Neil Sinclair
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Bias and Blame – New Leverhulme Trust project for Department of Philosophy
December 19, 2013
By Jules Holroyd. The Leverhulme Trust has awarded a 36 month grant to the University of Nottingham, for a project led by Dr Jules Holroyd (Department of Philosophy, Nottingham), in collaboration with Dr Tom Stafford (Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield) titled “Bias and Blame: Do Moral Interactions Modulate the Expression of Implicit Bias?”. The …
Biodiversity Offsetting and Extrinsic Properties
November 28, 2013
In September the UK government published a consultation paper on “biodiversity offsetting”. This is a mechanism whereby damage to one part of the natural environment (in the process of development) is compensated for by nurturing or creating a different part of the natural environment. Nottinghamshire is involved in the piloting phase. The scheme raises the …
Harm and Climate Change, Part II
July 29, 2013
Some of the people affected by climate change (see the IPCC report) are yet to be born. These people will not first experience a planet and way of life unaffected by climate change, only to see that verdant utopia snatched away. Rather, they will only ever experience a degraded planet and way of life. In …
Morality: What is it good for?
June 17, 2013
At his press conference concerning the current crisis in Syria yesterday, David Cameron said: ‘It is no secret that President Putin and I have had our disagreements on some of these issues, but what I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognise that we share some fundamental …
Harm and Climate Change, Part 1
May 13, 2013
The recent report about atmospheric C02 levels reaching the symbolic level of 400 parts per million calls attention to some of the issues dealt with in the Philosophy Department’s Environmental Ethics module. Suppose you are engaged in an activity that causes significant harm to others. It forces them out of their homes, raises the cost …
Measles, Mill, Madoff
April 26, 2013
What can the state legitimately compel its citizens to do? This is not a question about the means of compulsion (e.g. criminal vs. civil law; incentives vs. penalties) but the question of whether such compulsion is ever justified. There are good reasons to think not. One is that it is usually the individual who is …
