Vincent Di Norcia theorizes how morality is generated by how the brain works. “The time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.”Edward O.Wilson, Sociobiology – A New Synthesis Why do animals have brains? In order to survive in uncertain, often threatening environments. Conscious sentience is helpful […]
Ethics On The Brain Read More »
Namit Arora considers the complexity of consciousness and its implications for artificial intelligence. As a graduate student of computer engineering in the early 90s, I recall impassioned late night debates on whether machines can ever be intelligent – meaning, possessing the cognition, common sense, and problem-solving skills of ordinary humans. Scientists and bearded philosophers spoke
The Minds of Machines Read More »
Laura Weed takes us on a tour of the mind/brain controversy. In the twentieth century philosophy of mind became one of the central areas of philosophy in the English-speaking world, and so it remains. Questions such as the relationship between mind and brain, the nature of consciousness, and how we perceive the world, have come
Philosophy of Mind: An Overview Read More »
Paul Walker ponders the best type of relationship between a doctor and a patient. How well do you get on with your doctor? Every clinical consultation involves two people interacting, so should be seen as a relationship, and a moral encounter. The Hippocratic Oath, to do the best for the patient, and similar commitments grounded
Doctor-Patient Relationships Read More »
Simon Kolstoe says that all is not well with medicine. It is said that philosophy is driven by concerns about mortality. If there is even a small grain of truth in this, then from a purely self-interested perspective the philosopher has good reason to be supportive of the work of doctors and health scientists. After
Can We Trust Medical Science? Read More »
Jeffrey Spike explains the place of medical ethics within bioethics and in relation to philosophy. What I want to do in this brief introduction is (1) help define what bioethics is, (2) identify its major aspects, and (3) clarify its relationship to philosophy. To this aim I will outline how bioethics has developed three distinct
Robert Card on the ethics of medical care at the end of life. It is natural for humans to want control over their own lives. Since death is an inevitable part of being human, it is also understandable that people want control over the circumstances of their own death, if at all possible. As the
Lessons (Not) Learned Read More »
John Ongley investigates what Bertrand Russell thought about human reason. The economist John Maynard Keynes once said of his Cambridge friends in the years before World War I – including the philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore – that while their conversations were all bright, amusing and clever, there was “no solid diagnosis of human
Are People Rational? Read More »
Tim Delaney finds joy in Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness. In 1930, Bertrand Russell published The Conquest of Happiness, a book that predates the contemporary fascination with self-help publications by decades. It was described by Russell in the Preface as “not addressed to highbrows, or to those who regard a practical problem merely as
“To be happy, one must first not be unhappy” Read More »
Vincent Kavaloski reviews both Tolstoy’s insights and his oversight. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”(United States Declaration of Independence, 1776) Do we all pursue happiness? Should
Should We Pursue Happiness? Read More »