Practical Ethics
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At the Practical Ethics blog, you can find daily ethical analysis of news events from researchers in four centres based at the Philosophy.We focus on current events with practical ethical relevance, including developments in science and technology, environmental policy, public health, and information ethics.
Practical Ethics
23m ago
by Dominic Wilkinson
In an interesting legal case earlier this year, the court held an emergency hearing about the medical care of a 16 year old, recently diagnosed with acute leukaemia. The hearing, conducted remotely in the middle of the night, was to decide whether she should have medical treatment imposed against her wishes. Should an “intelligent young person”, who had no diagnosed mental illness or condition affecting her brain, but who faced a real possibility of serious, even life threatening complications be allowed to refuse medical treatment?
Treatment decisions and nearl ..read more
Practical Ethics
3w ago
written by Neil Levy and Keith Raymond Harris
There’s a lot of debate over the harms of misinformation today: whether it is more prevalent now than in the past, how often it misleads people, whether people act on misleading misinformation, and on whether the costs of content moderation or algorithmic depriorisation mightn’t be higher than the disease they aim to fight. This debate has focused, unsurprisingly, on false claims like “the 2020 election was stolen” or “Trump is a Russian agent”(misinformation, here, is more or less synonymous with fake news). In a new paper, we argue that ..read more
Practical Ethics
3w ago
This essay was the winner of the Graduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics 2024. Written by Jakob Lohmar.
Many people believe that we sometimes ought to produce one larger benefit rather than any number of smaller benefits. For example, many believe that in a choice between saving a human life and alleviating headaches, one always ought to prioritize the life, no matter the number of headaches.[1] Call the benefits that (no matter their number) cannot outweigh the saving of one human life “minor benefits” and the wellbeing differences that minor benefits am ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
Written by Joseph Moore
Last week, 4-8 March 2024, Professor Thomas Hurka, the Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto, delivered the 2023 Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics, entitled ‘Knowledge and Achievement: Their Value, Nature, and Public Policy Role’. The lecture series was rescheduled from the previous year but was well worth the wait.
Lecture 1
In Monday’s lecture, ‘Knowledge and Achievement #1: Their Value and Nature’, Hurka defended analyses of knowledge and achievement, drawing enlightening parallels betwee ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
This article was the runner up in the undergraduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Ayesha Chakravarti.
I. Introduction
Most feminists argue that “The personal is the political.” Is this true of people’s sex lives? In this essay, I will discuss the implications of having consensually inegalitarian sexual relationships (CISRs) on one’s moral alliance with women’s subordination. I define consensually inegalitarian sexual relationships as those which involve the consensual eroticisation of dominance and submission, or any form of powerplay. My arg ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
This article received an Honourable Mention in the undergraduate category of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by David Logan.
Benign Carnivorism (BC) is a practice where a farmer (i) creates animals with pleasurable lives worth living, (ii) painlessly kills them after a significant proportion of their natural lifespan, and (iii) would not create the animals without also killing them for meat.[1] In this essay, I argue BC is permissible and respond to its most influential objection: Jeff McMahan’s Argument from Interests.
Section 1 — The Benefit Argument and Mc ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
This article received an honourable mention in the undergraduate category of the 2024 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Gabriel McWilliams.
The concept of a virtuous character is a foundational tenet of the broader virtue ethics doctrine. It has, though, been subject to noteworthy objection. One such objection arises from the theory of situationism, which – broadly speaking – repudiates the notion of consistent moral characters and frameworks in favour of a view that emphasises the contextual specifics of moral situations as the determining factor(s) in both mor ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
This article received an honourable mention in the graduate category of the 2024 National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics. Written by Beatrice Marchegiani.
Introduction
Recent advancements in Large Language Models have enabled AI systems to engage in conversations with users that are virtually indistinguishable from human interactions. The proliferation of advanced Conversational AIs (CAIs)1 in an increasingly online-interaction-dependent world raises concerns about users being unable to distinguish between AI and human interactions. A 2023 study2 revealed that users can accurately dis ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
The 10th Annual National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics Final Presentation and Reception HT24 Week 9, Tuesday 12th March, 5:30pm – 7:45pm.
We are pleased to announce the four finalists of the 10th National Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics and to invite you to attend the final where they will present their entries. Two finalists have been selected from each category to present their ideas to an audience and respond to a short Q&A as the final round in the competition.
The Presentation will be held in the Seminar Room, Faculty of Philosophy, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Oxf ..read more
Practical Ethics
1M ago
Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford.
In 2020, in a medical facility in one of the southern states of the US, a patient wandered into an unsecured nursery for extremely premature children. Unfortunately, the patient managed to accidentally disconnect multiple babies from their life support. Worried that they would get in trouble, they fled the scene. But by the time the children were found, it was too late. Several had already died.
Of course, this event was extremely distressing for the children’s parents. They subsequently sued the medical facility, but to their astonishment, the state co ..read more