Religion vs Secularism

In this debate (recorded in Sydney, Australia, in March 2013) British philosopher A.C. Grayling joins Sean Faircloth, director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan and the Hon. Pru Goward M.P. to discuss the influence of religion in Australia and the U.S. The speakers discuss whether the church and state should or can ever be decisively divided, and where each institution stands among evolving social and political values:

Knowledge and Responsibility

As hideous as the ongoing Lance Armstrong debacle has been, it has provided some interesting talking points in terms of TOK. His recent confession to drug use throughout his career has led to his fans retrospectively reassessing their knowledge of him and his achievements.

He was especially vehement when attacking those who questioned his reputation, and wrote two (fraudulent) autobiographies: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000) and Every Second Counts (2003). Until he was forced into his confession he and his supporters denied that he was guilty of any wrongdoing, and now he is undergoing an agonising and embarrassing fall from the heights of fame and adulation.

As reported in the article below, Armstrong is now facing a class action lawsuit in the U.S., brought by disenchanted fans who bought his books. This poses questions about the extent to which those who disseminate false information are ethically, legally and financially responsible for it.

There are some parallels with the story of the scientists and government official in Italy who were found guilty of manslaughter in 2012 after failing to accurately predict an earthquake in the village of L'Aquila. However, they disseminated false information unknowingly, while Armstrong was all too aware that he was doing so knowingly.

Lance Armstrong

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) has made it its mission to expose what it considers to be fraudulent or misleading behaviour by people in positions of influence and power. In his most famous cases, Randi turned his own attention to faith healers, and in particular Peter Popoff.

Recently the JREF has focused on practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). This has become a hot topic in the UK, where healthcare is publicly funded through the National Health Service (NHS). Despite vocal opposition by the British Medical Association, many medical practices now offer alternative treatments such as acupuncture or homeopathy and homeopathic hospitals have been founded in London, Liverpool and Bristol.

The British government currently provides financial support for alternative therapies amounting to around £4 million per year (source The British Homeopathic Association), and many argue that this is a good deal in terms of the perceived benefits. There is significant celebrity endorsement of CAM, and Prince Charles has been particularly outspoken on the issue. There exists, however, no credible scientific and statistically significant evidence that CAM works any better than placebo (as reported exhaustively by Dr. Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science blog).

Many people would say that it is an individual's right to believe what they like, and even if these beliefs turn out to be based on untruths they may still be sources of comfort, especially in times of distress (a relativistic point of view). The placebo effect is powerful and little understood and therefore it could also be argued that it is beneficial to allow or even encourage people to maintain their existing beliefs, particularly in relation to their own health. This does sound somewhat patronising, however, and is suggestive of willful support of public ignorance.

In the article below, Dr. Steven Novella (member of the JREF and clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine) proposes that CAM should be considered not just to have no medical merit but to be actively dangerous to public health. He discusses a real life situation in which a woman with a cancerous growth decided to consult a practitioner of alternative rather than conventional medicine.
Is It Dangerous to Believe in CAM?

Ethical Orientations

One theory of ethics proposes that there are two basic ethical orientations: the ethic of care and the ethic of justice. The former is based on the importance of relationships and individual responsibility, while the latter is based on the application of a sense of fairness or law. Proponents of this idea would hold that your ethical orientation can be determined by the way you approach ethical dilemmas, although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The questionnaire below is an attempt to allow you to determine your own ethical orientation:

Ethics - Questionnaire 01 from Lico Reis

Ethics and the Free Market

Michael Sandel is Professor of Political Philosophy at Harvard University. He has commented extensively on the free market and how it affects public ethics. It is interesting to think about how money and our perception of wealth affect our ethical decisions, as he outlines in this video clip:

I've provided a link below to a discussion in which he and an audience at the London School of Economics address the ethical question of whether a nurse should be paid more than a banker:

Glossary of Philosophy

Enlightenment Rationalism Empiricism The Encyclopaedists Analytic synthetic distinction Logic Determinism Kant	Romanticism Rousseau Schelling and Coleridge Hegel Idealism Vs. Materialism Hegel's Dialectics Marx's Dialectical Materialism Schopenhauer & Nietzsche	Analytic Philosophy Bertrand Russell Wittgenstein: Tractatus Wittgenstein: Language Games The Private Language Argument Richard Rorty Timeline	Existentialism Kierkegaard: The solitary wanderer Martin Heidegger Edmund Husserl Sartre: Existence precedes essence Albert Camus
God Proofs of God's Existence: Argument from design Ontological argument Cosmological argument Pascal's Wager Kierkegaard Marx Nietzsche The Death of God	Mind Plato Aristotle Leibniz Epiphenomenalism Dualism Descartes Identity Theory Spinoza Behaviourism Ryle Ghost in the machine	Natural Science Popper Kuhn Feyerabend Science in the post- modern world	Moral philosophy Kant's Categorical Imperative Utilitarianism Nietzsche: The genealogy of morals Sartre and Bad Faith

