Suggested readings, 14 February 2021

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

Joe Humphreys, “Why Covid dissidents need to be understood, not demonised.” 4 Feb, Irish Times.

Interview with Katherine Furman, a philosopher and public policy researcher based at the University of Liverpool: "Lockdown has come with severe economic hardship here. For instance, foodbanks have reported a dramatic increase in their use. This is something social scientists will need to study to properly understand what was going on here, but I think it would be too quick dismiss protesters here as merely being ‘law-breakers’".

Dominic Wilkinson and Jonathan Pugh, “Is it ethical to quarantine people in hotel rooms?” 11 Feb, The Conversation.

"Mandatory hotel quarantine is probably ethically justified, but there are also strong ethical arguments to follow other countries in granting some exemptions to the hefty fee."

Christina Fleischer, “Ten things you didn’t know about Darwin.” 4 Feb, OUP Blog.

Ten little-known facts about the father of evolution.

Jonathan Chait, “Describing a Slur Is Not the Same As Using It.” 8 Feb, New York Magazine.

"It would be one thing to decide that not only is it unacceptable to use a slur but it is also unacceptable to utter or mention in it any form. It is another thing to treat those two different actions as completely indistinguishable."

Karen Stenner and Jessica Stern, “How to Live With Authoritarians.” 11 Feb, Foreign Policy.

"About a third of the population in Western countries is predisposed to authoritarianism."

Richard A. Friedman, “Why Conspiracy Theories Are So Alluring.” 12 Feb, New York Review of Books.

"Some conspiracies are laughable and harmless, like the notion that the earth is flat or that the 1969 moon landing was faked. Others, like the belief that vaccines are harmful, can lead to disease outbreaks -- or the failure to contain a deadly pandemic. And still others, such as the belief that climate change caused by human activity is a hoax, to which 13 percent of US respondents subscribe, threaten the very planet. But there is nothing new, or uniquely American, about conspiracy theories. They have been so widespread throughout history and across different cultures that it invites the question: What makes humans so vulnerable to these often outlandish explanations of everyday experience?"

Comments

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...

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 ...

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...

Nothing as It Seems

Search This Blog