Category: Ethics
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The problem of Good… The problem of Evil… The problem as the Solution!
People talk about the problem of evil. But they never talk about the problem of good… wonders philosopher William James. We have learnt that the world is inherently good and we worry about the problem of evil? Or are we too blind to see the inherent evil of the cosmos so as to wonder about…
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Ethics in numbers = No ethics.
It's easy to understand why natural selection favors people who help close kin at their own expense: It can increase the odds the family's genes are passed to future generations. But why assist distant relatives? Mathematical simulations by a University of Utah anthropologist suggest "socially enforced nepotism" encourages helping far-flung kin. The classic theory of…
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Decline in religion, decline in morality.
Religious decline does not equal moral decline, says researcher. [1] How original. Stupid prejudiced science reaches to stupid prejudiced conclusions. We must be careful to compare things with the same standards. Morality has not declined based on our standards now, because our standards have demised into a pulp of liberalism. But morality and ethics is…
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Who will your (future) automatic car decide to kill? [What does Jesus have to do with it?!?]
In philosophy, there’s an ethical question called the trolley problem. If you had to push one large person in front of a moving trolley to save a group of people on the tracks, would you? This abstract idea has taken hold in programming self-driving cars: what happens if it’s impossible to avoid everyone? Researchers from…
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Fear experiment on a 9-month baby. Science. Ethics. Humanity.
You'll have heard of Pavlov's dogs, conditioned to expect food at the sound of a bell. You might not have heard that a scarier experiment – arguably one of psychology's most unethical – was once performed on a baby. In it, a 9-month-old, at first unfazed by the presence of animals, was conditioned to feel…
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