News and events
Conference Announcement
Intuition, theory, and anti-theory in ethics Edinburgh, July 3-4 2010
Registrations are now open for this conference.
Our speakers are:
Talbot Brewer (University of Virginia)
John Cottingham (University of Reading)
Jonathan Dancy (University of Reading/ Texas)
Brad Hooker (University of Reading)
Edward Harcourt (Keble College, Oxford)
James Lenman (University of Sheffield)
Tim Mulgan (University of St Andrews)
Michael Ridge (University of Edinburgh) & Sean McKeever (Davidson College, NC, USA)
Tom Sorell (University of Birmingham)
Sergio Tenenbaum (University of Toronto)
Alan Thomas (University of Kent)
Venue: The Informatics Conference Centre, George Square, Edinburgh
Jointly organised by the Philosophy Departments, The Open University and The University of Edinburgh
With thanks to The Mind Association, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, The Scots Philosophical Association, and The Open University for their support.
Registration:
Fee £50; students and unwaged £25
To register simply email m.leroux@open.ac.uk, stating your intention to attend. Your place will be held for you on receipt of payment.
We advise early registration as space will be limited. This being Edinburgh in July, we also advise delegates to give early attention to the question of accommodation.
Discussion on the abolition of capital punishment (podcast)
December 16th 2009 sees the 40th anniversary of the abolition in the UK of capital punishment for the crime of murder. In this specially recorded discussion, Dr. Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The Open University, Professor Gary Slapper, Director of the Centre for Law at The Open University and Professor Barbara Hudson, Director of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Central Lancashire explore some of the fundamental issues underpinning our attitudes to this most severe of punishments. You can listen to this discussion on iTunes U or on OU Podcasts.
Against Charity: Slavoj Žižek at the Royal Society of Arts
Nigel Warburton chaired a discussion with the renowned Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek at the Royal Society of Arts on Tuesday 24 November 2009. Žižek – radical philosopher, polymath, film star, and author of over 30 books – is one of the most controversial and leading contemporary public intellectuals. He asks the question: if we can pour billions of dollars into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization, why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis?
You can download or listen to a recording from the Royal Society of Arts website.
CANCELLED: Pavis Lecture 2009
Professor Onora O'Neill (Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve)
Making Reason Public: Necessary Conditions for Dialogue and Discourse
Unfortunately, the Department of Sociology at the Open University much regrets it has had to cancel the forthcoming 2009 Pavis Lecture which was to have taken place on November 4th 2009.
The Pavis Lecturer for 2009, Professor Onora O’Neill (Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve), with great regret has had to withdraw from speaking on November 4th because her amendments to the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, Report Stage, will be debated in the House of Lords on the same date and she will speak to these amendments in person.
We hope to be able to reschedule Professor O’Neill’s lecture “Making Reason Public: Necessary Conditions for Dialogue and Discourse” at another time and will advise you accordingly. Professor O’Neill expresses her regrets and apologies.
We much regret any inconvenience you have experienced in consequence of this change of plan, which we learned about yesterday Monday October 26th, and share the regret and disappointment which doubtless you feel. We look forward to welcoming you to the Open University and the Pavis Lecture at another time.
Professor Richard Collins
Department of Sociology
The Open University
Call for Papers:
Ethics, Energy and the Future:
Technology for a Sustainable Society
June 24th-26th 2010
Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
Abstract Deadline: February 15th, 2010
Keynote Speakers include:
Simon Caney, University of Oxford
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington
Axel Gosseries, University of Louvain
Jeroen van den Hoven, 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology
Andrew Light, George Mason University
Henry Shue, University of Oxford
Climate change is one of the most urgent problems the world is currently facing. It is commonly
agreed that the world’s energy consumption lies at the heart of the problem. In order to meet the
challenges of a sustainable lifestyle, multidisciplinary decisions with regard to energy provision and
energy-consumption need to be made. This conference focuses on the ethical, political and economic
issues of such solutions and aims at bringing together researchers from engineering sciences,
philosophy and social sciences.
New energy technologies and policies raise various ethical and societal issues. Amongst them are questions relating to the just distribution of burden and benefits, public concerns and acceptance of various energy technologies, the risks and uncertainties associated with different technical options, and the appropriate criteria for assessing various technologies and policies. These aspects can be divided into four fields of concern.
