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A steamy calamari: trans-species eroticism and disgust

A steamy calamari: trans-species eroticism and disgust

Imagine a naked, beautiful person of your preferred gender. Now imagine that they sensously fondle a sausage. They gently caress it, they lick it, they eventually insert it somewhere…

While no doubt some of my readers have been turned off at this point, I think few would argue that depicting this scene is significantly more immoral than depicting the scene sans sausage. While one might have various concerns with pornography, self stimulation or the waste of food, most modern people would regard the scene as harmless "food play". In fact, sexual and erotic uses of food are widespread and at least in their milder forms regarded as pretty tame fetishes.

What about pictures of playing around with a calamari? Well, at least the UK legal system appears to find them objectionable. A man was accused of possessing "extreme porn images", including images of humans and animals having sex, and the news media focused on a particular image involving a dead cephalopod (it is not entirely certain whether it was a squid or an
octopus). Leaving aside the legal issue of what constitutes obscenity, what about the ethical issue? Is there really anything wrong with having sex with a dead cephalopod? Or having pictures of the act?

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Is anti-ageing worth it?

The Telegraphs proclaims that Anti-ageing drugs 'will fuel euthanasia'. The origin of the story was a lecture by Dr David Gems at UCL. He pointed out that if people were to live much longer healthy lives more would choose to end them themselves, and that centralized control of birthrates might become necessary. Francis Fukuyama argued at a conference in Aarhus last week that life extension also implies problems with age graded hierarchies and generational turnover. Some people, like Fukuyama, find these potential social consequences serious enough that life extension research should be discouraged. But are they strong enough?

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Comments policy

We encourage readers of our blog, including those who do not have a background in philosophy or ethics, to respond to posts and to engage in debate with our authors, and with each other. Comments should be polite, concise and relevant to the topic. Authors will respond to comments where possible, though may not respond… Read More »Comments policy

How to Prescribe Smart Drugs to Children Ethically

Ilina Singh and colleagues argue that the use of drugs such as Ritalin among young people is becoming so common that family doctors should be able to prescribe them as study aids to school pupils aged under 18.(1)

While the Guardian article rather cherry-picks from the range of Singh’s arguments in her original article, I have made broadly similar arguments to those in the Guardian article supporting cognitive enhancement myself (see here for a selection on enhancement).

However, one might ask whether the prescription of enhancement for young children who are incapable of consenting for themselves raises unique issues. 

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George and the British election

Politics is the art of compromise, but rarely has compromise been so necessary a political virtue in Britain as it is today.

Very soon we’ll know who’s done a deal with whom. The Liberal Democrats are the king-makers: ultimately they’ll decide whether to prop up a Tory or a Labour-led government. Let us be exceptionally generous and take the politicians at their word: let’s assume that what’s currently weighing on their minds is not personal interest, or party interest, but national interest. They may disagree about what constitutes the national interest, and how it is best achieved, but they agree that it’s what really matters.

Political and moral theory has a lot to say about compromise. And one character it’s worth remembering is George. 

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Organ Donation Euthanasia

by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu

There are 8000 patients on transplant waiting lists in the UK. Every year 400 patients die while waiting for an organ to come available.
We are all far more likely to be in need of an organ transplant than to be a donor. Most of us expect that if we needed a transplant that someone would donate one. On the basis of the ethical golden rule – do unto others as you would want them to do for you, we should all think seriously about whether and how we could donate our organs if we no longer need them.

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Lord Justice Nero?

There is
a shrill, unpleasant new sound in the UK church. It is the sound of
conservative Christians saying that they are persecuted. It’s the voice of a
minority. And as Rowan Williams trenchantly observed: ‘The Church of England is
like a swimming pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.’ The claim of
persecution is an insult to the vast numbers of Christians in the world who really
are persecuted. Please read the Bible and the history books before going on
prime time TV to say that you’re persecuted. 

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Is it wrong to vote tactically?

Tomorrow will see the closest election in the UK for many years and there is considerable debate about whether tactical voting is acceptable (see here, here, here). This is a particularly big issue this election as the Liberal Democrats (the UK's third largest party) have had a significant rise in popularity and the vote looks to be split fairly evenly among the three parties. A three-party race causes significant problems for the 'first past the post' voting system used in the UK and the US, as it means that a party can win a seat even if 60% or 70% of the people in the seat think that it is the worst option. For example, suppose that a seat has the vote split as follows:

40% — Conservatives

38% – Liberal Democrats 

22% – Labour

The Conservatives would win this seat even if they were the third choice of all the Liberal Democrat and Labour voters. In such a case, the Labour supporters might realise that they have relatively little chance of winning and that they can avoid a worst-case scenario by voting Liberal Democrat. Voting for a party that is not your preferred party is known as tactical voting and is quite contentious.

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The privacy of the shrew

Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the birth and feeding of a newborn platypus. But imagine that he had used similar technology to obtain pictures from a human home birth, or to take pictures of copulating couples in their homes? Brett Mills, a lecturer in television studies at the University of East Anglia has controversially suggested that animals may have a right to privacy that is breached by filming them without their consent.

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