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New Publication: ‘Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment’

New Publication: ‘Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment’

Written by Anthony Skelton, Lisa Forsberg, and Isra Black

Consider the following two cases:

Cynthia’s blood transfusion. Cynthia is 16 years of age. She is hit by a car on her way to school. She is rushed to hospital. She sustains serious, life-threatening injuries and loses a lot of blood. Her physicians conclude that she needs a blood transfusion in order to survive. Physicians ask for her consent to this course of treatment. Cynthia is intelligent and thoughtful. She considers, understands and appreciates her medical options. She is deemed to possess the capacity to decide on her medical treatment. She consents to the blood transfusion.

Nathan’s blood transfusion. Nathan is 16 years of age. He has Crohn’s disease. He is admitted to hospital with lower gastrointestinal bleeding. According to the physicians in charge of his care, the bleeding poses a significant threat to his health and to his life. His physicians conclude that a blood transfusion is his best medical option. Nathan is intelligent and thoughtful. He considers, understands and appreciates his medical options. He is deemed to possess the capacity to decide on his medical treatment. He refuses the blood transfusion.

Under English Law, Cynthia’s consent has the power to permit the blood transfusion offered by her physicians. Her consent is considered to be normatively (and legally) determinative. However, Nathan’s refusal is not normatively (or legally) determinative. Nathan’s refusal can be overridden by consent to the blood transfusion of either a parent or court. These parties share (with Nathan) the power to consent to his treatment and thereby make it lawful for his physicians to provide it.

Read More »New Publication: ‘Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment’

No, Plant-Based Meals Do Not Undermine Freedom of Choice

No, Plant-Based Meals Do Not Undermine Freedom of Choice

Written by Joanna Demaree-Cotton

 

Last month, TV personality Jeremy Clarkson took centre-stage in our local county politics with an argument against plant-based meals. His fury—expressed on television, on Twitter, and in a strongly-worded column in The Sun—was sparked by the Oxfordshire County Council’s decision to provide only plant-based meals at council-catered events as a move towards environmental sustainability.

 

Local farmers—including Jeremy Clarkson, whose farm in Oxfordshire was the focus of his latest TV venture Clarkson’s Farm—protested the measures. There is nothing surprising about this. There’s a straightforward conflict of interest here. It’s in the interests of people who make a living from selling animal products to promote diets based around animal products. (As local arable farmer John Richardson was reported to have said at the protest, “[we’re] just trying to promote the good food we produce”.)

 

More curious, however, is the claim that it’s morally wrong to have policies committing to plant-based catering. More specifically, one of Clarkson’s arguments was that deciding to provide plant-based catering is morally wrong because it interferes with freedom of choice. Standing with protesting farmers, Clarkson reportedly argued:

 

“I think people have to have choice. If people want to eat seeds and weeds, fine. If people want to eat meat, fine. … You can’t dictate. You might be a vegetarian but you can’t make everyone else a vegetarian just because you are.”

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Just War, Economics, and Corporate Boycotting: A Review of Dr. Ted Lechterman’s 2022 St. Cross Special Ethics Seminar

Professor Larry Locke (University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and LCC International University)

One of the more worrisome aspects of the modern concentration of resources in large corporations is that it often allows them to have societal impact beyond the capability of all but the wealthiest persons. Notwithstanding that disparity of power, much of modern ethical discourse remains focused on the rights and moral responsibilities of individuals, with relatively little analysis for evaluating and directing corporate behavior. Dr. Ted Lechterman, of the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, has identified this gap in modern ethics scholarship. At the 10 February, 2022, St. Cross Special Ethics Seminar, he stepped into the breach with some pioneering arguments on the ethics of corporate boycotts.

Individuals boycotting companies or products, as an act of moral protest, is widely regarded as a form of political speech. Individual boycotts represent a nonviolent means of influencing firms and may allow a person to express her conscience when she finds products, or the companies that produce them, to be ethically unacceptable. These same virtues may be associated with corporate boycotts but, while relatively rare compared to boycotts by individuals, corporate boycotts may also introduce a series of distinct ethical issues. Dr. Lechterman sampled a range of those issues at the St. Cross Seminar.

  • As agents of their shareholders, should corporations engage in any activity beyond seeking to maximize profits for those shareholders?
  • Do corporate boycotts represent a further arrogation of power by corporate management, with a concomitant loss of power for shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders of the firm?
  • Because of their potential for outsized impact, due to their high level of resources, do corporate boycotts (particularly when directed at nations or municipalities) represent a challenge to democracy?
  • Under what circumstances, if any, should corporations engage in boycotting?