- Energy technologies and their ethical issues
This track focuses on the ethical considerations relevant to technologies that are proposed to deal with the problem of climate change. Discussions about energy systems, e.g. nuclear power, biofuel, hydrogen, wind and solar energy as well as technological solutions for climate change such as Carbon Capture and Storage and geoengineering are welcomed.
- General ethical issues of sustainability and energy
This track covers general ethical issues of sustainability and energy, including questions of energy consumption, distribution and emissions entitlements. It also covers more fundamental philosophical issues such as what we owe future generations, who bears the responsibility for climate change and what the relevant moral principles are when determining long-term policies.
- Ethics, energy policy and political philosophy
This track includes topics regarding the ethical evaluation of energy policies, such as those which provide 'band aid' solutions rather than long-term solutions. Other relevant issues might include the role of compensation/ education in the implementation of energy policies or the integration of philosophical frameworks (e.g. distributive justice) in political decision making.
- Ethics and economics of climate change and energy technologies
This track welcomes papers which focus on ethical considerations in discussing economic aspects of environmental decision making. Contributions on cost-benefit analysis, the discount rate, emissions trading, risk and uncertainty in the case of future generations as well as other topics that deal with ethics and economics of energy are welcomed.
We invite you to contribute a paper in any of these four areas. Abstracts should be between 500 and 1000 words and should be sent to the contact address before February 15th, 2010. A limited number of scholarships to the value of €500 each will be made available to students who present a paper at the conference to help cover travel and accommodation costs; see the website.
www.ethicsandtechnology.eu/sustainability
Sustainability@ethicsandtechnology.eu
Philosophy Department Senior Seminar
Dr Edward Harcourt (Keble College Oxford)
'Love and the Origins of Authority in Infancy'
January 13, 2010
The Open University, Milton Keynes
All welcome
Cheating in Sport
The OU's Nigel Warburton was interviewed by Le Monde (21 September 2009) concerning the Singapore Grand Prix race-fixing scandal - Pourquoi les sportifs trichent-ils?
New Open University Ethics Interest Group
Convenors: Alison Higgs, Mary Twomey
Alison Higgs writes:
Thank you to everybody who got back in touch about the new Ethics Interest Group that Mary Twomey and I are setting up. We now have a very good base for getting the group up and running. I'm circulating this e-mail to everyone, in case there are people who missed the first message and would like to join us.
Our initial format will be a short presentation followed by discussion-and we hope that colleagues will feel able to attend whether or not they have knowledge of, or particular views about, the ethical issues that we are going to be looking at. Meetings will generally be held over lunchtime, so please bring lunch.
The first meeting will take place on Monday November 9, in Horlock 203, from 11.30 to 1.30. I'm going to start off with 'Assisted Suicide - what's missing from the debate?'.
The second meeting will take place on January 28, again in Horlock 203, 12.30 to 2.30. Mary will be leading on 'What's different about feminist ethics?'
Future dates:
24/03/10, Horlock 203, 12.30 to 2.30
19/05/10, Horlock 203, 12.30 to 2.30
14/07/10, Horlock 203, 12.30 to 2.30
We hope that colleagues from all the nations and regions will take part, so please let me know if you will be joining us in person or by video link so that I can arrange this.
Please let me know as well, if there are specific subjects you would like to discuss and/or to present at future meetings.
a.higgs@open.ac.uk
Call for Papers for a Special Issue with Ethics and Information Technology on “ICT and the capability approach”
Some influential theories of distributive justice, fairness and equality, like that of John Rawls, discuss fair distribution in terms of shares of primary goods available to people. The main criticism of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum of these views is that it is not the goods that are ultimately important, but what they allow us to do and be, the kind of lives they enable us to live. Giving everyone a laptop or some other piece of technology is no good in and by itself, according to their ‘capability approach’. Some people will be able to make good use of it and increase their level of functioning, whereas others who are for example illiterate or do not have access to a reliable power supply cannot possibly convert their possession of this particular technology into anything useful in their lives. Human functioning and capabilities are therefore at the centre of the work of Nussbaum and Sen. The capability approach is thoroughly normative, since it demands that people are brought to a minimum level of capabilities necessary to lead flourishing lives.
Although the capability approach has been widely adopted in development thinking, hardly any work has been done on the interrelations between the capability approach and technology. This is remarkable, since technology by definition aims at expanding human capabilities. In recent years, however, publications have started emerging on this topic, most of them concerned with ICT and more in particular with ICT and developing countries. A possible reason for this may be the high expectations regarding the positive contributions ICT will make in issues concerning development and global justice. One of the icons of ‘ICT for Development’ or e-development is the poor farmer in a developing country who now has access to crop prizes thanks to his mobile phone and as a result can eliminate the middlemen. The capability approach may be able to provide a lens through which such ICT applications can be critically scrutinized and evaluated.
