Podcasts about uehiro

In this podcast PhD students Peter Tuck and Vladimir Lukić speak with Professor Roger Crisp on his paper Towards a Global Hedonism. Professor Crisp is one of the two keynotes (with Doctor Debbie Roberts) at the upcoming PhD conference: What Really Matters? Reflections on Human Values taking place August 24-26 at the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. (for more information on the conference, email: cfeconference2022@outlook.com)Professor Crisp is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University and Uehiro fellow and tutor in philosophy at St. Anne's College, Oxford. His work falls principally within the field of ethics. Roger has written several books including but not limited to:Reasons and the good (2006), The cosmos of duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of ethics (2018), &Sacrifice regained: morality and self-interest in British moral philosophy from Hobbes to Bentham (2019).Here is the abstract forTowards a Global HedonismThis chapter argues that, of all alleged values of any kind, only pleasure is of ultimate axiological significance. It begins with the suggestion that absolute value—the value some item has through possessing a lower-order evaluative property that makes the world in which it is instantiated good—is foundational. Pleasantness is characterised as a basic category of phenomenal consciousness, and the charge of reductionism against hedonism based on this conception is refuted. Defences of hedonism against various forms of objection that it is counter-intuitive are modelled on an analogy with defences of consequentialism, and the general position is then applied to moral, aesthetic, and epistemic value. It is claimed that those attracted by the parsimony and elegance of welfarism (the view that the fundamental value is well-being) might find these qualities within hedonism in particular.podcast edited by Patrick Keenan

In the era of populism and political polarisation, listening to the other side has become harder than ever. Even agreeing to a common starting point, a set of facts about the world, has come to seem impossible. To many of us it seems that our political and cultural opponents just live in a different world, a different reality from us. Facts have become politicised, and their acceptance or denial a sign of one’s political identity. On top of that, much of political discourse takes place in an environment not conductive to civil debate and exchange of ideas: social media. Trolling, antagonising memes and conflict entrepreneurs short-circuit any chance of honest and truthful communication. So, is there a way to talk to the other side? To really engage with the viewpoint of our opponents? To understand their lived experience? And what can philosophy teach us about productive and unproductive ways to argue with each other?  There aren’t many philosophers who get profiled in The New Yorker, but Elizabeth Anderson is one of those rare exceptions. She is the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor and the John Rawls Collegiate Professor, at the University of Michigan, and that is only two of her titles. In 2019 she delivered the Uehiro lectures, at the University of Oxford, under the title: Can We Talk? Communicating Moral Concern in an Era of Polarized Politics I couldn’t think of a better philosopher to both diagnose the causes of our failure to communicate across the political divide, and provide us with insights into how we can relearn to talk with the other side. This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. The winter issue of The Philosopher is out, tackling one of philosophy’s perennial puzzles: the concept of Nothing. If you’d like to order a copy of the latest issue, and subscribe to the journal, go to www.thephilosopher1923.org/subscribe. Music by Pataphysical: https://soundcloud.com/pataphysicaltransmissionArtwork by Nick Halliday: https://www.hallidaybooks.com/design

Second lecture in the 2012 Uehiro Lecture series 'Sex in A Shifting Landscape'. After a hundred and fifty years of feminism, we are still struggling to achieve a satisfactory legal and social framework for managing the relations of the sexes. This is partly, of course, because so many men have been unwilling to give up their traditional privileges, and the original feminist project is still far from finished. But more fundamentally than that, we have no clear conception of what a fair arrangement would be. You can regard some kinds of inequality as definitely unjust while being in considerable doubt about others. And even if we ever thought we had reached an ideal solution, the endlessly shifting landscape of technological change would soon throw things into turmoil. Reproductive technology alone has already taken us far out of our moral depth. Even if there could be no such thing as a definitive solution, however, a good deal can be said about particular aims and attitudes. There is still a great deal of confusion in public debate, in which many arguments depend on fallacies of equivocation or dubious, unrecognized presuppositions. By drawing on some elements of the original nineteenth-century debate, I hope to show how various present-day ideas and arguments can be rescued from some of this confusion, and cast light on such contested areas as sex equality, the natures of women and men, ideology, political correctness and the appropriate aims of feminism.

