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Uehiro Lectures

Addiction, Desire, and The Polluted Environment – Richard Holton’s 2nd Uehiro Lecture

By Jonathan Pugh

 

In the second of his three Uehiro lectures on the theme of ‘illness and the social self’, Richard Holton turned to the moral questions raised by addiction. In the first half of the lecture, he outlined an account of addictive behaviour according to which addictive substances disrupt the link between wanting and liking. In the second half of the lecture, he discusses the implications of this account for the moral significance of preferences, and for how we might structure environments to avoid triggering addictive desires.

 

You can find a recording of the lecture here

 

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Dementia and the Social Scaffold of Memory

By Jonathan Pugh

 

The number of individuals suffering with dementia is steadily increasing; as such, the moral issues raised by the neurodegenerative diseases that bring about the symptoms typifying dementia are of pressing practical concern. In this context, Richard Holton’s topic for the first of his three 2018 Uehiro lectures (on the theme “Illness and the Social Self”) is a timely one: What are the ethical implications of the progressive and pervasive loss of memory that is a central feature of dementia?

I shall be blogging a synopsis of each lecture in the series on the Practical Ethics blog – You can find a recording of the lecture here

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Video Series: Larry S. Temkin on Peter Singer, Effective Altruism and Our Obligations to the Needy

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 it okay to spend large amounts of money on ‘dramatic rescues’ (e.g. after an earthquake, to find perhaps one… Read More »Video Series: Larry S. Temkin on Peter Singer, Effective Altruism and Our Obligations to the Needy

Not content with temporal parochialism

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By Dominic Wilkinson @Neonatal Ethics, Director of medical ethics

Why should we care about what happens to future generations? What reason do we have to sacrifice our own well-being and interests for the sake of people who will exist after we are dead?

Last night Professor Sam Scheffler from NYU gave the first of the 2015 Uehiro lectures on this controversial and challenging topic.  http://media.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/uehiro/HT16_UL_Scheffler1.mp3

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