In this special issue of Ethics and Information Technology the relevance and implications of the capability approach for ICT will further be explored, though not merely confined to the context of developing countries. We invite contributions concerning both theoretical and applied issues from all over the world and with relevance for either Western countries, developing countries, or both.
Some of the issues that can be addressed are the following:
- Case studies about specific ICTs / capabilities / groups of people / contexts
- The capability approach and the digital divide
- System level effects of ICT and the capability approach
- Designing ICT for human capabilities
- The capability approach and evaluation of e-development projects
- Complexity of capability effects of ICT: short versus long term, enabling as well as constraining, etc.
- The tension between agency versus well-being in ICT4D practise
- ICT, objective capabilities, subjective valuations & adaptive preferences
- The capability approach, participation and ICT
- The capability approach, ICT and (neutrality towards) the good life
- ICT and individual / collective / external capabilities
- Applied ontology of ICT and human capabilities
The editors at Ethics and Information Technology are seeking articles for a special issue in this area. Submissions will be double-blind refereed for relevance to the theme as well as academic rigor and originality. High quality articles not deemed to be sufficiently relevant to the special issue may be considered for publication in a subsequent non-themed issue.
Closing date for submissions: February 28nd, 2010 To submit your paper, please use the online submission system, to be found at www.editorialmanager.com/etin.
For any questions or information regarding this special issue, please contact the managing editor, Noëmi Manders-Huits, N.L.J.L.Manders-Huits@tudelft.nl
Ethics and Information Technology (ETIN) is the major journal in the field of moral and political reflection on Information Technology. Its aim is to advance the dialogue between moral philosophy and the field of information technology in a broad sense, and to foster and promote reflection and analysis concerning the ethical, social and political questions associated with the adoption, use, and development of IT.
Call for Papers for a Special Issue with Ethics and Information Technology on "The Case for e-Trust: a New Ethical Challenge"
Trust in digital environments (e-trust) affects the activities of millions of individuals involving a wide range of social dynamics. This pervasive phenomenon raises new ethical problems, such as the occurrence of e-trust relationships between human and artificial agents and the emergence of trust in on-line contexts.
The ethical debate on e-trust has been characterised by the tension between two opposite positions. One considers e-trust as a different phenomenon from trust. It argues that trust requires embodied interactions characterised by emotional, cultural and physical aspects and hence that trust could not arise in digital contexts, where such kinds of interactions are impossible. The other position rejects the assumption of embodied interactions as a necessary condition for the occurrence of trust, and focuses on the analysis of the main characteristics and of the ethical features of e-trust.
The purpose of this special issue of Ethics and Information Technology, entitled “The Case for e-Trust: a New Ethical Challenge”, is to address explicitly the issues concerning the ethical nature of e-trust.
Submitted papers are requested to explore issues concerning the following research questions:
- What are the fundamental and distinctive aspects of e-trust?
- Should e-trust be regarded as an occurrence of trust on-line or as an independent phenomenon in itself?
- What are the ethical implications of e-trust?
- To what extent artificial agents can be involved in an e-trust relationship?
- What is the influence, if any, of the context on the emergence of e-trust?
Submissions will be double-blind refereed for relevance to the theme as well as academic rigor and originality. High quality articles not deemed to be sufficiently relevant to the special issue may be considered for publication in a subsequent non-themed issue of Ethics and Information Technology.
Closing date for submissions: March 1st 2010
To submit your paper, please use the Springer online submission system, to be found at www.editorialmanager.com/etin
Please contact the special guest editors for more information,
Mariarosaria Taddeo, mariarosariataddeo@gmail.com,
Luciano Floridi, luciano.floridi@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Or the managing editor, Noëmi Manders-Huits, N.L.J.L.Manders-Huits@tudelft.nl
Ethics and Information Technology (ETIN) is the major journal in the field of moral and political reflection on Information Technology. Its aim is to advance the dialogue between moral philosophy and the field of information technology in a broad sense, and to foster and promote reflection and analysis concerning the ethical, social and political questions associated with the adoption, use, and development of IT.
The Open University Ethics Centre presents
Integrity in Public Life Lecture Series
The lunchtime lectures on ‘Integrity in Public Life’ are now available online as audio files from the OU Podcast service. Follow this link to listen to or download the lectures. Brief details of the individual lectures are given below.