Professor Janet Radcliffe-Richards gives (OUC Distinguished Research Fellow) gives the first of three lectures on feminism for the Uehiro Practical Ethics lecture series. After a hundred and fifty years of feminism, we are still struggling to achieve a satisfactory legal and social framework for managing the relations of the sexes. This is partly, of course, because so many men have been unwilling to give up their traditional privileges, and the original feminist project is still far from finished. But more fundamentally than that, we have no clear conception of what a fair arrangement would be. You can regard some kinds of inequality as definitely unjust while being in considerable doubt about others. And even if we ever thought we had reached an ideal solution, the endlessly shifting landscape of technological change would soon throw things into turmoil. Reproductive technology alone has already taken us far out of our moral depth. Even if there could be no such thing as a definitive solution, however, a good deal can be said about particular aims and attitudes. There is still a great deal of confusion in public debate, in which many arguments depend on fallacies of equivocation or dubious, unrecognized presuppositions. By drawing on some elements of the original nineteenth-century debate, I hope to show how various present-day ideas and arguments can be rescued from some of this confusion, and cast light on such contested areas as sex equality, the natures of women and men, ideology, political correctness and the appropriate aims of feminism.

Third and final lecture from the 2012 Oxford Uehiro lectures in Practical Philosophy given be Professor Janet Radcliffe-Richards.

In the first of three podcasts, Professor Tim Scanlon (Harvard University) delivers the first 2013 Annual Uehiro Lecture in the lecture series "When Does Equality Matter?"

In the second of three podcasts, Professor Tim Scanlon (Harvard University) delivers the second 2013 Annual Uehiro Lecture in the lecture series "When Does Equality Matter?"

Third and final lecture from Professor Tim Scanlon in which he talks about the philosophical justifications for equalitiy of opportunity. Includes a roundtable discussion with Professors John Broome, Janet Radcliffe Richards and David Miller

Could genetic engineering one day allow parents to have designer babies? Tatiana Vdb/flickr, CC BYWhat if humans are genetically unfit to overcome challenges like climate change and the growing inequality that looks set to define our future? Julian Savulescu, visiting professor at Monash University and Uehiro professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, argues that modifying the biological traits of humans should be part of the solution to secure a safe and desirable future. The University of Melbourne’s William Isdale spoke to Julian Savulescu about what aspects of humanity could be altered by genetic modifications and why it might one day actually be considered unethical to withhold genetic enhancements that could have an overwhelmingly positive effect on a child’s life. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio VPro Extra - The Perfect Human Being: Julian Savulescu on human enhancement Channel Four Television Corporation - Science and the Swastika VPro Extra - The Perfect Human Being: Michael Sandel on the values of being a human being Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Kai Engel - Pacific Garbage Patch Free Music Archive: Circus Marcus - La tapa del domingo William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Human Rights, Global Ethics and the Ordinary Virtues Professor Michael Ignatieff of the Central European University, delivers the 2016 Uehiro/Carnegie/Oxford lecture, titled: Human Rights, Global Ethics and the Ordinary Virtues

Professor Roger Crisp (Philosophy, Oxford) Professor Andrew MacLeod (Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London) Abstract This event focuses on the empirical psychological and philosophical questions surrounding well-being and the good life. It will be chaired by Dr. Gillian Sandstrom (Psychology, University of Cambridge) and will include presentations by Prof. Crisp (5pm) and Prof. MacLeod (6pm), each followed by discussion between speakers and Q&A. Professor Roger Crisp is a Uehiro fellow and professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His work is dedicated to fundamental questions about the nature of well-being and the role of virtue in a well-lived life. He is the author of Mill on Utilitarianism (1997) and Reasons and the Good (2006) and editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics (2013), among many others. Professor Andrew MacLeod is a professor of Clinical Psychology and director of the clinical doctorate program of the Royal Holloway University of London. He is a leading researcher in the field of mental health and well-being, and adopts a positive psychological approach to the design of clinical and nonclinical interventions.

If networking is considered to be either cultivating non-merit-based favouritism or demonstrating one’s merit in advance of formal selection processes, then I argue that it is an attempt to gain illegitimate advantage over competitors and is thus immoral. Networking is taken to be a perfectly innocuous part of business and career-advancement. I argue that, where the aim is to increase one’s prospects of prevailing in a formal competitive process for a job or university placement, networking is an attempt to gain illegitimate advantage. This is true no matter which of the two standard characterisations we accept. If networking is about building personal relationships, as some claim, then it involves cultivating non-merit-based favouritism. To that extent it shares one of the wrong-making features of bribery. On the other hand if networking is about demonstrating one’s merit in advance of formal selection processes, it shares one of the wrong-making features of earwigging in legal advocacy. One way or the other, the networker denies (or tries to deny) rival candidates something to which they are presumptively entitled. Either he denies their right not to be disadvantaged for reasons other than lack of relative merit, or he denies their right not to be disadvantaged by private ex parte communications that take place outside of formal selection processes.

