Out with the Future of Humanity, in with the “Challenges Faced by Humanity Today”

Following the closure of its Future of Humanity Institute this past April, the University of Oxford today launched the Uehiro Oxford Institute (UOI), which takes up ethical questions about “the great challenges faced by humanity today.”

Researchers and teachers at the new interdisciplinary ethics institute, which appears to be a revamping of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics (which was founded in 2003), will take up questions concerning “artificial intelligence, climate and ecological breakdown, future pandemics, global conflict, political systems under pressure,” among other issues. (Perhaps there is an organizational distinction at Oxford between “centres” and “institutes”?)

The leaders of the UOI are Roger Crisp (Director), Dominic Wilkinson (UOI Deputy Director, Director of Medical Ethics), Katrien Devolder (Director of Public Philosophy), Thomas Douglas (Director of Research), and Guy Kahane (Director of Studies). The full list of its fellows and researchers is here.

According to an announcement from Oxford,

The ultimate concern of the Institute will be the ethical question of how we should act and live in light of the great challenges faced by humanity. We see this question as ultimately philosophical, and so the Institute will have especially close links with philosophy, and in particular the philosophers and the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford. But properly to understand these challenges, and to develop solutions to them, requires expertise from many disciplines. Our research staff will therefore include experts from a range of relevant disciplines, and will engage closely with researchers in the humanities, including literature, art, and history, as well as medical, natural, and social sciences.

The UOI is funded by the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education.