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Author Archives: Marianne
Disability Rights
The last weekend school of the academic year was entitled Disability and the Right to Life: Would the Disabled be better off Dead? This got us off to a rather bad start – lots of people objected to the words … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Reflections, Uncategorized
Tagged disability rights, discussion, ethics, philosophy
17 Comments
The Refugee Crisis
So what should we do about the thousands of human beings risking their lives to find a safe haven in Europe? Newspapers are full of harrowing pictures; crammed boats negotiating wild seas, elderly people trudging through the snow clutching their … Continue reading
The Inconsistency of Science
Can a good scientific theory be logically inconsistent with itself? If you think not you’d be in good company: Karl Popper, the famous philosopher of science, believed that consistency was the sine qua non of a good scientific theory. It … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Monthly Conundrums
17 Comments
Drones, Robots and the Ethics of Armed Conflict in the 21st Century
Wow! Did you know there are machines out there capable, once programmed, of searching out their target, and delivering their lethal ‘payloads’ without further human intervention? In other words the ‘decision’ to kill belongs to the machine itself. Alex Leveringhaus … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Monthly Conundrums
Tagged argument, armed conflict, ethics, fully automated weapons, human rights, killer-robots, lethal force, philosophy
11 Comments
Early Modern Texts
This month’s featured website is Early Modern Texts. This wonderful websites hosts a number of classical (and more modern) books and papers rewritten in such a way that they are easier for the modern reader to understand. The site was started … Continue reading
Do YOU eat genetically modified foods?
In August 1998 the popular science programme World in Action featured a scientist who had been feeding genetically modified potatoes to rats. A researcher at the prestigious Rowett Institute, Arpad Pusztai , a world expert on plant lectins, said that as a … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Monthly Conundrums
Tagged argument, bioethics, ethics, genetic modification, hunger, poverty
4 Comments
Automated Robotic Weapons
In the House of Commons there are two red lines separating the two sides of the House. The lines are two sword-lengths apart. They are there to underline the fact that, in the House, disputes must be solved by discussion … Continue reading
Posted in Reflections, Uncategorized
Tagged argument, automated robotic weapons, ethics, ethics of war, philosophy
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