Professor Mark Coeckelbergh considers whether AI poses a risk for democracy n this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar Cases such as Cambridge Analytica or the use of AI by the Chinese government suggest that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) creates some risks for democracy. This paper analyzes these risks by using the concept of epistemic agency and argues that the use of AI risks to influence the formation and the revision of beliefs in at least three ways: the direct, intended manipulation of beliefs, the type of knowledge offered, and the creation and maintenance of epistemic bubbles. It then suggests some implications for research and policy.

Is AI bad for democracy? Analyzing AI’s impact on epistemic agency 

In the first St Cross Special Ethics Seminar of 2023, Dr Larry Lengbeyer explores 'shallow cognizing' as a form of self-control Shallow cognizing is a familiar but overlooked practice of self-control, typically initiated without conscious intention, that enables us to short-circuit potential upwellings of emotion and desire in ourselves.  We will consider the range of contexts in which the practice is manifest, speculate about its roots in the compartmentalized structure of our cognitive systems, ponder its benefits and costs (its uses and misuses), and contemplate its relation to virtue.  We will then continue in this exploratory vein by asking whether taking account of this neglected phenomenon might improve our understanding of issues in practical ethics, such as duties of doctors to obtain informed consent from patients, and how to balance free expression with proper care for others' sensibilities, in the classroom and perhaps elsewhere.

Shallow Cognizing for Self-Control over Emotion & Desire 

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Edmond Awad discusses his project, the Moral Machine, an internet-based game exploring the ethical dilemmas faced by driverless cars. I describe the Moral Machine, an internet-based serious game exploring the many-dimensional ethical dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. The game enabled us to gather 40 million decisions from 3 million people in 200 countries/territories. I report the various preferences estimated from this data, and document interpersonal differences in the strength of these preferences. I also report cross-cultural ethical variation and uncover major clusters of countries exhibiting substantial differences along key moral preferences. These differences correlate with modern institutions, but also with deep cultural traits. I discuss how these three layers of preferences can help progress toward global, harmonious, and socially acceptable principles for machine ethics. Finally, I describe other follow up work that build on this project.

The Moral Machine Experiment 

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Professor Stephen Clarke the role of hope in patients undergoing major healthcare procedures, and how it relates to decision-making in situations of risk and uncertainty. It is widely supposed that it is important to imbue patients undergoing medical procedures with a sense of hope. But why is hope so important in healthcare, if indeed it is? We examine the answers that are currently on offer and show that none do enough to properly explain the importance that is often attributed to hope in healthcare. We then identify a hitherto unrecognised reason for supposing that it is important to imbue patients undergoing significant medical procedures with hope, which draws on prospect theory, Kahneman and Tversky’s hugely influential descriptive theory about decision making in situations of risk and uncertainty. We also consider some concerns about patient consent and the potential manipulation of patients, that are raised by our account. We then consider some complications for the account raised by religious sources of hope, which are commonly drawn on by patients undergoing major healthcare procedures.

Hope in Healthcare 

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Brian Earp argues that all medically unnecessary genital cutting of non-consenting persons should be opposed on moral and legal grounds. Defenders of male circumcision increasingly argue that female ‘circumcision’ (ritual cutting of the clitoral hood or labia) should be legally allowed in Western liberal democracies even when non-consensual. In a recent article, Richard Shweder (2021) gives perhaps the most persuasive articulation of this argument to have so far appeared in the literature. In my own work, I argue that no person should be subjected to medically unnecessary genital cutting of any kind without their own informed consent, regardless of the sex characteristics with which they were born or the religious or cultural background of their parents. Professor Shweder and I agree that Western law and policy on child genital cutting is currently beset with cultural, religious, and sex-based double-standards. We disagree about what should be done about this. In this talk, I argue that ‘legalizing’ childhood female genital cutting so as to bring it into line with current treatment of childhood male genital cutting is not an acceptable solution to these problems. Instead, all medically unnecessary genital cutting of non-consenting persons should be opposed equally on moral and legal grounds and discouraged by all appropriate means.

