ethics
TagWhat’s Wrong? (A New Blog)
What’s Wrong? is the “not quite official” blog of the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Center for Values and Social Policy. The blog is edited by Colorado’s David Boonin, and its purpose is to provide “a forum for discussing and reporting on topics in applied normative philosophy, broadly understood to include applied ethics as well as practical subjects in social,..
NCAA’s Report on Academic Fraud at UNC
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) released its report on academic fraud involving student athletes at the University of North Carolina (previously), according to reports at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and the New York Times. According to the Chronicle, the report focuses “most prominently” on former philosophy professor and..
New Blog on the Ethics of War
The Ethical War Blog is a new group blog hosted by the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. The Centre’s Jonathan Parry writes:
The Ethical War Blog will publish short and timely opinion articles on war-related topics in the news, written by specialists in the field, in an accessible and digestible format. The blog launches with five articles, with n..
Diversity in Moral and Political Philosophy Journals
Alex Guerrero (U. Penn) looked at four leading journals in moral and political philosophy to see how they have been doing in terms of racial and ethnic diversity over the past decade. Some findings:
- 0.9% of authors 1.6% of editors are racialized as black
- 1.2% of authors and 0% of editors are Latina/Latino
- 4.9% of authors and 4.3% of editors are Asian
- 18.2%..
Are Philosophers Hypocrites?
“On no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups,” the researchers reported.
An article in The Atlantic— “The Hypocrisy of Professional Ethicists“— sums up research by Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR), Joshua Greene (Harvard), Sara Bleich (Johns Hopkins), Eric Schulz (Max Planck Inst.), Michael Koenigs (Wisconsin), and other..
Is this video a test of your rationality or your humanity or what?
Boston Dynamics builds robots. Here’s a video of “Spot,” their robotic dog. Watch until at least the 10-second mark.
Is it wrong to kick the dog? What can we learn from our reactions to this video?
An article here reports on the reactions of others.
New Center for Ethics and Education
Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) and Anthony Laden (University of Illinois, Chicago) are launching the Center for Ethics and Education, the chief aim of which is to bring philosophical thinking to bear on educational policies and practices. The Center will be funded by a $3.5 million grant from the Spencer Foundation. In an article at the University of Wisconsin website,..
$3.6m for Georgetown Ethics Chair and Ethics Lab
Georgetown University received a $3.6 million gift from alumna Kathleen “Kathy” McNamara Hugin and her husband, Robert. The gift will fund a faculty chair in ethics and the further development of Georgetown’s Ethics Lab, a project of the university’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics. Further information about the gift and the lab are here.
Philosophy Grad Student Target of Political Smear Campaign (several updates)
A philosophy graduate student and instructor at Marquette University is the target of a political attack initiated by one of her students, facilitated by a Marquette political science professor, and promulgated by certain advocacy organizations.
Cheryl Abbate, a Marquette PhD student working on a dissertation in ethics, has provided me with information about the ..
Teaching on Same-Sex Marriage
Most colleges offer lower-level philosophy courses on contemporary moral problems, one of the aims of which is to teach students how to think philosophically about assorted social and political issues. There are more of these kinds of issues than could be covered adequately in a semester, so the instructor must select which to include, and there may be some difficul..
Very Bad Wizards
Very Bad Wizards is a series of fun and fascinating podcast conversations on morality and related issues between philosopher Tamler Sommers (Houston) and psychologist David Pizarro (Cornell) and occasional guests. They have recently put out their 46th episode, which features a discussion with Josh Knobe (Yale), and starts off with a discussion of how a person’s nudi..
Would We Be Better Off Without Blame?
The reality is that we are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal. A morally serious inquiry into the requisite meaning of free will needs to face some basic facts….
We have gotten nothing f..
Radical Suffering Reduction & Virtual Killings
The Foundational Research Institute says that it “brings together researchers from diverse fields to examine how humanity can best reduce suffering in the future. We draw on insights from artificial intelligence, technology, anthropic reasoning, international relations, sociology, public policy, ethics, and many other disciplines.” Its website seems to be mainly the..
The Ethics of Driverless Cars
Would you buy a car that would drive you off a cliff, to your death, in order to save the lives of several pedestrians your car would otherwise run over? The world of driverless cars will likely soon be upon us, and with them a number of questions like that and scenarios that make something like this seem simple. Aeon Magazine has a new article from Tom Chatfield on..
What Should a Statement of Professional Ethics for Philosophers Say?
As I noted last week, a petition was started, calling for the APA to create a “Code of Conduct and Statement of Professional Ethics for the Academic Discipline of Philosophy.” Meanwhile, Amy Ferrer, executive director of the APA, responded, saying that the matter will be considered at an upcoming meeting of the APA board of officers, and that it is currently APA pol..
Petition for Philosophers’ Code of Conduct
Philosophers Eleanore Stump and Helen de Cruz have started a petition asking the American Philosophical Association to produce a code of conduct and a statement of professional ethics for professional philosophers.