Autism, Empathy and Ethics

I posted a video recently in an attempt to show the link between ethics and empathy. If you define ethics along the lines of the practical application of morals in society (as we have in the class), then it follows that without some form of empathy (to understand the effect of your actions on others) you are unable to employ a true ethical code.

A common (mis)conception is that people with autism lack the ability to empathise. I'll admit to being guilty of thinking like this in the past. If this is true then it could be argued that autistic people lack the ability to be ethical. In her blog existence is wonderful, Anne Corwin (who has herself been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome) shows this is a fallacy, and that while autistic people perhaps have a different take on empathy, they cannot be catagorised as non-ethical. She makes the point that the act of labelling and categorising people is, in itself, very harmful.

This makes me think that coming up with a useful and usable definition of ethics is much more difficult than you might think. Incidentally, if you are interested in seeing the autism-spectrum quotient test that she refers to in the article, I have found a copy of it here.
Autism and Empathy

Empathy and Ethics

Morality in Animals

I've posted some ideas about this subject previously (in particular the thoughts of Richard Dawkins on the origin of morality). In this TED Talk Frans de Waal, professor of Primate Behaviour at the Emory University Psychology Department in Atlanta, Georgia (famous for their work with Chantek the orangutan), gives his views on the existence of moral behaviour in animals.

A Child with Three Biological Parents?

Recent IVF research in the UK has focused on the possibility of tackling rare genetic disorders by creating embryos from DNA obtained from three separate individuals. With the treatment now a distinct possibility, attention has turned to the ethical implications. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a UK-based think-tank which meets up to six times per year to discuss current issues has given it a potential green light. However, as with all cases of this type, opinion is divided, with many seeing it as a slippery slope towards the legalisation of 'designer babies'.

In the clip from the BBC Today Programme a parent who lost her baby to a mitochondrial disease discusses her hopes that she could receive the treatment to help her through another pregnancy. She is joined by two health professionals with very differing views on the matter.

3 Person IVF

Using Statistics

Hans Rosling is professor of global health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. He began his career as a physician, spending many years in Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Medecins sans Frontiers (Sweden), and has written a respected textbook (Global Health: An Introductory Textbook, Studentlitteratur AB, Sweden, 2006).

His work is grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), and he has developed interesting and innovative methods of displaying his data through which he is able to appeal even to the most hardened statistic-phobes. He is able to clearly show the importance of collecting and understanding real data (in the mathematical sense) in order to understand the current situation and properly plan for the future.

Much of his current work focuses on the developing world, which he shows is no longer worlds away from the west. In this TED talk he shows that the First and Third Worlds are on the same trajectory toward health, prosperity and longer life, and many countries are moving towards this goal twice as quickly as the west once did. He feels the obstacles to true understanding of the situation are merely problems of perception and our preconceived ideas.

Reason and the Universality of Human Rights

In December 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a full list of all 30 articles of which can be found here. The Assembly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories." In 1976 it was adopted as international law, having been ratified by a sufficient number of nations. It is now perhaps the cornerstone of international political ethics.

It was constructed, of course, as a consequence of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War, and was based on the reasoning that all human beings are "born fee and equal in dignity and rights" (Article 1). However its wording has been subjected to considerable criticism over a number of years. Proponents of alternative schooling, for example, are against the adoption of "universal elementary education" (Article 26), while organisations such as Amnesty International have argued that there is a need to adopt a right of refusal to kill in times of war (currently not mentioned by the Declaration). Some Muslim countries (such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan) have critisised the UDHR for failing to take the religious context of Islam into account. In 1990 the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) was adopted by member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, as an alternative.