Against Legalizing Female 'Circumcision' of Minors 

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Sarah Chan outlines some risks arising from the deliberate infection of human participants to infectious agents for research purposes In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Sarah Chan explores three key areas of risk in ‘challenge trials’ – the deliberate infection of human participants to infectious agents as a tool for vaccine development and improving our knowledge of disease biology.  Dr Chan explores a) whether some forms of challenge trials cannot be ethically justified; b) why stratifying populations for vaccine allocation by risk profile can result in unjust risk distribution; and c) how comparing these cases and the evaluation of relative risk reveals flaws in approach to pandemic public health.

Vaccine policies and challenge trials: the ethics of relative risk in public health 

Marcello Ienca discusses moral and legal issues surrounding the decoding – ‘mind reading’ - of brain activity In the 1990s, following rapid advances in the use of technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an ethical debate arose around the concept of 'mind reading': the possibility of decoding a person's mental states (including their conscious experience) based on quantitative measurements of their brain activity. This debate concerned the moral and legal status of information about mental states (mental information) and the definition of normative principles to justify the collection and processing of such information. However, the poor replicability of fMRI-based studies combined with conceptual clarifications within the philosophy of mind (such as Dennett's vehicle-content distinction) showed that this debate rested on weak empirical and conceptual grounds. As a result, the interest of the bioethics/neuroethics community waned. A couple of decades later, however, the wide availability of brain data outside the clinical setting combined with the use of artificial intelligence models to process and decode such data (through a process known as 'reverse inference') make the ethical debate on mind-reading topical again, albeit on a different conceptual ground. In addition, AI approaches such as affective computing and natural language processing have shown the possibility of inferring a person's mental states also from non-neural data (e.g., social media). This presentation will discuss the moral and legal status of mental information and the conditions for legitimate access to and alteration of such information. In particular, it will examine the concepts of ‘mental privacy’ and ‘cognitive liberty’ and defend the thesis that every person should enjoy a right to mental self-determination. This includes both the negative freedom from coercive or otherwise non-voluntary access to one's mental sphere and the positive freedom of the individual to modify their mental states and processes (e.g. through cognitive or affective enhancement).

Do We Need Mental Privacy? The Ethics of Mind Reading Reloaded 

Professor Gopal Sreenivasan delivers a New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar on the topic of Informed Consent. This talk develops a novel argument to show that prospective research subjects can validly consent to participate in a study without understanding (most of) the content of the required disclosure. Its point of departure is the right subjects standardly have to waive (most of) the investigator’s duty to disclose. Things get worse for autonomy based defences of informed consent because this right to waive is very well grounded in an individual’s autonomy.

Waiver or understanding? A dilemma for autonomists about informed consent 

A New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, with Professor Maureen Kelley. Much of global health research occurs against the backdrop of severe, intersectional and structural vulnerabilities, where susceptibility to disease and early death are driven by poverty, and related factors such as political conflict and climate change. Global health research priorities over the last two decades have been shaped by a small number of high income country institutions, with political commitments informed largely by the ‘global burden of disease’ model. On this model, international research has primarily targeted infectious diseases and other causes of high morbidity and premature, preventable mortality, but has ignored the structural determinants of those diseases. An unintended consequence is that researchers at the frontlines of data collection and interaction with participants and communities come face-to-face with the daily suffering of participants and family members. They often face heart-rending dilemmas in responding to complex health, social, and economic needs that far outstrip the resources and expertise of most research projects or clinical trials. In this presentation, I will share findings from a longitudinal research ethics study, where local ethics teams were embedded within ongoing clinical and social science research studies in contexts of severe poverty, food shortages, droughts and flooding, gender-based violence and political conflict—typical of many global health research sites. Based on our empirical ethics findings, including experiences of research participants, community members and researchers, I will offer critical reflections on the limitations of current accounts of researcher responsibility (ancillary care or duty of care), and suggest we rethink the ways that current global health research institutions and funders engage the underlying structural drivers of disease and suffering.

