO revelations. Secret archives are going to be opened and the skies are going to be probed as never before for signs of extraterrestrial life. This afternoon we might be presented with irrefutable evidence not just of life beyond the…
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Three Observations about Justifying AI
Written by: Anantharaman Muralidharan, G Owen Schaefer, Julian Savulescu Cross-posted with the Journal of Medical Ethics blog Consider the following kind of medical AI. It consists of 2 parts. The first part consists of a core deep machine learning algorithm. These blackbox algorithms may be more accurate than human judgment or interpretable algorithms, but are…
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Your eyes will be discontinued: what are the long-term responsibilities for implants?
by Anders Sandberg What do you do when your bionic eyes suddenly become unsupported and you go blind again? Eliza Strickland and Mark Harris have an excellent article in IEEE Spectrum about the problems caused when the bionics company Second Sight got into economic trouble. Patients with their Argus II eyes found that upgrades could…
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Should Vaccination Status Affect ICU Admission?
By Ben Davies and Joshua Parker Intensive care units around the country are full, with a disproportionate number of patients who have not had a single COVID-19 vaccination. Doctors have been vocal in describing the emotional cost of caring for critically unwell patients suffering from the effects of a virus for which there is an…
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What is a party?
By Alberto Giubilini There seems to be some confusion these days around what exactly a party is. The Sue Gray report updates on the alleged (i.e. actual) parties at No.10 during lockdowns cast doubts on our certainties. For what is a party? Intriguing question, for those into philosophy. You start by thinking you know…
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Cross Post: Is This the End of the Road for Vaccine Mandates in Healthcare?
Written by Dominic Wilkinson, Alberto Giubilini, and Julian Savulescu The UK government recently announced a dramatic U-turn on the COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, originally scheduled to take effect on April 1 2022. Health or social care staff will no longer need to provide proof of vaccination to stay employed. The reason, as health…
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Impersonality and Non-identity: A Response to Bramble
by Roger Crisp Consider the following case, from David Boonin: Wilma. Wilma has decided to have a baby. She goes to her doctor for a checkup and the doctor tells her that…as things now stand, if she conceives, her child will have a disability. . . that clearly has a substantially negative impact on a person’s quality of…