Tag Archives: Ethics

The New York Times Magazine – January 7, 2024

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 5, 2024): The new issue features “Letting Naomi Die” – Treatment wasn’t helping her anorexia, so doctors allowed her to stop, no matter the consequences. But is a ‘palliative’ approach to mental illness really ethical?

Should Patients Be Allowed to Die From Anorexia?

A portrait of Naomi.

Treatment wasn’t helping her anorexia, so doctors allowed her to stop — no matter the consequences. But is a “palliative” approach to mental illness really ethical?

By Katie Engelhart

The doctors told Naomi that she could not leave the hospital. She was lying in a narrow bed at Denver Health Medical Center. Someone said something about a judge and a court order. Someone used the phrase “gravely disabled.” Naomi did not think she was gravely disabled. Still, she decided not to fight it. She could deny that she was mentally incompetent — but this would probably just be taken as proof of her mental incompetence. Of her lack of insight. She would, instead, “succumb to it.”

What If People Don’t Need to Care About Climate Change to Fix It?

A photo illustration of Hannah Ritchie.

By David Marchese 

“It seems like we’ve been battling climate change for decades and made no progress,” Dr. Hannah Ritchie says. “I want to push back on that.” Ritchie, a senior researcher in the Program on Global Development at the University of Oxford and deputy editor at the online publication Our World in Data, is the author of the upcoming book, “Not the End of the World.” In it, she argues that the flood of doom-laden stats and stories about climate change is obscuring our ability to imagine solutions to the crisis and envision a sustainable, livable future.

Preview: Philosophy Now Magazine January 2024

Image

Philosophy Now Magazine (December 2023/January 2024) – The new issue features Freewill versus Determinism – Are we free to choose? Or is Everything Fixed In Advance?; Materialism, Freedom and Ethics; Žižek on Cancel Culture; Spinoza, Hume and other Determinists, and more…

Spinoza & Other Determinists

Myint Zan compares different ways of denying free will.

What Is Free Will?

Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Criticising Strawson’s Compatibilism

Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will.

Materialism, Freedom & Ethics

Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

The Will Is Not Free: You Have To Earn It

Basil Gala on what it takes to free ourselves from our formative factors.

Preview: Philosophy Now Magazine Oct/Nov 2023

Image

Philosophy Now Magazine (October/November 2023) – The new issue features Hannah Arendt – the Complexities of Loving and the Banality of Evil; What Happened to Philosophy?; The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry Into Human Freedom and more…

Hannah Arendt & the Complexities of Loving

Jack Pemment considers the strange attraction between two deep minds.

Hannah Arendt & the Banality of Evil

Georgia Arkell reconsiders Arendt’s explosive report on the trial of Eichmann.

THE LIFE PHILOSOPHICAL

What is the Philosophical Experience?

Eldar Sarajlic philosophically considers what it is to do philosophy.

Is Progress Possible In Philosophy?

Mathis Bitton suggests three ways that philosophy progresses.

Why Write Philosophy?

George Sher writes some philosophy to tell us.

What Happened to Philosophy?

Alexander Jeuk says overspecialization, academic debate focusing, and simplistic argument structures, are prominent missteps in modern philosophy.

Preview: MIT Technology Review – September 2023

Image

MIT Technology Review – September/October 2023: ‘The Ethics issue’ features Experimental Drugs – Who should get them?; Eric Schmidt on transforming science; When AI goes to war, and more…

Who gets to decide who receives experimental medical treatments?

a bottle of pills with a "fast forward" icon on the label

For many patients, pushing for access to unproven treatments is their best chance of survival. And that’s worth the risk.

Views: The New York Times Magazine – August 6, 2023

Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (August 6, 2023) –

The Art of Telling Forbidden Stories in China

Hao Qun and an unnamed writer. Hao, who once enjoyed a successful writing career in China, fled to Australia after facing persecution.

Many writers are looking for ways to capture the everyday realities that the government keeps hidden — sometimes at their own peril.

By Han Zhang

On an August evening in 2021, the best-selling Chinese novelist Hao Qun, who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, was procrastinating in his one-bedroom apartment. He needed to be at Beijing Capital International Airport around 6 the next morning to catch a flight to London, but he found it hard to pack. Though Hao had a valid tourist visa to Britain, the Chinese government had kept tabs on him for years, and it was possible that he would be prevented from leaving; other public intellectuals had tried to travel abroad only to discover that they were under exit bans. Hao might have been packing for a life of exile or a futile trip to the airport.