Fighting diseases of poverty through research: Deadly dilemmas, moral distress and misplaced responsibilities 

A New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar with Dr David M Lyreskog.  It is no exaggeration that the philosophical and ethical dimensions of age-related cognitive decline and dementia have been discussed for millennia, nor is it without reason. To this day, we struggle with understanding and dealing with the conceptual and ethical complexities which these conditions give rise to. And yet, we keep encountering new problems, challenging us to again rethink our relationship with neurodegenerative disease, cognitive impairment, and personhood.In this presentation I highlight phenomena in dementia care, prevention, and treatment, which have recently gained attention in dementia care and in the literature of the same – including relational identity adoption, paradoxical lucidity, and transformative experience – and discuss their ethical, philosophical, and practical implications. I argue that, to tackle the problems that arise, we may need to adjust our way of thinking about the human mind, to better make sense of what is at stake in dementia care and to deal with the consequences. I suggest that a framework allowing a spacial and temporal “plasticity of the mind” of sorts may help us in this endeavour, and inform our decision-making in care, prevention and treatment of dementia. I also address some of the potential issues with adopting such an approach, and discuss how to move on from here.

A New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar with Dr David M Lyreskog. It is no exaggeration that the philosophical and ethical dimensions of age-related cognitive decline and dementia have been discussed for millennia, nor is it without reason. To this day, we struggle with understanding and dealing with the conceptual and ethical complexities which these conditions give rise to. And yet, we keep encountering new problems, challenging us to again rethink our relationship with neurodegenerative disease, cognitive impairment, and personhood. In this presentation I highlight phenomena in dementia care, prevention, and treatment, which have recently gained attention in dementia care and in the literature of the same – including relational identity adoption, paradoxical lucidity, and transformative experience – and discuss their ethical, philosophical, and practical implications. I argue that, to tackle the problems that arise, we may need to adjust our way of thinking about the human mind, to better make sense of what is at stake in dementia care and to deal with the consequences. I suggest that a framework allowing a spacial and temporal “plasticity of the mind” of sorts may help us in this endeavour, and inform our decision-making in care, prevention and treatment of dementia. I also address some of the potential issues with adopting such an approach, and discuss how to move on from here.

Towards a plasticity of the mind – New-ish ethical conundrums in dementia care, treatment, and research 

A selection of seminars and special lectures on wide-ranging topics relating to practical ethics.  The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics was established in 2002 with the support of the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education of Japan. It is an integral part of the philosophy faculty of Oxford University, one of the great centres of academic excellence in philosophical ethics.

Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

In this talk I explain the nature of national security interest in the burgeoning field of neuroscience and its implications for military and counter-intelligence operations. Professor Jonathan Moreno (University of Pennsylvania). Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he is one of fifteen Penn Integrates Knowledge professors. At Penn he is also Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy. His latest book is Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network (2014), which Amazon named a “#1 hot new release.” Among his previous books are The Body Politic, which was named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, Mind Wars (2012), and Undue Risk (2000). Moreno frequently contributes to such publications as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, and Psychology Today, and often appears on broadcast and online media. In 2008-09 he served as a member of President Barack Obama’s transition team. His work has been cited by Al Gore and was used in the development of the screenplay for “The Bourne Legacy.” His online neuroethics course drew more than 36,000 registrants in fall 2013. The American Journal of Bioethics has called him “the most interesting bioethicist of our time.” Moreno is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is the U.S. member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee. A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., Moreno has served as an adviser to many governmental and non-governmental organizations, including three presidential commissions, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He holds the Visiting Professorship in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Moreno holds a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, was an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow, holds an honorary doctorate from Hofstra University, and is a recipient of the Benjamin Rush Medal from the College of William and Mary Law School and the Dr. Jean Mayer Award for Global Citizenship from Tufts University.

