Uehiro Oxford Institute

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Tom Buller reflects on the causal relationship between movement goals and bodily awareness and challenges the idea that BMI-enabled movement and intentional bodily movement are equal actions. Individuals who have suffered a significant loss of motor function as a result, for example, of spinal cord injury are now able to regain a degree of sensorimotor control through the use of a brain-machine interface (BMI). A BMI decodes intact neural signals to extract voluntary motor commands that reflect the individual's movement intentions, and uses the processed signal to control an external device or the individual's own body. BMIs have been described as a (novel) way to 'translate thought into action.' Accordingly, we should regard BMI-enabled control of a robotic (or biological) limb and a standard case of intentional bodily movement as equally providing examples of action, for in both cases we have bodily movement that is causally related to the individual's belief, desires, and movement goals. This description can be challenged, however, by reflection upon the nature of the causal relationship and the role of bodily awareness. According to an influential line of thought, in order for an action to occur it is not sufficient that the intention merely causes the bodily movement; rather, action requires that the cause be of the 'right type' such that the movement is directly related and appropriately sensitive to the individual's intentions. The argument can be made, however, that present BMIs does not meet this condition: first, indirect BMIs that co-opt neural signals that are not intrinsically related to the intended movement lack this direct relationship; second, although direct BMIs that decode movement parameters possess this relationship, the lack of sensorimotor feedback suggests that the causal connection is 'deviant,' for the BMI serves as an unreliable causal intermediary.

In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Anne Schwenkebecher discusses morally wrongful collective inaction and the problem of group-based ignorance. Some of the many things that we could do together with others but fail to do are morally wrongful inactions. While the list of our – individual and collective – non-actions is infinite, not everything that I (or we) fail to do is some form of inaction that is plausibly attributable to me (or us). ‘Collective inaction’ is the unintended failure of two or more agents to perform a collective action or produce a joint outcome where that action or outcome was collectively feasible and where the individual agents had group-based reasons to perform (or produce) it. In a second step we will discuss the role that ignorance plays in excusing morally wrongful collective inaction. We identify three different kinds of collective knowledge (common, pooled, or public) and corresponding types of group-based ignorance. We conclude by showing that inaction is excusable where ignorance sufficiently weakens agents’ group-based reasons for action.

OUC-Ethox Seminar. Steve Clarke discusses Ronald Dworkin's account of sacred values in his work 'Life's Dominion' and furthers the argument that the assertion 'life is sacred' is tenable by both liberals and conservatives. In his Life’s Dominion (1993) Ronald Dworkin developed an original approach to understanding public debates between liberals and conservatives about the morality of abortion and euthanasia. Conservative opponents of abortion and euthanasia usually invoke the ‘sanctity of life doctrine’ and these debates have often been characterized as turning on whether we should accept that that all human life is sacred, as this doctrine implies. However, Dworkin argued that all mainstream participants in public (but not academic) debates about the morality of abortion and euthanasia accept that life is sacred and that these public debates should be characterized as being over the relative merits of competing liberal and conservative accounts of what the assertion ‘life is sacred’ means and what follows from it. When Life’s Dominion appeared in 1993 it attracted a lot of attention, but most who attended to it, were not won over. A sticking point was Dworkin’s account of sacred values, which was idiosyncratic and unrelated to any of the existing treatments of sacred values, due to theologians, anthropologists, or psychologists. Here I offer a qualified defense of Dworkin. I’ll argue that recent work on sacred values, in anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, gives us good grounds for thinking that the view that life is sacred is held by very many liberals, as well as by mainstream conservatives, and that it is plausible to characterize public debates about abortion and euthanasia as turning on the relative plausibility of competing accounts of what the assertion ‘life is sacred’ means.

A St Cross Special Ethics Seminar. Professor John-Stewart Gordon focusses on the question of whether moral experts must follow their own expert advice in order to remain experts. The lively topic of whether moral expertise and moral experts exist has been vividly discussed in recent contributions in ethics and, particularly, in bioethics. I hold the view that moral expertise exists and that some moral philosophers can be considered as moral experts in the full sense, who have moral expertise, while some are not. In this talk, however, I focus on the question of whether moral experts must follow their own expert advice in order to remain experts. This is an important issue because my analysis will respond to the vital question of whether a "moral expert" has (necessarily) both cognitive and practical skills in order to be considered a proper moral expert.

In this double seminar, Erasmus visitors Laurentiu Staicu and Emanuel-Mihail Socaciua discuss the rise of biomedical technology and some of the legal issues of moral bioenhancement 'The rise of postmedicine: some ethical concerns regarding biomedical technology'. Traditional medicine is bound by a moral duty to treat patients with compassion and to combine all medical interventions and treatments with caring as a fundamental attitude toward the patient. That's because the patient is seen as a person who needs help in recovering his or hers well-being, and any person should be treated with care and respect. However, what happens when patients are seen as medical puzzles which need to be solved rather than people in need? Can we treat a puzzle with care and compassion? The use of biomedical technology in medical treatments brought a spectacular increase in efficiency, but what are the moral costs of this increased efficiency? (Speaker: Laurentiu Staicu)

'How Drug Patents Might Lead to Disincentives for Moral Bioenhancement'. Biological moral enhancement (BME) and intellectual property (IP) might seem two entirely distinct areas. While BME refers to moral enhancement techniques which presuppose the use of biological means, the moral and legal debate surrounding IP tries to tackle the issue of whether ideas could/should be appropriated. In our paper we wish to link the two debates by exploring the consequences of the current IP and patent system in relation to the propensity of individuals to become morally enhanced through drugs or other pharmaceutical compounds. If artificial scarcity is one of the intended consequences of patents, we argue in favor of the following (weak) thesis: intellectual property rights provide noticeable disincentives for individual and voluntary moral bioenhancement.(Speaker: Emanuel-Mihail Socaciua)

In this talk, Eric Schwitzgebel considers whether it's acceptable to aim for peer-relative mediocrity. Most of us aim to be morally mediocre. That is, we aim to be about as morally good as our peers, not especially better, not especially worse. This mediocrity has two aspects. It is peer-relative rather than absolute, and it is middling rather than extreme. We look around us, notice how others are acting, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it's not a terribly bad way to be. We ought to be somewhat disappointed in ourselves. A possibly helpful comparison is being mediocre in other things you care about intensely: being a mediocre parent, a mediocre friend, a mediocre teacher, a mediocre philosopher.

In this episode, Brian Earp discusses the 'Reproducibility Project' and questions whether psychology is in crisis or not. In a much-discussed New York Times article, psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett claimed, “Psychology is not in crisis.” She was responding to the results of a large-scale initiative called the Reproducibility Project, published in Science magazine, which appeared to show that the results from over 60% of a sample of 100 psychology studies did not hold up when independent labs attempted to replicate them. In this talk, Earp addresses three issues: what did the Reproducibility Project really show?; is psychology in crisis or not?; and is there room for improvement?

In this talk, Professor John Paris asks "What is the historical meaning of "ordinary means" to sustain human life? And what has been the understanding for over 500 years of Catholic moral analysis of the obligation to sustain life?" Is it, as Pope John Paul II insisted in an allocution to a meeting of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life in March, 2000 that food and water must always be provided for patients in a persistent vegetative condition (PVS). Artificial nutrition and fluids, he writes, are not medical measure, but "natural" and therefor are "ordinary means" that are always morally required." PVS is a state of permanent unconsciousness. The record for maintaining a patient in that condition is 37 years, 111 days.

JOHN J. PARIS, S.J., PhD is the Michael P. Walsh Professor of Bioethics at Boston College. He has also been Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA (1970-1990), Adjunct Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA (1982-1994) and Clinical Professor of Family and Community Health, Tufts University, Boston, MA 1985-1998) and has been a visiting scholar at Yale Law School, The Kennedy Institute of Ethics, The University of Chicago Medical School, Georgetown University School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a visiting professor at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University's School of Medicine. Fr. Paris served as consultant to the President's Commission for the Study of Ethics in Medicine, the United States Senate Committee on Aging, and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He has published over 190 articles on the area of law, medicine and ethics in publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Journal of Intensive Care Medicine, Pediatrics, Archives of Diseases of Childhood, The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), The Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics (CQ) and The Wall Street Journal. He is the Ethics Section Editor of The Journal of Perinatology. Fr. Paris served as a consultant and expert witness in many of the landmark biomedical cases including Quinlan, Baby L, Brophy, Jobes, Baby K and Gilgunn.

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.

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.