Differences do sometimes make a difference. There will be occasions when taking account of the particularities of an individual and her situation is appropriate, even obligatory for those charged with implementing the law – if not from a legal perspective then from a moral or practical one. This is where judgment comes in. In a […]
The Tragedy of Costs and Benefits
In the fight against COVID-19, weighing costs and benefits is indispensable for moral clarity. At the same time, we must not forget its limits. One way that measurement can distort the choice is by virtue of an excessive focus on what is easily measurable instead of what ought to be measured. Many graphs, for example, […]
Getting it right
Truth is neither absolute nor timeless. But the pursuit of truth remains at the heart of the scientific endeavour But philosophers of science, over the past half-century, have turned against the representation of science as a ceaseless forward march toward truth. It is just not how science works, how it moves through history. It flies […]
A moral map for AI cars – reveal that moral choices are not universal
The Moral Machine Experiment – Survey maps global variations in ethics for programming autonomous vehicles. How do different cultures value human life? To find out, researchers created a viral online experiment to gather data from millions of participants across the world. Some values generalised across cultures, but others came as a surprise. When a driver […]
Life-and-death thought experiments are correctly unsolvable
Moral dilemma should not be seen as puzzles to be solved – but sources of insight for living in complexity. People have concerns about the psychological effects of endlessly playing shoot-em-up video games but I sometimes wonder whether doing moral philosophy is just as corrosive. A worryingly large proportion of ethical thought experiments involve fantasies […]