Brain Science and the Military 

In this public lecture, Dr William Casebeer discusses neuroscience, human agency and free will. The findings of neuroscience are often used to undermine traditional assumptions about the nature of human agency.  In this talk, I sketch out a compatibilist position which leverages a neo-Aristotelian concept of “critical control distinctions”—rather than talking about whether agents freely will actions, a more consilient vocabulary asks whether agents were in control or out of control when the action was taken.  A plausible neurobiological determinism can save what is worth saving about our traditional notions of responsibility and also points toward a twenty-first century research agenda which coevolves legal and moral norms about responsibility with neuroscientific critical control capacities.

 The Neuroscience of Moral Agency (Or: How I Learned to Love Determinism and Still Respect Myself in the Morning) 

The Possibility of Religious-Secular Ethical Engagement: Abortion.

The Possibility of Religious-Secular Ethical Engagement Debate 1: Abortion 

Uncertainty and quality should be integrated into the quantitative sciences of complex systems; this talk offers some practical techniques that illustrate how this could be accomplished. The faith that truth lies in numbers goes back to the Pythagorean attempt to unify both practical and theoretical sciences.  Its current manifestation is the idolisation of pre-Einsteinian physics in the quantification of social, economic, and behavioural sciences.  The talk will explain how this "crisp number" mode of thinking has promoted the use of over-simplistic models and masking of uncertainties that can in turn lead to incomplete understanding of problems and bad decisions.  The quality of a model in terms of its fitness for purpose can be ignored when convenience, especially computerised convenience, offers more easily calculated crisp numbers.  Yet these inadequacies matter when computerised models generate pseudo-realities of their own through structures such as financial derivatives and processes such as algorithmic trading.  Like Frankenstein's monster, we have already seen financial market pseudo-reality take on an uncontrolled, unstable and dangerous life of its own, all the more beguiling when it generated income for all parties in the merry-go-round.  Despite its manifest failings, it is still going on.

Uehiro Seminar: The Value of Uncertainty 

Professor Richman's talk combines differing theories of models of autism and moral responsibility, and explores the practical implications arising from these ideas. Although criteria for identifying autism have been established based on behavioral factors, researchers are still exploring and developing models to describe the cognitive and affective differences that lead to the known behaviors. Some of these models offer competing ways of understanding autism; some simply describe characteristics of autism. Significantly, these models tend to involve cognitive functions that are also cited in accounts of moral responsibility. This suggests that autism may be a reason not to blame an autistic person for some actions that transgress social, ethical, or legal expectations even when we would certainly blame a neurotypical person for the same action.Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This talk will focus on a limited range of theories: autism as characterized in terms of executive function deficit, and moral responsibility based on access to appropriate reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, I do not intend to endorse them. The goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of influential ideas about autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults.

Professor Richman's talk combines differing theories of models of autism and moral responsibility, and explores the practical implications arising from these ideas. Although criteria for identifying autism have been established based on behavioral factors, researchers are still exploring and developing models to describe the cognitive and affective differences that lead to the known behaviors. Some of these models offer competing ways of understanding autism; some simply describe characteristics of autism. Significantly, these models tend to involve cognitive functions that are also cited in accounts of moral responsibility. This suggests that autism may be a reason not to blame an autistic person for some actions that transgress social, ethical, or legal expectations even when we would certainly blame a neurotypical person for the same action. Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This talk will focus on a limited range of theories: autism as characterized in terms of executive function deficit, and moral responsibility based on access to appropriate reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, I do not intend to endorse them. The goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of influential ideas about autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults.

Autism and Moral Responsibility: Executive Function and the Reactive Attitudes 

In this talk, Neil Armstrong uses ethnographic material of NHS mental healthcare to raise some questions about autonomy, risk and personal and institutional responsibility. Neil Armstrong's research investigates mental health. He is particularly interested in how the institutional setting shapes so much of mental healthcare. His research aims to find ways that we might improve healthcare institutions rather than just focussing on developing new healthcare interventions. He is also concerned with methodological questions: how anthropological work can be of clinical value, and how best to produce anthropological knowledge in an inclusive way.

