By Terry Newell from Huffington Post "On March 4, 1865, with the Civil War finally approaching a victorious conclusion, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. Rather than satisfy the audience's thirst for celebration and revenge, Lincoln gave a sermon on the meaning of the war...

By Julian Baggini from The Independent "As soon as the identity of the Cumbria killer became known, people immediately started to ask what kind of man Derrick Bird was. And there were always going to be only two possible answers. Almost every perpetrator of an atrocity is assigned the role of either...

By Brian Palmer from Slate "Leaving aside the question of medical ethics, did any useful science ever come out of Nazi experiments on unwilling subjects? Very little. Concentration camp doctors conducted research on vaccines, antibiotics, fertility, transplantation, and eugenics. The majority of...

By Moheb Costandi from Seed "Brooklyn defense attorney David Zevin almost made legal history last month by attempting to submit functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data as evidence that a key witness was telling the truth. Zevin was defending Cynette Wilson, who claimed that the temping...

By James Risen from The New York Times "Medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogations of terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of medical ethics and domestic and international law, according to a new...

From The Economist To create life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine...

By Michelle Roberts from BBC News. "Brain scans could be useful as lie detectors to show if a witness lies when identifying a suspect in a crime investigation, US researchers believe. Scientists at Stanford University were able to tell when a person recognised a mug shot by reading their brain waves...

By Belinda Luscombe from Time. "In the age of hyperengaged parenting, globalization and the Internet, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has become a freighted organization. Every position statement released by the group — whether about ***-feeding, autism or obesity — sends waves of fury...

By David Berreby from BigThink. "Nick Kristof has an idea for fixing the Catholic Church: Turn it "upside down"! Take power away from the "old boys' club" at the Vatican, where a dark cloud hovers because of the way the old boys handle sexually abusive priests. Give the scepter...

By Marcelo Gleiser from NPR . "Is ethics part of this core-self? I dare speculate that, yes, some people have higher ethical standards than others. They will carry such standards wherever they go, whatever they do. Can such standards be tempered by events in life, education, relationships etc.?...

By Ingvild Almås, Alexander W. Cappelen, Erik Ø. Sørensen, Bertil Tungodden "Fairness considerations fundamentally affect human behavior, but our understanding of the nature and development of people’s fairness preferences is limited. The dictator game has been the standard experimental design for...

By Karl Sigmund "How does cooperation emerge among selfish individuals? When do people share resources, punish those they consider unfair, and engage in joint enterprises? These questions fascinate philosophers, biologists, and economists alike, for the "invisible hand" that should turn...

By Robert Sparrow "Since the first sex reassignment operations were performed, individual sex has come to be, to some extent at least, a technological artifact. The existence of sperm sorting technology, and of prenatal determination of fetal sex via ultrasound along with the option of termination...

By Frans Svensson "Conceived of as a contender to other theories in substantive ethics, virtue ethics is often associated with, in essence, the following account or criterion of right action: VR: An action A is right for S in circumstances C if and only if a fully virtuous agent would characteristically...

By Bridget Clarke "One of the most prominent strands in contemporary work on the virtues consists in the attempt to develop a distinctive—and compelling—account of practical reason on the basis of Aristotle’s ethics. In response to this project, several eminent critics have argued that the Aristotelian...

By Ragnar Francén "Motivational externalists and internalists of various sorts disagree about the circumstances under which it is conceptually possible to have moral opinions but lack moral motivation. Typically, the evidence referred to are intuitions about whether people in certain scenarios who...

By Gregory F. Mellema "There have traditionally been two schools of thought regarding moral ideals and their relationship with moral duty. First, many have held that moral agents at all times have a duty or obligation to realize or attain moral ideals, or at least they have a duty to strive to realize...

By Tzvi Novick This article examines aspects of "scholastic" ethics in tannaitic literature, in particular, the notion that one who is engaged in legal discussion should readily admit ignorance, and should concede to the truth. While centering on mAvot 5.7, the article traces developments in...

By Elisa Aaltola Animal ethics has tended to follow an analytical approach and has focused much attention on moral reason and theory. Recently, some have argued this to be a fundamental problem. The 'paradigmatic account' claims that instead of reason and theory, ethics ought to emphasize common...

By Traci Warkentin This paper explores a philosophical praxis of paying attention, and the importance of bodily comportment, in human-animal interactions. It traces some of the beginnings of the notion of attentiveness as it has arisen in contemporary Western environmental and animal ethics, and its...