Skip to main content

Suggested readings, 29 November 2020

 

Here are some interesting articles I've read over the past week that I think are worth checking out.

"At a time when humans are threatening the extinction of so many other species, it might not seem so surprising that some people think that the extinction of our own species would be a good thing. Take, for example, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose founder believes that our extinction would put an end to the damage we inflict on each other and ecosystems more generally."

Alberto Giubilini and Vageesh Jain, “Should COVID-19 vaccines be mandatory? Two experts discuss.” 25 Nov, The Conversation. 
"Only through widespread vaccination will we reach herd immunity -- where enough people are immune to stop the disease from spreading freely. To achieve this, some have suggested vaccines should be made compulsory, though the UK government has ruled this out. But with high rates of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK and elsewhere, is this the right call? Here, two experts to make the case for and against mandatory COVID-19 vaccines."

Fintan O'Toole, “To counter vaccine sceptics, we must understand them.” 28 Nov, Irish Times. 
"Only if we understand the social resistance to vaccines, not just as individual selfishness or stupidity but as a historical and cultural phenomenon, can we think about how to counter it."

Lawrence Krauss, “Why Is Scientific Illiteracy So Acceptable?” 23 Nov, Quillette. 
"When it comes to public perceptions of medical or scientific prowess, I blame in part science fiction programs on television or in feature films that give the illusion that faced with a technical problem, sufficiently talented scientists and engineers can both ascertain the cause and create a solution in hours instead of years or decades. That is just not the way science often works. Most important scientific developments are not revolutionary. More often than not they are baby steps taken along a long road of discovery." 

"[A] 2007 literature review on the beliefs of alternative medicine users showed that they often had the following characteristics: postmodern, rather than conventional belief systems; an appreciation of health approaches perceived as 'non-toxic' and holistic; a belief in psychological factors as a cause of illness; and a view of themselves as both unconventional and spiritual."

David Goodhart, “The Left’s obsession with subjectivity.” 23 Nov, UnHerd. 
"Our knowledge of the world is usually some sort of balance between personal experience and abstract ideas. And it is my contention, perhaps not a very original one, that in recent years the balance has been tipping away from the realm of the objective towards personal experience."

Richard Marshall, “Tyrannies of Opinion et al.” 25 Nov, 3:16. 
Interview with philosopher Russell Blackford on free speech, liberalism, tyrannies of opinion, and secularism.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should We Use Neuroenhancement Drugs to Improve Relationships?

A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , July-August, Vol. 147 (2014)   L ove, it is fair to say, is probably the strongest emotion we can experience. It can come in many different forms:  love of one’s parent, sibling, or child. Though most people consider romantic relationships—which include companionship, sexual passion, intimacy, warmth, procreation and child-rearing—as the most significant component of one’s life; and it is probably the thing we find discussed more than anything else in novels, films and music. Committed romantic relationships tend to occur within the institution of marriage—something that is ubiquitous to most, if not all, cultures.   Indeed, relationships today, which are primarily love-driven, are not just confined to marriages, as many couples sustain relationships outside of wedlock. Being in a love-driven relationship is considered important for most people, as it contributes to happiness—something we a...
1 comment
Read more

Is Adult Incest Wrong?

An version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , March-April, Vol. 151 (2015)   Incest is something most people find morally objectionable and it's one of the most common of all cultural taboos. The British Medical Association’s Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia (1990) defines incest as “ intercourse between close relatives,” that usually includes “intercourse with a parent, a son or daughter, a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a grandparent or grandchild.” The Oxford English Dictionary ’s definition is a little broader: it doesn’t confine incest to just intercourse, but to “sexual relations between people classified as being too closely related to marry each other.”    Most countries have some kind of law against incest—though consensual adult incest is not a crime in France, Spain, Russia the Netherlands, and a host of countries in South America. In England and Wales, however, t he Sexual Offences Act 2003 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The ethics of high-tech “conversion” therapy

An edited version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , September-October, Vol. 148 (2014) I n an earlier post I discussed the imminent prospect of biological manipulating our different love systems and some of the ethical implications that might follow from it. This topic originally appeared in an article published in 2008 by Oxford ethicists Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg, who argue that it might be possible, in the next number of decades or so, to biologically manipulate and enhance our quality of love. They propose that we could supplement our relationship counselling sessions with prescription ‘love drugs’—ones with the purpose of improving intimacy and commitment between partners.  With emerging biotechnologies like this, which includes recent work in neuroscience, psychopharmacology and other related areas, it will also be possible to consider the prospect of using them to manipulate brain systems to diminish and alter the capacity fr...
2 comments
Read more