The biggest problem has been one of enforcing the terms of the Declaration and reprimanding those who violate them. Implicit in this is the fact that some countries interpret the articles differently to others. However, the UN Security Council has always found it difficult to get its members to come to a consensus where it is necessary to use force. This weakness was exposed in September, 2002, when President George W. Bush brought his case against Iraq to the General Assembly and challenged the UN to take action against Baghdad for failing to disarm. Unable to get the UN Security Council to act, Bush succeeded in securing permission from the US Congress to act against Iraq without UN approval. The American message seemed clear: as a senior administration official put it at the time, "we don't need the Security Council." This could be interpreted as proof that the logic of universal human rights enshrined in the Declaration is flawed, as suggested by author Will Self in this BBC podcast:

The Pillow Angel

In 2007, the parents of a six year old severely disabled girl from Seattle took the decision to have her sterilised and treated with hormones to prevent her growing into a woman. This left her in a permanent state of pre-pubescence, and small enough for her to be more easily lifted and cared for by her parents.

Many questions in medical ethics concern relatives asking for medical intervention for someone who can't give their own consent. This case has divided opinion. Ashley's parents feel strongly that the treatment will give her the best quality of life. The ethics committee of the Seattle Children's Hospital, where she was treated, carried out a cost-benefit analysis and agreed. Opponents of the treatment feel that since it was effectively unprecedented, this marks the first step on a slippery slope of treatments to make life easier for care-givers at the expense of the dignity of the recipient. Others feel that drastic interventions such as this highlight the lack of support (both financial and medical) that society is prepared to give severely disabled people over the long term.

Whatever your position, its obvious that Ashley belongs to a very loving family who's thoughts are only for her well-being. They have written and blogged extensively about their decision. Ashley has become better known as the 'Pillow Angel'.

Pillow Angel

How Do You Kill a Human Humanely?

The debate over the application of the death penalty is certainly one that polarises opinion. However, I think one of the less well debated issues is not whether its use is ethically correct, but whether current methods are truly humane. Of course, many people feel that in applying capital punishment, it is not necessary for the State to have such concerns - and that this, in itself, should form part of the punishment. However, others might argue that in order to distance themselves from the accusation of state-sponsored murder, governments have to at least try to make sure that the death penalty is administered as painlessly as possible.

In 2008, former British member of parliament Michael Portillo made a documentary for the BBC's Horizon programme in which he set out to discover the most humane way to kill a prisoner. I was quite shocked by how many recent executions in the US seem to have been botched and how little appears to be known about how much pain a prisoner being executed may feel before they die. Both the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution of 1791 state that a prisoner has the right not to be subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment", while Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has similar wording. Uncertainty about whether current methods constitute this (among other legal arguments) have resulted in somewhat of a crisis in some US states. Capital punishment is currently suspended for prisoners on death row in California and, since 2007, three states have repealed it (New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois).

The Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) was a Yale professor of psychology who is most famous for his controversial study into how far people will follow the instructions of authority figures without question. This became known as 'The Milgram Experiment'. I have posted details of this previously in 'The Top 10 Unethical Psychology Experiments' (although I personally would argue that Milgram wasn't intentionally acting unethically, and his subjects were not prevented from refusing to continue with the experiment once they had concerns).

In 2006 British illusionist Derren Brown produced a TV programme named 'The Heist'. In this he attempted to persuade a group of thirteen members of the public to partake in what they thought was a real armed bank robbery. In order to choose his victims, Brown reproduced the Milgram Experiment, and found results startling similar to those of Milgram. This is shown in the clip below:

Psychological Experiments

During the 20th Century a number of psychologists (the behaviourists and cognitive psychologists) tried to introduce greater scientific thinking into the subject. Greater emphasis was placed on the collection of empirical evidence through detailed observation, researchers made more of an effort to remain objective, and attempts were made to control variables, reduce the observer effect and repeat experiments where possible. Psychology effectively moved towards the inductivism of the natural sciences (or rather the hypothetico-deductive model of Karl Popper, 1935).

A number of experiments based on this thinking later became notorious. Some investigators were less than honest with their research subjects (often in an effort to lessen the observer effect or reduce the effect of extraneous variables). In other cases the long-term psychological effects of the experiments on human or animal subjects were not considered. Sometimes ethics were abandoned because the researcher placed their own work and reputation above all other considerations.

I've reproduced a list of the 'top 10 unethical psychology experiments' from the website listverse.com (last accessed 16/4/12). Its an interesting list, but I would argue that not all of the experiments could really be called unethical. The Stanford Prison Experiment, for example, more than anything was badly planned, with the subjects influenced by the observer effect into thinking they were expected to play a role. The list and the order in which the experiments are placed reflect the author's own thoughts on the subject.

Top 10 Unethical Psychology Experiments

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Taboo

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2008) defines a taboo as "a social or religious custom placing prohibition or restriction on a particular thing or person". Taboos come into existence as a means to help a society to persist or improve the general health of its members. Since societies change, so do taboos (although perhaps rather slowly, and without the acceptance of all).

