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MORALITY
American psychologists have released a study claiming that there is a strong link between exposure to science and moral behavior.
The 'yuk' factor can sometimes play a decisive role in our moral assessments. But how reliable a guide are our visceral reactions of disgust?
Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer and a research assistant, Agata Sagan, proposed a “morality pill” in a column in the New York Times this week. They speculate that moral behaviour is at least in part biochemically determined. Hence, it should be possible to engineer moral behaviour with drugs. Here is the scenario that they paint:
In a curious turn of moralising, UK researchers have called for films depicting smoking to be R-rated.
The New York Times philosophy blog likes edgy topics like does truth matter, isn’t it all relative, and can we have morals without God? The latest edgy assertion comes from bioethicist Joel Marks, a scholar at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale University, who has recently swung around to the view that there is no difference between right and wrong.
Harvard neuroscientist Marc D. Hauser, a popular teacher and writer, will resign on August 1. Nearly a year ago an internal investigation found him guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct and in April the psychology department voted not to allow him to teach when classes begin in the fall.
Do the errors have an innocent explanation?
Peter Singer and Sam Harris on the new science of morality
Frans de Waal sceptical of how good a job science will do
Marc D. Hauser admits errors
Marc D. Hauser allegedly involved in academic misconduct
David Brooks is fascinated by a scientific explanation of good and bad
Harvard experts show Newsweek readers that morality is all in your head
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