Why is mental healthcare so ethically confusing? Clinicians and institutions from an anthropological perspective 

What, if anything, is wrong with swearing? And, what exactly are we doing when we try to swear inoffensively?  I begin by reflecting on why we swear, why it is widely deemed offensive, and some of the benefits of swearing. I then turn to the widespread practice of substituting asterisks for letters (and analogous spoken strategies) in an effort to swear without causing offence, and consider what could possibly explain how such a practice succeeds (if it does) in making swear words less offensive. I argue that – to the extent that swearing is offensive – there is no plausible philosophical story according to which this practice succeeds in rendering swearing inoffensive, and that some accounts of why swearing is offensive entail that asterisked swearing actually magnifies the badness of swearing. I conclude that, in so far as we are willing to view asterisked swearing as inoffensive, we should not be offended by swearing.  (This talk will contain swearing. However, since the speaker hopes to convince you that swearing is less offensive than it is often taken to be, you should not let this dissuade you from coming along.)

St Cross Seminar: On Swearing 

Paper presented by Javier Gracia and Andrés Richard at the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.

 Can we Dissociate Reason from Feelings? Ten Critical Philosophical Questions to Greene's Dual Process Theory 

Research shows that implicit moral attitudes affect our thinking and behavior. This talk reports new psychological and neuroscientific research and explores potential implications for scientific moral psychology as well as for some philosophical theories.

Implicit Moral Attitudes 

Anthony Skelton examines possible reasons why philosophers have neglected to discuss children's welfare.  After outlining and evaluating differing views, a rival account is presented. What makes a child's life go well? This paper examines two answers to this question, one put forward by Wayne Sumner in Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics and another by Richard Kraut in What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-being. The argument of this paper is that neither view is entirely satisfactory. A better account of the nature of children's welfare combines elements of both views. This paper is divided into five sections. The first section examines possible reasons why philosophers have neglected to discuss children's welfare. The second section outlines and evaluates Sumner's view. The third section outlines and evaluates Kraut's view. The fourth section sketches an account of children's welfare that rivals the accounts discussed in sections two and three. The final section summarizes my results.

1st St Cross Seminar HT13: Two Conceptions of Children's Welfare 

In November 2018, a Chinese scientist announced the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies and sparked outrage across the world. Professor Nie considers how China's complex socio-ethical approach paved the way for this controversial experiment. Among numerous ethical issues, editing heritable germline genomes of otherwise healthy embryos for natural resistance to HIV constitutes an effort of positive eugenics, i.e. not treating disease but enhancing genetic features. This paradigm case of scientific misconduct has its roots in the widespread practice of yousheng (eugenics) in China and in the nation’s pursuit of science superpower status. This talk will offer a (brief) socio-ethical inquiry into how the ideologies of nationalism, sinicised social Darwinism and scientism have shaped the Chinese authoritarian model of human genetic engineering in a global context.

From Eugenics to Human Gene Editing: Engineering Life in China in a Global Context 

Professor Seumas Miller defines fake news, hate speech and propaganda, discusses the relationship between social media and political propaganda. In this article I provide definitions of fake news, hate speech and propaganda, respectively. These phenomenon are corruptive of the epistemic (i.e. knowledge-aiming) norms, e.g. to tell the truth. I also elaborate the right to freedom of communication and its relation both to censoring propaganda and to the role of epistemic institutions, such as a free and independent press and universities. Finally, I discuss the general problem of countering political propaganda in cyberspace and argue, firstly, that there is an important role for epistemic institutions in this regard and, secondly, that social media platforms need to be redesigned since, as they stand and notwithstanding the benefits which they provide, they are a large part of the problem.

Freedom of Political Communication, Propaganda and the Role of Epistemic Institutions in Cyberspace 

If networking is considered to be either cultivating non-merit-based favouritism or demonstrating one’s merit in advance of formal selection processes, then I argue that it is an attempt to gain illegitimate advantage over competitors and is thus immoral. Networking is taken to be a perfectly innocuous part of business and career-advancement. I argue that, where the aim is to increase one’s prospects of prevailing in a formal competitive process for a job or university placement, networking is an attempt to gain illegitimate advantage. This is true no matter which of the two standard characterisations we accept. If networking is about building personal relationships, as some claim, then it involves cultivating non-merit-based favouritism. To that extent it shares one of the wrong-making features of bribery. On the other hand if networking is about demonstrating one’s merit in advance of formal selection processes, it shares one of the wrong-making features of earwigging in legal advocacy. One way or the other, the networker denies (or tries to deny) rival candidates something to which they are presumptively entitled. Either he denies their right not to be disadvantaged for reasons other than lack of relative merit, or he denies their right not to be disadvantaged by private ex parte communications that take place outside of formal selection processes.

