On All Saints Day in 1755 the earth quaked beneath the city of Lisbon. Crowds rushed to open spaces near the sea only to be engulfed by a tsunami. The philosopher Voltaire lamented the tragedy in his Poem…
There is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between moral and ethical decisions.
Helga Weber
Certain customs or behaviours are recognised as good and others as bad, and these collectively comprise morality – arguably the summation of our value system as human beings. So a conversation about ethical…
Philosophy begins, as Aristotle remarked, with curiosity and wonder.
kozumel
You’re a free thinker – congratulations – but does that mean you can, and should, approach everything with an open mind? Let me try to convince you you shouldn’t. I do not want to argue with him: he shows…
Our relationship with non-human animals must be understood as a question of morality.
Patrick Bouquet/Flickr
The traditional point of view in western intellectual thought – and one which is reflected in our own day-to–day views – is that of human exceptionalism, or anthropocentrism: the belief that humans are…
The word morality makes people uneasy – but not ethics. What is the basis of a moral education?
Flood G/Flickr
The human animal takes a remarkably long time to reach maturity. And we cram a lot of learning into that time, as well we should: the list of things we need to know by the time we hit adulthood in order…
Good moral character comes from practice.
Moyan Brenn
When we think of morally upright, virtuous citizens, do we imagine boring do-gooders? Is the idea of being virtuous out-dated and old-fashioned? Or is “being virtuous” still something we should aspire…
George Pell insists it is individual moral failures that are the root of the Catholic Church’s problems.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
It is the long-held view of Cardinal George Pell and other senior Catholic officials that the sexual abuse crisis is an issue primarily about the moral failure of individual priests and not related to…
FIFA’s decision to hand Luis Suarez a four month ban for biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini has sealed Suarez’s place as the villain of World Cup 2014. The incident has provoked outrage across the…
Genetics is just the latest specialist knowledge threatening to take the question of criminal responsibility away from law and hand it over to science.
Graham/Flickr
Welcome to Biology and Blame, a series of articles examining historical and current influences on the notion of criminal responsibility. Today, Arlie Loughnan considers the challenge to the legal system…
Old school isn’t always best.
Zurijeta via Shutterstock
Richard Walden, chairman of the Independent Schools Association, has claimed that state schools fail to provide pupils with a “moral compass” because of a relentless focus on exam results and league tables…
Get used to it: 100-year sentences enjoy popular support.
Amanda Slater
David Cameron plunged into the criminal punishment debate recently by throwing his support around proposals to impose incredibly long sentences (100 years or so) for some murders as a way to circumvent…
Prisoners are having sex whether we like it or not and a lack of condoms affects us all.
PA/Barry Batchelor
The idea of prisoners having sex upsets people; it offends our sense that prison is a place of punishment not pleasure. But sex still happens, maybe more than we like to think. And if it is happening…
There is mounting evidence that babies might have more of a moral compass than we once thought.
Baby image from www.shutterstock.com
Psychologists from Yale and the University of British Columbia think they have found a way to show that infants in their first year of life possess the psychological building blocks of a moral sense. These…
We’re in a state of moral decline in the West – or so we’re told. From sky-rocketing divorce rates and the shrinking of life-long commitments to an excessive concern with self and consumerism. Morality…
When we’re deciding how our character should act in-game, do we default to our real-world moral codes?
rachel a. k.
A recently published study in the journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking suggests most videogame players are governed by the same moral codes they apply to real life. But there are…
Can ethical markets solve the problems of persistent poverty and global income inequality?
Michelle Brea
In part seven of our multi-disciplinary Millennium Project series, Adrian Walsh argues that a humane market asks something of us that we may not want to give. Global challenge 7: How can ethical market…
Can we afford to be laissez faire about amoral economic behaviour?
Carrie Sloan
“Morally bankrupt” is how a recently departing Goldman Sachs executive described the culture of the investment bank. As noted in Business Day, this view “is common among the bank’s critics, many of whom…
On the ninth anniversary of the US-led Iraqi invasion, suicide attacks were used against civilians in Iraq.
EPA/Mohammed Jalil
Suicide attacks and car bombings across Iraq this week have killed at least 43 people and left 255 wounded. We are sadly now very familiar with the phenomenon of the suicide bomber, but the particular…
Universities need to remember why they research: to advance knowledge.
Flickr/Gates Foundation
Steven Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, recently claimed that universities should break from being treated as businesses and recapture their moral purpose. He used the example of Jonas…