Bitesize ethics summer programme

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Emma Dore-Horgan 

What do we mean by ‘practical ethics’? What sorts of real-world ethical problems are practical ethicists concerned with?
In this introductory session, we will discuss the nature of practical ethics and its major subfields. We will then raise and discuss some key issues and major debates in practical ethics that concern philosophers and the public alike today.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Alberto Giubilini

When are freedom restrictions in public health policy ethically justified? Answering the question is difficult, among other things, because there are different concepts of freedom at stake and different kinds of goods that can be pursued. The restrictions most of us experienced during the pandemic were meant to protect some people against an infectious disease. Different organizations and institutions are now endorsing more public health restrictions to pursue other types of goods, such as reducing pollution or smoking rates. At a first glance, these policies entail a trade-off between individual freedoms and (perceived) collective goods. According to some accounts of freedom, however, there is no trade-off: public health restrictions might indeed promote freedom. For instance, a community might democratically endorse public health restrictions, which is itself a form of freedom. Or temporary restrictions can be instrumental to protecting freedom in the long term. The problem is that these accounts don’t make use of the same notion of freedom. In this lecture I will try to unpack these different meanings, explore their relationships, and reflect on how a liberal state can implement public health policies without becoming illiberal.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Roger Crisp

Many, probably most, people are optimists about the future, believing that the extinction of sentient life on earth would be, overall, bad. This talk suggests that pessimism about the future is no less reasonable than optimism. The argument rests on the possibility of ‘discontinuities’ in value, in particular the possibility that there may be some things so bad – such as agonizing torture – such that no amount of good can compensate for them. The ‘spectrum’ problem often raised in connection with alleged discontinuities will be discussed, along with the claim that moments of agonizing torture, spread out over a long period, can be compensated by great goods. Some difficulties with articulating the badness of agonizing torture will be explained. The talk will end with a discussion of the ethical implications of pessimism, concluding that, as far as sentient life on earth is concerned, pessimists may agree with optimists that it should be protected, but for quite different reasons.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Thomas Mitchell

Advertisements, and online news stories have extensive reach and are often designed to have a persuasive effect. What, if anything, is wrong with such methods of influence?

Some of the key questions include the following:
­    - Where is the line between persuasion and manipulation? 
­    - Is there anything wrong with precisely targeting a particular audience with a persuasive message? 
­    - How should the right to freedom of speech be balanced against the duty to be truthful? 
­    - Given its vast reach, immense speed, and more impersonal feel, is the Internet morally different to more traditional kinds of communication?

This session will provide an introductory look at the ethical issues raised by persuasive digital technologies. In so doing, we will draw some connections to other important concepts, such as autonomy, honesty, rationality, and wellbeing.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Muriel Leuenberger

In the last decades, technological devices and applications promise unique insights into who we are. We are being measured, labelled, categorized, and diagnosed by technology. In this talk, I explore the value and ethics of self-knowledge through technology. Specifically, whether and which ethical and practical reasons we have to use such technologies to know ourselves better and which ethical issues arise from the opportunities of technologically sourced self-knowledge. Thereby, I focus on technologies that provide bioinformation, specifically health and activity trackers, Direct-to-Consumer neurotechnologies, and genetic testing, as well as algorithmic profiling as used in recommender systems, for targeted advertising, and to support decision making in the justice system or the job market.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Mattia Cecchinato

Phenomenal consciousness consists in experiences which are such that there is something it is like to have them (e.g. seeing colours, smelling coffee, or feeling warm). It is of moral significance in a number of ways. One’s well-being at least partly depends on the quality of one’s conscious experiences. Our obligations to non-human animals are often motivated by concern for their conscious life. And crucial moral questions in human medicine concerning euthanasia and brain death turn on whether consciousness is present. In this talk, I will introduce the central debates of what we may call ‘the ethics of consciousness’. I will discuss whether consciousness is valuable in itself, which kind of consciousness might ground moral status, and the extent to which the quality of our conscious experience contributes to the goodness of our life.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Mette Hoeg

This class explores the value of integrating literary studies in consciousness research to develop a strong ethical and existential dimension in the field. We will consider the potential of fictional narrative for developing concepts of selfhood and personal identity that cohere with the new neuroscientific explanations of human beings and reality. Using Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities as illustrative examples, we will look at how literary representations of human consciousness and existence that are free from conventional essentialist ideas of self, agency and anthropocentrism can help normalise the neuroscientific image of the human being by bringing out the inherent emancipatory potential of the materialist and reductionist explanations and giving the reader the possibility to relate to these experientially and emotionally.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Sasha Arridge

Climate policy around the world lags dangerously behind where it needs to be if we are to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. This grim fact prompts two questions:

1. What can we do to bring about the required policy changes? 

And

2. What ought we do to bring about these changes?

Many climate activist groups think that both questions can be answered with mass protest and non-violent civil disobedience: these activist tactics are both effective and morally permissible means to achieving sound climate policy. Recently, however, some prominent voices in the climate movement have argued that such tactics alone are ineffective: only the combination of these tactics with more direct action like ecotage – the targeted sabotage of property for environmental purposes – can be effective. Such thinking raises the possibility that questions 1 and 2 have different answers: even if ecotage is an effective means to the required policy changes, it might not be permissible. This class, then, will focus on the morality of direct climate actions like ecotage, and ask when, if ever, it might be permissible to blow up a pipeline for the sake of the climate.

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Gary O'Brien

Procreation seems to most people to be morally neutral – one is neither required to have, or to refrain from having, children. Whether someone decides to have children is entirely up to them. On reflection however this laissez faire attitude is odd. In our daily lives we often make choices that affect other people, and our behaviour towards others is rightly constrained by moral norms. But what could affect a person more than causing them to exist? By doing so we make them vulnerable to harms, and expose them to risks which it would not be permissible to inflict on existing people. Some philosophers have argued that procreation is always wrong, others have claimed it is permissible despite the moral hazards involved, and still others suggest that causing someone to exist confers a great benefit to them. What then should we think about ‘the most natural thing in the world’?

Time: 12:35-13:20

Tutor: Emma Dore-Horgan

Imagine you are the judge presiding over the trial of Richard Smith, a man convicted (and with a history) of violent behaviour, and you must decide the terms of his sentence. It is the year 2051 and there exists a pill that can reduce aggression by increasing brain serotonin levels. Should Smith be offered this pill? Should Smith be required to take this pill as a condition of his parole?
These questions mark the beginning of a discussion on the ethics of ‘neurocorrection’: the practice of deploying interventions that exert direct effects on the brain to reduce offenders’ reoffending risk and/or facilitate their rehabilitation more generally. We currently use a form of neurocorrection – opioid-substitution therapy – to reduce drug cravings/drug-seeking behaviours in substance-abusing offenders. However, some speculate we will soon have further neurocorrectives at our disposal to, for example, reduce impulsive aggression or enhance empathy. When and under what precise circumstances might it be permissible to deploy these interventions?