Read More »Just War, Economics, and Corporate Boycotting: A Review of Dr. Ted Lechterman’s 2022 St. Cross Special Ethics Seminar

Slaps VS Jokes at the Oscars

By Hazem Zohny

Most of us draw a strict-ish line between actions that physically hurt and words that psychologically hurt. This is especially so when violence is used in response to words – hence the near universal condemnation of Will Smith’s cringey Oscars interruption. A slap is deemed a pathetic response to a joke, or any assortment of words for that matter (in some cultures anyway – blasphemy and certain other utterances can get you legally killed in some places).

But is there something intrinsically worse about physical violence compared to words that (we will assume) hurt? I have a strong intuition that violence is indeed inherently worse than words that hurt, but I wonder how easy it is to appeal to some principled basis to ground that claim. I’m not sure.

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Robert Audi on Moral Creditworthiness and Moral Obligation

by Roger Crisp

On Tuesday 8 March, Professor Robert Audi, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, gave a Public Lecture for the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. The event was held in the Lecture Room at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford and was hybrid, the audience numbering around 60 overall.Read More »Robert Audi on Moral Creditworthiness and Moral Obligation

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: When Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Does Our Duty to Assist the Needy Require Us to Befriend the Lonely?

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This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2022 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Written by Lukas Joosten, University of Oxford

While most people accept some duty to assist to the needy, few accept a similar duty to befriend the lonely. In this essay I will argue that this position is inconsistent since most conceptions of a duty to assist entail a duty to befriend the lonely[1]. My main argument in this essay will follow from two core insights about friendship: friendship cannot be bought like other crucial goods, and friendship is sufficiently important to happiness that we are morally required to address friendlessness in others. The duty to friend, henceforth D2F, refers to a duty to befriend chronically lonely individuals. I present this argument by first presenting a broad conception of the duty to assist, explain how this broad conception entails a duty to friend, and then test my argument to various objections.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: When Money Can’t Buy Happiness: Does Our Duty to Assist the Needy Require Us to Befriend the Lonely?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Why Don’t We Just Let The Wise Rule?!

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This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2022 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Written by Alexander Scoby, University of Cambridge

Throughout history, democracy has been accused of producing objectively sub-optimal outcomes because it gives voice to the ‘mob’. 1 Recently, Brexit and the election of Trump have been the favoured examples.2

The supposedly poor epistemic performance of democracy has served as a springboard for epistocracy, loosely defined as any political arrangement where the ‘wise’ (or competent) have disproportionate political authority relative to the rest of the population.3

I argue that against a background of structural inequality, an epistocracy is unlikely to epistemically outperform democracy. By doing so, I hope to undermine the appeal of epistocracy and ‘defend’ democracy from a competitor.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Why Don’t We Just Let The Wise Rule?!

The End Of The Egg?

written by Neil Levy

There are no more free range eggs in the UK. They’re a victim of the pandemic – not COVID, but avian flu. Avian flu is devastating to the poultry industry, most immediately because outbreaks lead to the culling of all the birds. Avian flu can infect humans and has caused multiple deaths over the years; prevention in domestic birds is therefore aimed not only at reducing the costs to producers but also at reducing the risks to human health. Keeping them indoors is aimed at preventing the virus spreading from wild birds to the poultry.Read More »The End Of The Egg?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Terra Nullius, Populus Sine Terra: Who May Settle Antarctica?

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This article was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the 2022 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics

Written by Leo Rogers, University of Oxford

Abstract

Who may settle Antarctica? I first argue that there are no significant prior claims to Antarctic territory, which is completely uninhabited. I assume that the environmental case for leaving Antarctica uninhabited does not rule out (but may qualify) legitimate claims to settlement, and that Antarctic territory will eventually be rendered habitable by climate change. I proceed to argue that states whose territory has become uninhabitable due to climate change have a right to settle distinct parcels of Antarctic territory. This is grounded in their right to political self-determination, which requires territory. Conflicting claims may be evaluated in relation to a standard of equality of resources, which is less problematic here than elsewhere. I then assess the objection that my argument implies more demanding duties than I set out, noting that my argument describes a negative rather than a positive duty. Finally, I note the abstraction of my argument, maintaining that it nonetheless retains its value.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: Terra Nullius, Populus Sine Terra: Who May Settle Antarctica?

Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: How Should Career Choice Ethics Address Ignorance-Related Harms?

This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2022 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics.

Written by Open University student Lise du Buisson

Introduction

Choosing a career is a decision which governs most of our lives and, in large part, determines our impact on the world around us. Although being fortunate enough to freely choose a career is becoming increasingly common, surprisingly little philosophical work has been done on career choice ethics (MacAskill 2014). This essay is concerned with the question of how an altruistically-minded individual should go about choosing a career, a space currently dominated by theories oriented towards achieving the most good. Identifying an overlooked aspect of the altruistic career choice problem, I draw from non-ideal theory and the harm reduction paradigm in feminist practical ethics[1] to propose an alternative account of altruistic career choice ethics informed by where one is likely to do the least harm.Read More »Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics: How Should Career Choice Ethics Address Ignorance-Related Harms?