By Alberto Giubilini Oxford Martin School and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanitites, University of Oxford For further discussion on this topic by Dr Giubilini see his oped in The Irish Times Last month I was invited by Oxford’s Student…

What does Peter Singer’s famous ‘pond example’ tell us about our obligations to the world’s needy? Is rescuing a child drowning in a shallow pond really the same as donating money to effective aid organisations? Is i…

Should self-driving cars be programmed in a way that always protects ‘the driver’? Who is responsible if an AI makes a mistake? Will AI used in policing be less racially biased than police officers? Should a human being always t…

Written by Michael S. Dauber, MA In 2015, Sergio Canavero announced that he would perform a therapeutic head transplant procedure on a human subject by December 2017. Since then, he has recruited the assistance of surgeon Xiaoping Ren and s…

  By Charles Foster Last night, long after everyone else I know, I went with the kids to see Paddington 2. As everyone agrees, it’s wonderful. It’s a modern morality tale. There is plainly a big appetite for morality. Interestingly, th…

Written by Dr Rebecca Brown It has become commonplace to identify a lack of impulse control as a major cause of poor health. A popular theory within behavioural science tells us that our behaviour is regulated via two systems: the fast, imp…

Suppose a religious community regards a site – with, say, a stone circle – as sacred. It has for centuries been used as a place of prayer and contemplation. The land is owned by the state and they want to sell it off to build apartment bloc…

Novel gene editing technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9, allow scientists to make very precise changes in the genome of human embryos. This could prevent serious genetic diseases in future children. But the use of gene editing in human embryos…

Written by Michael Robillard               “Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a g…

Written by Neil Levy As I have discussed previously, there is a growing concern about the use of ‘ableist’ language. Ableism is discrimination on the basis of disability, when disability is not in fact relevant. There has long been a move t…