6 May 2009
Dr John Githongo: The Paradox of Two Recessions
John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner now working as Senior Advisor - Advocacy, World Vision UK, will consider some of the scandals that have come to light as the economic tide has gone out in European business. He will compare the apparent paradox whereby economic upturn and democratic recession have gone together in Africa.
20 May 2009
Lord Butler: Integrity and Politics
Lord Butler will draw on his experience as a previous head of the Civil Service, and lead author of the Butler Report, to discuss the ethical pitfalls facing politicians and civil servants, and how to avoid them.
27 May 2009
Professor John Cottingham: Integrity and Fragmentation
Professor Cottingham, the distinguished philosopher from the University of Reading, will argue that we are harmed by living in a compartmentalised culture. Our institutions are manned by specialists who have mastered a particular field, but are not expected to form a view of the whole. Yet the classical ideal of the unity of the virtues suggests that people cannot live well unless their activities are integrated into a meaningful structure, informed not just by narrow technical expertise but by an overall vision of the good for humankind. We need this idea today.
17 June 2009
Baroness O’Neil: Trustworthiness, Accountability and Character
Baroness O’Neill, cross-bench peer and President of the British Academy, focuses on the place of trust in public life, and explores what we should take as evidence of trustworthiness. Character, codes of conduct and formal systems of accountability can all be helpful for judging trustworthiness, but what can we do when they don’t provide enough evidence?
Ethics Bites podcasts
Some of the most contentious moral issues of today's society are the focus of Ethics Bites - a new series of podcasts from The Open University that features contributions from some of the most eminent commentators in the field drawn from across the world. The latest thinking on issues as diverse as climate change, euthanasia, censorship of the arts and corporate responsibility is drawn together for the series, the first podcast of which will be available from Wednesday 13 February at Open2.net. Subsequent podcasts will be made available weekly on Wednesdays. Applied ethics is a central theme; at the core of each programme in the 14-part series are the connections between the issue and its everyday implications.
The OU Ethics Centre's Blog - Open Minded Ethics - now open
The Blog is now open to all readers at: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OpenMindedEthics/ .
If you would like to comment or blog there, please contact Professor Chappell.
Philosophy graduates are suddenly all the rage with employers. What can they possibly have to offer?
In an article in The Guardian Tuesday November 20, 2007 Jessica Shepherd writes "Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show philosophy graduates, once derided as unemployable layabouts, are in growing demand from employers ... Why, only now, are they so prized by employers?" One answer is that "Graduates of philosophy who come in to graduate-entry medicine, or to nursing courses, are very useful. Growth areas in the NHS include clinical ethicists ... medical ethics committees and ethics training courses for staff are also growing." Read the full article online.
Ethics Centre Director's Inaugural Lecture available online
Timothy Chappell, Director of the Ethics Centre, gave his Inaugural Lecture as The Open University's Professor of Philosophy on September 26. His Lecture, entitled "Forgiveness", is available as a webcast.
Ethics Matters: Managing Ethical Issues in Higher Education
This guide, available to download as a PDF (281 KB), is designed to help UK higher education institutions (HEIs) tackle ethical matters within and throughout their organisations. It is written for anyone who wishes to develop or has responsibility for developing or revising an institution’s approach to ethical issues. The focus of the guide is on the ethical behaviour of an institution and its staff and students. It does not cover the teaching of ethics in the curriculum. Follow this link for the Council for Industry and Higher Education’s website on Ethical Issues in Higher Education.
InterCAPE Affiliation
Since October 2006 The Open University Ethics Centre has been affiliated to InterCAPE, The International Network for Teaching and associated Research in Comparative, Applied and Professional Ethics.
Past Events
Conference on Death: what it is and why it matters
Ethics Centre members Carolyn Price and Chris Belshaw (both of the Philosophy Department, The Open University) organised a conference on "Death: what it is and why it matters" at York, July 17-18 2008. Follow this link for abstracts and some papers.
OU Ethics seminar series
This seminar series provides an opportunity for many people across the University, working in a wide range of disciplines, to exchange ideas and to discuss work in progress in a cross-disciplinary forum. Follow this link to find out about past and planned seminars and to read some of the accompanying presentations.
Ethics in Real Life
The inaugural conference and centre launch was held on 23 May 2007. Follow this link for details of the programme and related presentations and to view a webcast of the presentations.
From the Director's diary
Follow this link for details of talks and papers by the Centre's director.