2009 Uehiro Lectures: Allen Buchanan on The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement
Professor Allen Buchanan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University will give a series of three lectures 'Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement' on Tuesdays May 5, May 12 and May 19 16.30 – …
Read MoreEpistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2
Conspiracies against the laity frequently operate with an inverted morality. For example, honour among thieves includes the obligation not to snitch, that is to say, not to tell the truth about the wrongdoing of each other. By contrast, the…
Read MoreIntuitive pirates: why do we accept file sharing so much?
Piracy is in the headlines, whether in Somalian waters or Swedish cyberspace. A Stockholm court this friday found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay and sentenced them…
Read MoreAn earthquake in the theodicy doctrine
On April 6, a strong earthquake struck several Italian cities, causing hundreds of deaths and destroying thousands of homes.Such violent and destructive phenomena always arouse dismay and amazement. Many date the birth of modern athe…
Read MoreTortured logic
A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has concluded that medical personnel were involved in interrogation and torture performed overseas by the CIA according to reports in the New York Times. The practices r…
Read MoreBe mindful of results, not the method
David King warns that we should modify society, not childrens' brains. This is a response to a recent Radio 4 documentary on "the criminal mind", which discussed recent evidence for biological underpinnings of some forms of an…
Read MoreEcclesiastical gaydar: should churches be allowed to discriminate priests?
Melbourne's Catholic Churches have decided to test potential priests for sexual orientation, banning those that appear to be gay. This is in accordance with the Vatican recommendation that even celibate gays should not be allowed in the…
Read MoreContradicting Nature
Rubén Noé Coronado Jiménez is 25 and pregnant with twins. He is unusual in that he is a transsexual man, in the middle of hormone treatments and about to undergo a full operation to change his sex: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/3…
Read MoreConspiracies against the laity and wishful thinking
Most duties are concerned with or grounded in the significance of actions. By contrast, an epistemic duty is a duty whose grounding object is belief or knowledge rather than action. My concern here is with a certain epistemic duty had…
Read MoreOverruling parents and allowing infants to die
Over the weekend a nine-month old infant, baby ‘OT’, died following a court ruling that allowed doctors to remove life support. As discussed in a post last week, his parents had wanted treatment to continue, but the court ruled that the hos…
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