Antidepressants are commonplace yet there is much debate about their clinical efficacy. Are they merely placebos or do they have a clinical effect on the way our brains work? In this presentation, Professor Cowen investigates the evidence. Antidepressant drugs are commonly prescribed for clinical depression but have a rather dubious public reception. Professor Ian Reid has commented that, 'antidepressants are regularly caricatured in the media as an addictive emotional anaesthetic, peddled by thoughtless general practitioners as a matter of convenience, and taken by credulous dupes who seek "a pill for every ill".' (BMJ 2013; 346: f190). There is also a perception that antidepressants, in fact, work only through placebo mechanisms and have no specific activity to relieve depression. In this presentation I will look at the evidence for the effectiveness of antidepressants and the kind of clinical situation where their use seems justified. I will also describe a new 'cognitive' theory of antidepressant action which suggests that antidepressants work through a specific effect on how the brain evaluates emotional information.

We explore some possible interactions between enhancement technology and punishment, reflect on ethical issues that arise as a result, and consider what our justice system must do in order to ensure that it keeps pace with developments in technology. Criminal justice systems currently employ a limited range of penal sanctions to punish offenders. The type and nature of the sanctions employed are, in large part, determined by the penal aims a particular system is designed to pursue. However, they are also shaped by beliefs about what people are typically like, and by the resources available to develop and deploy punishments. Technology - particularly human enhancement technology - could change both of these latter influences. It could facilitate more effective punishments, support existing punishments, undermine certain punishments, make certain punishments more severe than was originally intended, and alter the resources available for punishments and the constraints on types of punishment.

The talk discusses the balance between cyber security measures and individual rights - any fair and reasonable society should implement the former successfully while respecting and furthering the latter. Defeating online insecurity is like defeating a Hydra with many heads: from e-commerce and online banking scams to malware, from hacking to cyberwar, it requires Herculean efforts to slay the Hydra. However, fighting and preventing attacks on security may easily cause serious ethical problems, since security measures can also undermine individual liberties such as privacy, freedom of speech and expression. This is because such measures often rest on the collection, storage, access, or elaboration of individuals' personal information. Clearly, any democratic government, fair society and responsible organisation need to identify a balance between online security and individual rights, in order to implement the former successfully while respecting and furthering the latter. The talk discusses a criterion for such a balance to be ethically sound. It is claimed that cyber security measures and individual rights are not necessarily antithetical and that they should be both considered fundamental aspects of individual's well-being in the information age.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics. Outside traditional philosophical discussion, the trolley problem has been a significant feature in the fields of cognitive science and neuroethics. You have been set the following trolley problem by a villain. There is a central track, called CONTINUE. If you do nothing, the trolley will continue down this track, and kill whomever is at the end of it, then stop. Part way along the line, there is a junction, with a lever. If you pull that lever, then the trolley will go down one of two tracks - STOP and LOOP. If it goes down STOP, then it stops, killing whoever is at the end of the line (if anyone). If it goes down LOOP, it returns to the start of the track, killing whoever is on LOOP, and leading to the trolley returning to the junction. The lever determining which way the trolley will go is probabilistic, and the villain controls the probabilities. The villain also controls how many people are tied to the tracks, and which tracks they are tied to. Importantly, if the trolley goes down LOOP, killing whoever is on there, then the villain will replace those victims with fresh ones. This paper, animated by a concern that deontological theorists have trouble accommodating ignorance and uncertainty into our theories, develops a broadly deontological approach to iterated, probabilistic decision problems like this one.

The speaker proposes a four-step account of action, within which only two of the four steps benefit from the subject's attention, revealing a potential disconnect between the subject of experience and the morally responsible agent. There is a tendency to think of action as a relatively high-level concept, minimally requiring the input of the experiencing subject through the subject's attention. To account for the known effects of practice and skill, I propose instead a four-step account of action, within which only two of the four steps benefit from the subject's attention. This account reveals a potential disconnect between the subject of experience and the morally responsible agent. This disconnect allows for praise and blame (i.e. moral responsibility) in cases where the subject is unaware of his or her action, which I will discuss through a couple of examples.