How a Sexual Assault in a School Bathroom Became a Political Weapon

A photo illustration of a girls’ bathroom door slightly ajar.

It was an explosive claim — that a Virginia school district covered up a crime in order to protect transgender rights. But was it true?


By Charles Homans

For months a sort of aerosolized fury had hung over the Loudoun County school district. There were fights over Covid closures and mask mandates, over racial-equity programs, over library books. Now, in the weeks before the school board’s meeting on June 22, 2021, attention had shifted to a new proposal: Policy 8040, which would let transgender students choose pronouns, play sports and use bathrooms in accordance with their declared gender identity. In May, an elementary-school gym teacher announced that as a “servant of God,” he felt he could not follow the policy. The district swiftly suspended him — and just as swiftly, the antennae of conservative media outlets and politicians swiveled toward Loudoun County.

My Friend Is Trapped in a Nursing Home. What Can I Do?

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on helping people who are institutionalized against their will.

By Kwame Anthon

News: China Fighter Jets Enter Taiwan Airspace, EU Creates New ‘Ethics Body’

The Globalist Podcast, Friday, June 9, 2023: China enters Taiwanese airspace and Japanese waters. Is this business as usual or a serious escalation?

Plus: the EU’s “Hogwarts for ambassadors”, the latest fashion news and the White Cube gallery heads to Seoul.

Philosophy Now Magazine June / July 2023 Preview

Image

Philosophy Now Magazine (June/July 2023) – The ‘Meta Ethics Issue’ featuring Back to the Sophists: Nana Ariel corrects the record and the modern application of Sophistry and Will the Real John Locke Please Step Forward? Hilarius Bogbinder shows how Locke’s intellectual identity changed over time.

The Cognitive Gap

Justin Bartlett explores a basic distinction between understandings of ethics.

Who’s To Say?

Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.

Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.

Ethical Truth in Light of Quantum Mechanics

Myles King contends that physics helps us understand ethics.

Can You Be Both A Moral Rationalist & A Moral Sentimentalist?

Andrew Kemle says that evolutionary forces give us the answer.

Future Science: ‘Artificial Intelligence Everywhere’

December 4, 2020

Imagine a robot trained to think, respond, and behave using you as a model. Now imagine it assuming one of your roles in life, at home or perhaps at work. Would you trust it to do the right thing in a morally fraught situation?

That’s a question worth pondering as artificial intelligence increasingly becomes part of our everyday lives, from helping us navigate city streets to selecting a movie or song we might enjoy — services that have gotten more use in this era of social distancing. It’s playing an even larger cultural role with its use in systems for elections, policing, and health care.

Read more

Technology Podcast: Concerns Over Facial Recognition Technology

Scientists have grave concerns over ethical and societal impacts of facial-recognition technology. In this surveillance special, we dig into the details.

In this episode:

03:24 Standing up against ‘smart cities’

Cities across the globe are installing thousands of surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology. Although marketed as a way to reduce crime, researchers worry that these systems are ripe for exploitation and are calling for strict regulations on their deployment.

Feature: Resisting the rise of facial recognition

17:44 The ethics of researching facial recognition technology

Despite concerns surrounding consent and use, researchers are still working on facial recognition technology. Can this sort of work be justified? We hear some of the debates going on in academia about this field of research.

Feature: The ethical questions that haunt facial-recognition research

25:02 What do researchers actually think?

Nature surveyed 480 researchers who have published papers on facial recognition, AI and computer science. The results revealed that many researchers think there’s a problem.

Science Podcasts: Covid-19 Vaccine Ethical Issues, Upcycling Plastic Bags

First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jon Cohen about some tricky ethical questions that may arise after the first coronavirus vaccine is authorized for use in the United States. Will people continue to participate in clinical trials of other vaccines? Will it still be OK to give participants placebo vaccines? 

Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Bert Weckhuysen, a professor at Utrecht University, about a process for taking low-value plastic like polyethylene (often used for packaging and grocery bags) and “upcycling” it into biodegradable materials that can be used for new purposes.