Professor Seumas Miller sets out how the use of lethal and coercive forces may erode moral character and cause moral injury. According to leading psychiatrist Jonathan Shay whose patients are US war veterans, “Moral injury is an essential part of any combat trauma that leads to lifelong psychological injury. Veterans can usually recover from horror, fear and grief so long as ”what’s right” has also not been violated”. The focus of this paper is on moral injury in both military combatants and...

Is 'gig work' exploitative and injust? In this New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Daniel Halliday examines the common concerns from an ethical perspective. Recent advances in communication economy have created new ways for consumers to access service labour. Those who own the platforms associated with these services typically do not employ their workers, but treat them as freelance or 'gig' workers. This has led to a popular complaint that gig work is exploitative or otherwise unjust, and...

In this New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Simukai Chigudu examines the humanitarian politics of responding to the most catastrophic cholera outbreak in African history. The paper demonstrates how humanitarian relief operations are riven by competing claims to leadership, authority and legitimacy but often converge on the ineluctable logic of saving lives - 'the salvation agenda'. Nevertheless, the paper contends that the exigency of saving lives in this case did not, and could not, address...

How should members of a liberal democratic political community, open to value pluralism, decide bioethical issues that generate deep disagreement? Reasoned debate will not often generate an answer equally accepted to all participants and affected persons. One political means of reaching binding because authoritative decisions are majoritarian democratic institutions. Its core feature is proceduralism, the notion both that no rule is acceptable apart from a formal method, and that the...

Professor Steven Hoffman discusses legal mechanisms available for coordinating international responses to transnational problems, their prospects, and their challenges. Global legal epidemiology is the scientific study of international law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and promotion of outcomes around the world. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of international legal mechanisms on the basis of their quantifiable effects and drawing implications for the development of future...

Fake news spread online is a clear danger to democratic politics. One aspect of that danger is obvious: it spreads misinformation. But other aspects, less often discussed, is that it also spreads confusion and undermines trust. In this talk, I will argue that it is this last aspect that captures the most pernicious effect of fake news and related propaganda. In particular, I’ll argue that its effectiveness is due in part to a curious blindness on the part of many users of social media: a kind...

In this OUC-WEH Joint Seminar, Irina Mikhalevich argues that the moral status of invertebrate animals is often overlooked, and sets out why animal ethics should be more inclusive and comprehensive. Invertebrate animals account for approximately 95% of all extant species and an astounding 99.9% of all animals on Earth, ranging from the sessile and brainless sea sponge to social-learners such as bumblebees and flexible problem-solvers like the common octopus. Despite this diversity, these...

In this OUC-WEH Joint Seminar, Russell Powell explores the concept of 'disease' Despite several decades of debate, the concept of disease remains hotly contested. The debate is typically cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view that combines elements of each staked out in between. In light of a number of widely discussed problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the concept of disease is beyond repair and thus recommend eliminating it in a wide range...

In this special lecture, Professor Matt Adler argues that social welfare function is a better methodology than cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analysis has become the dominant methodology for assessing governmental policy. It has given rise to a vast academic literature, and is now officially required as part of the policymaking process in a number of governments. But cost-benefit analysis is flawed. It lacks firm normative foundations and is biased toward the rich. In this talk, I...

An inter-disciplinary collaboration on music, mortality and ethics. In 1824, ill and conscious of his own mortality, Franz Schubert incorporated a theme from one his earlier lieder “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (Death and the Maiden) into a new string quartet. Schubert’s emotive musical treatment of Claudius’ poem evokes the intense conflict between struggle and acceptance in the face of death. Medical professionals, especially those who work in palliative care, often have considerable experience...

Digitisation has entered the mobility arena. The car has evolved from a mechanical device into a “data producing embedded software platform”, and the internet is quickly linking the supply and demand to effectively fulfil our transport needs. Just like every industry that is confronted with digitisation, changes in mobility come faster than most traditional players can prepare for. Yet, with all unpredictability that comes along with disruption there are some fixed rules that one can prepare...

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Tom Buller reflects on the causal relationship between movement goals and bodily awareness and challenges the idea that BMI-enabled movement and intentional bodily movement are equal actions. Individuals who have suffered a significant loss of motor function as a result, for example, of spinal cord injury are now able to regain a degree of sensorimotor control through the use of a brain-machine interface (BMI). A BMI decodes intact neural signals to...

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Anne Schwenkebecher discusses morally wrongful collective inaction and the problem of group-based ignorance. Some of the many things that we could do together with others but fail to do are morally wrongful inactions. While the list of our – individual and collective – non-actions is infinite, not everything that I (or we) fail to do is some form of inaction that is plausibly attributable to me (or us). ‘Collective inaction’ is the unintended failure...

OUC-Ethox Seminar. Steve Clarke discusses Ronald Dworkin's account of sacred values in his work 'Life's Dominion' and furthers the argument that the assertion 'life is sacred' is tenable by both liberals and conservatives. In his Life’s Dominion (1993) Ronald Dworkin developed an original approach to understanding public debates between liberals and conservatives about the morality of abortion and euthanasia. Conservative opponents of abortion and euthanasia usually invoke the ‘sanctity of...

A St Cross Special Ethics Seminar. Professor John-Stewart Gordon focusses on the question of whether moral experts must follow their own expert advice in order to remain experts. The lively topic of whether moral expertise and moral experts exist has been vividly discussed in recent contributions in ethics and, particularly, in bioethics. I hold the view that moral expertise exists and that some moral philosophers can be considered as moral experts in the full sense, who have moral...

In this double seminar, Erasmus visitors Laurentiu Staicu and Emanuel-Mihail Socaciua discuss the rise of biomedical technology and some of the legal issues of moral bioenhancement 'The rise of postmedicine: some ethical concerns regarding biomedical technology'. Traditional medicine is bound by a moral duty to treat patients with compassion and to combine all medical interventions and treatments with caring as a fundamental attitude toward the patient. That's because the patient is seen as a...

In this talk, Eric Schwitzgebel considers whether it's acceptable to aim for peer-relative mediocrity. Most of us aim to be morally mediocre. That is, we aim to be about as morally good as our peers, not especially better, not especially worse. This mediocrity has two aspects. It is peer-relative rather than absolute, and it is middling rather than extreme. We look around us, notice how others are acting, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it's not a terribly...

In this episode, Brian Earp discusses the 'Reproducibility Project' and questions whether psychology is in crisis or not. In a much-discussed New York Times article, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett claimed, “Psychology is not in crisis.” She was responding to the results of a large-scale initiative called the Reproducibility Project, published in Science magazine, which appeared to show that the results from over 60% of a sample of 100 psychology studies did not hold up when independent...

In this talk, Professor John Paris asks "What is the historical meaning of "ordinary means" to sustain human life? And what has been the understanding for over 500 years of Catholic moral analysis of the obligation to sustain life?" Is it, as Pope John Paul II insisted in an allocution to a meeting of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life in March, 2000 that food and water must always be provided for patients in a persistent vegetative condition (PVS). Artificial nutrition and fluids,...

Professor Richman's talk combines differing theories of models of autism and moral responsibility, and explores the practical implications arising from these ideas. Although criteria for identifying autism have been established based on behavioral factors, researchers are still exploring and developing models to describe the cognitive and affective differences that lead to the known behaviors. Some of these models offer competing ways of understanding autism; some simply describe...

In this public lecture, Dr William Casebeer discusses neuroscience, human agency and free will. The findings of neuroscience are often used to undermine traditional assumptions about the nature of human agency. In this talk, I sketch out a compatibilist position which leverages a neo-Aristotelian concept of “critical control distinctions”—rather than talking about whether agents freely will actions, a more consilient vocabulary asks whether agents were in control or out of control when the...

Paper presented by Neil Levy at the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.

Paper presented by José Félix Lozano Aguilar at the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.

Paper presented by Katrien Devolder at the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.

Paper presented by Emilian Mihailov at the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.