Uehiro Seminar: Is Networking Immoral? 

Tom Walker discusses autonomy and informed consent to medical treatment There are two features of consenting to medical treatment that have been little explored in the extensive literature on this topic. The first is that the requirement to obtain consent is conditional in the following sense – we only need to obtain consent for those things that are both wrong if done without consent, and that we want or have reason to do. The second is that whilst many patients in their interactions with doctors are initially uninformed, this does not always prevent them from choosing to have, or not to have, possible treatments. In this paper I explore the implications of these two features for the idea that doctors ought to provide information to patients about the treatments they propose. I will argue that these features create a serious problem for the widely held idea that it would be wrong, because it would fail to respect his autonomy, to give a competent patient medical treatment without his valid consent (where this refers to a voluntary and informed agreement to have the treatment). As such the requirement to respect autonomy will not give any reason for doctors to provide information in these cases; in fact on at least some accounts of autonomy the obligation to respect autonomy would give them a reason not to provide that information. The paper then goes on to consider some ways in which the obligation to provide information about potential treatments could be supported.

St Cross Seminar: "I wouldn’t have consented if I’d known that could happen": Consenting without Understanding 

How best to govern the field of assisted reproductive technologies? As UK and US authorities utilise different approaches, will the disparate structures and missions of these two bodies result in significantly different answers? In the past few decades, technologically advanced, democratic societies have struggled with the question of how best to govern the field of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). The UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) embody two approaches that highlight the degree of diversity in answering this question. While British politicians fashioned the HFEA as a statutory authority built upon ideals of deliberative democracy, the US has avoided federal regulations on ART, leaving the ASRM - a professional self-regulating society - with the sole responsibility for producing guidelines. Both bodies, however, utilize a deliberative committee to debate and determine rules for ART. Drawing on interviews with committee members of the HFEA and ASRM, this talk will focus on opening these largely opaque deliberative spaces. When examining ethical arguments for and against certain procedures, what reasons do members consider to be "good" reasons, and how do they legitimate such judgements? How do members conceive of the general public and how does this conception affect the role of public perspectives in deliberations and final decisions? Perhaps most importantly, do the disparate structures and missions of these two bodies result in significantly different answers to these questions?

Opening the Black Box: Examining the Deliberation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the UK and US; Second St Cross Special Ethics Seminar HT13 

In this special lecture, Professor Mitt Regan discusses the latest research in moral perception and judgment, and the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular. In November 2005, an improvised explosive device destroyed a vehicle in a US Marine Corps convoy, killing one man and seriously injuring another.  Less than a minute later, Sergeant Frank Wuterich saw five unarmed Iraqi men standing by a car about fifteen meters away. The men were unarmed, and made no move to advance toward him, nor did they exhibit any hostile behavior. Wuterich later described what happened next: “I took a knee in the road and fired. Engaging was the only choice. The threat had to be neutralized.” The five men whom Wuterich killed were four college students and a driver they had hired to take them to class.  The white car in effect was a taxi, although not marked as such. No weapons were found in the car.On one account, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he allowed himself to be overcome by emotions of fear and anger that were untempered by reason.  This account is consistent with an influential understanding of moral behavior as a product of higher-order cognitive processes that distinguish us from other creatures.  As humans, we can be held responsible for failing to use reason to bring our emotions under control. On another account, however, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he responded to the situation with the wrong kind of emotion. This account posits that emotions have a cognitive component, and that individuals can be held responsible for the kinds of emotional responses that they habitually exhibit in specific situations. This lecture will discuss research in neuroscience and psychology that provides support for this account by emphasizing the importance of affective computational processes that are closely associated with moral perception and judgment. It will then discuss the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular.

In this special lecture, Professor Mitt Regan discusses the latest research in moral perception and judgment, and the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular. In November 2005, an improvised explosive device destroyed a vehicle in a US Marine Corps convoy, killing one man and seriously injuring another. Less than a minute later, Sergeant Frank Wuterich saw five unarmed Iraqi men standing by a car about fifteen meters away. The men were unarmed, and made no move to advance toward him, nor did they exhibit any hostile behavior. Wuterich later described what happened next: “I took a knee in the road and fired. Engaging was the only choice. The threat had to be neutralized.” The five men whom Wuterich killed were four college students and a driver they had hired to take them to class. The white car in effect was a taxi, although not marked as such. No weapons were found in the car. On one account, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he allowed himself to be overcome by emotions of fear and anger that were untempered by reason. This account is consistent with an influential understanding of moral behavior as a product of higher-order cognitive processes that distinguish us from other creatures. As humans, we can be held responsible for failing to use reason to bring our emotions under control. On another account, however, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he responded to the situation with the wrong kind of emotion. This account posits that emotions have a cognitive component, and that individuals can be held responsible for the kinds of emotional responses that they habitually exhibit in specific situations. This lecture will discuss research in neuroscience and psychology that provides support for this account by emphasizing the importance of affective computational processes that are closely associated with moral perception and judgment. It will then discuss the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular.

One Minute in Haditha: Neuroscience, Emotion and Military Ethics 

Sinnott-Armstrong is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Ethics at Duke University.  In this inaugural workshop, professors from Duke University presented papers in Oxford in June 2015.

Moral Conformity 

Resilience

Professor Seumas Miller sets out how the use of lethal and coercive forces may erode moral character and cause moral injury. According to leading psychiatrist Jonathan Shay whose patients are US war veterans, “Moral injury is an essential part of any combat trauma that leads to lifelong psychological injury. Veterans can usually recover from horror, fear and grief so long as ”what’s right” has also not been violated”. The focus of this paper is on moral injury in both military combatants and police officers. The role of combatants and that of police officer both necessarily involve the use of harmful methods – paradigmatically, the use of lethal force in the case of combatants, the use of coercive force, deception and the like in the case of police officers - in the service of good ends, notably national self-defence and law enforcement, respectively. However, the use of these methods sets up a dangerous moral dynamic, including so-called dirty hands/dirty harry scenarios, and the possibility of the erosion of moral character - and, in some cases, moral injury.

The Ethics of Stress, Resilience, and Moral Injury Among Police and Military Personnel 

Paper presented Pedro Jesús Pérez Zafrilla the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics Workshop. Exploring various themes in neuroethics, the MT16 Oxford-Valencia Neuroethics showcased the wealth of philosophical research at Valencia and Oxford.

Moral Reasoning is Not Like a Dog's Tail: A Critical Analysis of Social Intuitionism's Two Illusions of Moral Deliberation 

Is 'gig work' exploitative and injust?  In this New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Daniel Halliday examines the common concerns from an ethical perspective. Recent advances in communication economy have created new ways for consumers to access service labour. Those who own the platforms associated with these services typically do not employ their workers, but treat them as freelance or 'gig' workers. This has led to a popular complaint that gig work is exploitative or otherwise unjust, and that the platforms need to regulated so that their workers qualify as employees. Many people now boycott the platforms using gig work, or feel uncomfortable about using it. But it is not obvious what the connection is between gig work and injustice or exploitation per se. After all, gig work has always been around in many other forms, and much of it compares favourably with employment in firms. This is not to dismiss the concern that many have with particular kinds of gig work, only to observe that the problem is complicated and calls for more detailed moral theorizing. At bottom, what's needed is a proper theory of what the difference between employment and freelance/gig work is supposed to be, and what moral purpose it serves. This talk will aim to make some progress in this direction.

Is there a Moral Problem with the Gig Economy? 

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