Many have spent their careers defending the overpopulation thesis so they double-down in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

'Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society.'

Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato nytimes.com/2024/05/19/opi…

Is this the beginning of a free speech renaissance?

NYT: “It has not gone unnoticed…that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful…Establishing a culture of openness and free

“Most patients whose life support was continued died anyway in the hospital, within about six days. But 42 percent who continued life support recovered enough in the next year to have some degree of independence.”

nytimes.com/2024/05/17/hea…

This is a very sad case but it only confirms the need for laws that constrain choice and prohibit euthanasia when someone can only see reasons for despair.

theguardian.com/society/articl…

Beautiful passage from Augustine's City of God on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heavenly city.

'You would like to attain faith and do not know the way...Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.' Blaise Pascal.

Hot off the press by The Institute for Ethics in AI’s Distinguished Senior Scientist Nigel Shadbolt and co-author Roger Hampson. Promises to be a powerful dose of sanity in the discussion of AI, and finely written like their previous book, The Digital Ape.

My paper 'Faith and rational deference to authority' is now out in Philosophy & Phenomenological Research. I argue that it can be rational to defer to an authority even when the authority's pronouncement goes against your own reasoning.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ph…

This feels kinda necessary?

Today I received an invitation to be on the editorial board of a real bioethics journal. After several hundred emails from predatory journals I almost deleted it 😆

I'm looking forward to Charles Taylor's new big book 'Cosmic Connections: Poetry in an Age of Disenchantment' (Harvard University Press) coming out next week. I'm especially looking forward to the chapters on Hopkins and Eliot. It's amazing he is still publishing books like this at 93!

This excellent paper examines the recent Law Commissions’ proposals on surrogacy, which show two key phenomena:
👉🏻 The ‘liberal’ ideology putting ‘autonomy’ and ‘choice’ over welfare for vulnerable women & children;
👉🏻 Institutional capture by this ideology.

Be sure to read!👇🏻

Director of Research, Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford - Minerva buff.ly/4bbvpI8

This is an important new frontier in respect for the dignity of the deceased: regulation of AI 'deadbots'.

theguardian.com/technology/art…