According to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), incest (marriage and/or sexual partnership between closely related individuals) is the 'universal taboo' (The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1947), trans. James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). He believed this was a driving force in human social development since it forced people to look outside their family for mates and therefore brought disparate and even warring groups together.

The origins of this taboo seem to lie in the increased likelihood that children of an incestuous partnership will be born with abnormalities, and hence have a possible deleterious effect on a society. There appears to be more to it than this, though, as it does appear to elicit particular disgust and revulsion. Also there are other behaviours which increase the likelihood of a couple having children born with disabilities (for example becoming pregnant later in life) which are not held in the same disregard. In addition, it is not perhaps the universal taboo that Lévi-Strauss made out. For instance, European monarchies (together with those in other societies such as the Incas and Ancient Egyptians) encouraged marriage between closely related members of the nobility for centuries to keep blood lines pure. (With this in mind, it is interesting that Henry VIII chose to accuse Anne Boleyn of an incestuous affair with her brother to ensure he was granted his divorce - and her execution).

Given that incest has gained this reputation as perhaps the ultimate taboo, it is surprising that there is no true consensus between different nations with regard to its legality (or illegality). In some countries, the law has tried to take into account the risks while legalising it in certain circumstances. In Brazil, an uncle and niece may have a relationship provided they undergo health checks. In some states of the US, first cousins may marry if they are at reproductive age or ability. France dropped incest from the penal code under Napoleon, but reinstated it in 2010. Children born to incestuous relationships in France are removed and put into care. In the Netherlands, where consensual incest is no longer prosecuted, the legal status of a child born of such a relationship is ambiguous. Sweden is the only country in Europe which allows marriage between siblings who share a parent, although I believe Switzerland is currently debating whether it should be decriminalised.

There is an interesting academic paper on the subject here.

A story appeared in the news recently of two German siblings who met after growing up separately and started a relationship together (in the knowledge they were brother and sister). They lost their appeal at the European Court of Human Rights this week after being convicted in Germany. Here's how the BBC reported the story:

German Incest Couple

Uncontacted Tribes

The Ethics of IVF

One of the most controversial aspects of modern medical ethics is the use of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Ethical views appear, in general, to have changed considerably in western countries since the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in Britain in 1978 - so much so that it is now largely accepted that homosexual couples can seek IVF treatment and the sex of a baby may be determined prior to pregnancy.

Most religious groups seem to have given IVF qualified acceptance. The Anglican Church, for instance, allows IVF within marriage, but forbids the donation of eggs and sperm. The Hindu religion allows IVF, but only if the gametes used in the procedure come from a married couple seeking pregnancy. Hindus may also donate sperm, but the donor must be a close relative of the infertile husband. Buddhists have a very liberal attitude towards assisted pregnancy - it is permitted for both married and unmarried couples and men are free to donate sperm. While Islam allows IVF treatment, it must be within the bounds of marriage. After divorce or death of one of the spouses, preserved sperm or eggs are not permitted to be used, since the Muslim marriage contact would be seen to have been broken. My understanding of Jewish Law is that since the scriptures direct Jews to procreate, if this is not possible via a normal pregnancy, it is acceptable for this to be achieved by artificial means. There does not appear to be a clear consensus among rabbis over some aspects of IVF such as the implantation of multiple embryos (some of which may of course not result in a viable pregnancy).

Of the major world religions, Catholicism appears to take the most authoritarian and conservative stance, in line with its absolutist take on morality and ethics. It accepts that Catholic couples may seek medical treatment for infertility, but does not permit the use of IVF or the donation of eggs or sperm. The Vatican's position is that it is immoral to separate sex and procreation. In June 2006 Pope Benedict XVI made a series of statements to clarify his view of IVF treatment:

• The human being has the right to be generated, not produced, to come to life not in virtue of an artificial process but of a human act in the full sense of the term: the union between a man and a woman. 
• Never before in history has human procreation, and therefore the family, which is its natural place, been so threatened as in today's culture. 
• Procreation must always take place within the family.
• ...true love is only that which comes from the union of a man and a woman.
• A true family comes from the union of two people from different sexes.

Robert Winston is a pioneer of some techniques of IVF and is currently professor of Science and Society at Imperial College, London. He was an advisor to the World Health Organisation as part of their programme on human reproduction between 1975 and 1977, and is now a celebrity after presenting numerous science documentaries on British television. He currently sits in the House of Lords on the side of the Labour Party and therefore also has political affiliations. In the following podcast he sets out his views on the ethics of IVF treatment: