We have a moral duty to allow others to make ‘transformative choices’ such as changing careers, migrating and having children, a new study argues. This duty can be outweighed by competing moral considerations such as preventing murder but in many cases we should interfere with far greater caution.
Dr Paulina Sliwa argues that intentions are the key to making sense of our everyday morality.
In the outrage that erupted when an American dentist killed a lion, the trophy hunter was branded a 'monster'. Natalie Lawrence, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, explores notions of the monstrous and how they tie into ideas about morality.
Charities want your time and not just your money: new study identifies factors that lessen ‘time aversion’ in charitable giving.
Human stem cell research holds promise for combating some of the most recalcitrant of diseases and for regenerating damaged bodies. It is also an ethical, legal and political minefield.
Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the ‘anthropology of the good’.
The process of giving and receiving (and being in debt) is an inescapable part of human experience. From sub-prime lending and student loans to organ donations and gift-giving in ancient cultures, a conference at Cambridge this week will explore how debt is a central feature of the way in which societies think about and organise themselves.
They’ve had viewers cowering behind the sofa since ‘Doctor Who’ began – but what exactly is it that makes people so frightened of the Daleks? A new study by a Cambridge researcher claims to have the answer.
Miranda Gill traces shifting 19th-century perceptions of eccentricity, from its association with the intoxicating lure of modernity and fashion to the murky underworld of circus freaks and half-mad visionaries.
A prolific writer and champion of accessible philosophy, Simon Blackburn was honoured this year by the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his significant contributions to academia. His esteemed career has taken him full circle - from his arrival at Trinity College to study Moral Sciences as an undergraduate in 1962, to his return to the same college as Professor of Philosophy in 2001.
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