Nutt argues that there are serious ethical implications for a simplistic prohibitionist approach to drugs and suggests alternative strategies that might be used. The use of the law to control drug use is long established though still unproven in efficacy. Although seemingly obvious that legal interdictions should work there is little evidence to support this assertion. So for example cannabis though illegal is at some time used by nearly half of the population. Similarly drugs like ecstasy and amfetamine are widely used by up to a million young people each weekend. This use is underpinned by a demand for the pleasurable experiences that the drugs produce, and also by a paradoxical desire by some people to break the law. As well as being ineffective for many users prohibition of drugs often leads to perverse magnification of harms and drug use. When the "English" approach to heroin use (prescription to addicts) was abolished in the 1970s on moral grounds heroin use increased tenfold in a few years as addicts were forced to become dealers so getting more people addicted to fuel their income. The banning of alcohol in the 1920s in the USA lead to huge criminal expansion of alcohol sales the perpetrators of which turned to other drugs once prohibition was repealed: a legacy that we still experience today. Moreover the un-scientific and arbitrary distinct between legal drugs particularly alcohol and tobacco and "illegal" drugs also has perverse negative consequences. As well as bringing the scientific foundation of the drug laws into disrepute it also precludes the use of possibly life-changing drugs for those who might benefit from them as treatments: examples of these include cannabis for Multiple sclerosis, MDMA [ecstasy] for PTSD and psilocybin for cluster headaches.

Associate Professor Rob Sparrow (Monash) and PhD student Chris Gyngell (ANU) present talks on the topic of human enhancement. Rob Sparrow on 'Enhancement and Obsolescence: Avoiding An "Enhanced Rat Race"': A claim about continuing technological progress plays an essential, if unacknowledged, role in the philosophical literature on "human enhancement". Advocates for enhancement typically point to the rapid progress being made in the development of biotechnologies, information technology, and nanotechnology as evidence that we will soon be able to achieve significant improvements on normal human capacities through applications of these technologies. In this paper, I will argue that - should it eventuate - continuous improvement in enhancement technologies may prove more bane than benefit. A rapid increase in the power of available enhancements would mean that each cohort of enhanced individuals will find itself in danger of being outcompeted by the next in competition for important social goods - a situation I characterise as an 'enhanced rat race'. Rather than risk the chance of being rendered technologically and socially obsolete by the time one is in one's early 20s, it may be rational to prefer that a wide range of enhancements that would generate positional disadvantages that outweigh their absolute advantages be prohibited altogether. The danger of an enhanced rat race therefore constitutes a novel argument in favour of abandoning the pursuit of certain sorts of enhancements. Chris Gyngell on 'Stocking the Genetic Supermarket: Genetic Enhancements and Collective Action Problems': In the near future parents may be able to directly alter the genetic make-up of their children using genetic engineering technologies (GETs). A popular model that has been proposed for regulating access to GETs is the 'genetic supermarket'. In the genetic supermarket parents are free to make decisions about which genes to select for their children with little state interference. One possible consequence of the genetic supermarket is that 'collective action problems' will arise. The combined result of individuals using the market to pursue self-interested gains may have a negative effect on society as a whole, and on future generations. In this paper I look at whether GETs targeting height, innate immunity, and certain cognitive traits would lead to collective action problems if available in the genetic supermarket. I argue that that the widespread availability of GETs targeting height are unlikely to lead to genuine collective action problems, but that those targeting innate immunity and aspects of our cognition, could. I then briefly discuss some implications of this claim for the regulation of GETs.

Legal punishment as the routine infliction of suffering poses a serious challenge of justification. The challenge becomes more urgent as a number of thinkers argue that the dominant, retributivist answer fails in the light of the findings of neuroscience. In this talk I sketch a general account of retributivist justification of punishment and the basic neuroscientific argument against it. I then explore ways of challenging the argument by modifying the retributivist account of responsibility and desert. I analyze several variations and argue that none are plausible. I conclude by suggesting one way in which the notion of criminal responsibility can be rescued, but at the theoretical cost of changing the grounds of justification.

Uncertainty and quality should be integrated into the quantitative sciences of complex systems; this talk offers some practical techniques that illustrate how this could be accomplished. The faith that truth lies in numbers goes back to the Pythagorean attempt to unify both practical and theoretical sciences. Its current manifestation is the idolisation of pre-Einsteinian physics in the quantification of social, economic, and behavioural sciences. The talk will explain how this "crisp number" mode of thinking has promoted the use of over-simplistic models and masking of uncertainties that can in turn lead to incomplete understanding of problems and bad decisions. The quality of a model in terms of its fitness for purpose can be ignored when convenience, especially computerised convenience, offers more easily calculated crisp numbers. Yet these inadequacies matter when computerised models generate pseudo-realities of their own through structures such as financial derivatives and processes such as algorithmic trading. Like Frankenstein's monster, we have already seen financial market pseudo-reality take on an uncontrolled, unstable and dangerous life of its own, all the more beguiling when it generated income for all parties in the merry-go-round. Despite its manifest failings, it is still going on.

