Title: Risk, Ambiguity, and Ethical Decision-Making Abstract: I argue that it can be rational to defer to an authority about what to believe or what to do even when doing so goes against one’s own reasoning. Indeed, such deference is rational in typical cases in which individuals treat others as authorities: for example, experts in ... Read more

Location: Edgecliffe G03 Title: Green Bioethics: Environmental Sustainability and Health Care Commentator: Joseph Millum (St Andrews) Abstract: Health care is ubiquitous in the industrialized world. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment. By 2017, the National Health Service’s Health, and Social Care sectors had a carbon output (CO2) of 27.1 million tons. Carbon ... Read more

Location: Edgecliffe G03 Title: Is the future a utility monster? Abstract: I will revisit Nozick’s utility monster thought experiment and draw an analogy between imagined utility monsters and the long-term future. I argue that the far future can be seen as a real-life utility monster. This is the case if the three premises that form the ... Read more

Title: Threshold Deontology: Some Lessons from Vagueness Abtract: Threshold Deontology is the view that the positive consequences of an act do not normally override moral constraints, but when the positive balance of the consequences of an act is sufficiently great, it may be morally permitted, and possibly required to engage in an act that is ... Read more