Neil Levy explores some of the previous debates about whether psychopaths are fully responsible for their wrongdoing, especially work on the moral/conventional distinction. Psychopaths commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and seem cognitively unimpaired. They are often thought to be bad, not mad. I advance a deflationary explanation of the moral/conventional task, and argue that this explanation entails that psychopaths fail to act with the quality of will that would underwrite holding them to be fully responsible for their actions. Neil Levy specialises in free will and moral responsibility, and empirical approaches to ethics. He has published widely on many topics in philosophy, including bioethics, applied philosophy, continental philosophy and free will. He is the author of 4 books and over 50 articles in refereed journals. He has written a book on neuroethics for Cambridge University Press (2007).

Discussing a paper co-authored with David Birks, Alexandre Erler suggests sleeping less can provide a greater opportunity for well-being. While many people today are not sleeping long enough, there is still an important minority of the population who sleeps longer than average. Even a small reduction in the number of hours a person sleeps could have a significant positive impact on how well that person's life can go. The authors propose that there is a strong reason to investigate any ways of allowing people, particularly long sleepers, to function on less sleep without harming their health or quality of life.

The Possibility of Religious-Secular Ethical Engagement: Abortion.

The Possibility of Religious-Secular Ethical Engagement: Euthanasia. Julian Savulescu and Charles Camosy held two public debates in Michaelmas Term 2012 under the series title 'The Possibility of Religious-Secular Ethical Engagement'.

Julian Savulescu believes that if we can genetically alter the next generation, not only should we be free to do so, it may even turn out that in some circumstances we have an obligation to go ahead and do it. The term 'designer baby' is usually used in a pejorative sense - to conjure up some dystopian Brave New World. There are already ways to affect what kind of children you have - most obviously by choosing the partner to have them with. But there are others too: a pregnant mother can improve her baby's prospects by not smoking, for instance. With advances in genetics, however, there will soon be radical new methods to select or influence the characteristics of your progeny: not just physical characteristics, like height or eye colour, but intellectual capacities, and capacities linked to morality - such as how empathetic the child will be. The big question is how much freedom parents should have to make such selections.

Museum Ethics. The Museum world, like most professions, encounters various ethical problems. This short talk will consider the ethics of conservation and reconstruction, and of human remains, but will mostly discuss ethical problems associated with the acquisition of cultural property from other countries. Archaeologists are particularly concerned that the trade in antiquities leads to the looting of sites, and illegal export of valuable items. How far can British and American museums continue to maintain collections from the great ancient civilisations when they are unable to acquire important recent finds from other countries?

2nd Annual Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics, given by Professor Jorge Moll on 18th January 2011 on the subject of new evidence for Neural bases for moral sentiments.

Lecture and discussion from Professor Ingmar Persson (Gothenburg University), the discussant is Derek Parfit (Oxford).

Dr Adrian Walsh delivers a St Cross College Lecture entitled Good Intentions and Political Life: Against Virtue Parsimony. It is a commonplace that the good life and the good society are intimately interconnected. In order to maximize our chances of living well, we require a well-ordered polity; and this is one of the fundamental challenges of politics. Typically we regard a good society as, amongst other things, a society that has well designed institutions. One crucial aspect of the 'design challenge' concerns itself with the relationship between individual virtue and such political institutions. Is it is in general a good idea to prefer those institutions that demand from participating individuals a virtue-rich input? [...]

Dr Adrian Walsh delivers a St Cross College Lecture entitled Good Intentions and Political Life: Against Virtue Parsimony. It is a commonplace that the good life and the good society are intimately interconnected. In order to maximize our chances of living well, we require a well-ordered polity; and this is one of the fundamental challenges of politics. Typically we regard a good society as, amongst other things, a society that has well designed institutions. One crucial aspect of the 'design challenge' concerns itself with the relationship between individual virtue and such political institutions. Is it is in general a good idea to prefer those institutions that demand from participating individuals a virtue-rich input? [...]

A St Cross Special Ethics Seminar - If we are to avoid annihilation, we must either alter our political institutions, severely restrain our technology or change our nature (22 February 2010).

Julian Savulescu and the other Monash Distinguished Alumni discuss how Monash University has influenced their careers.