Philosophy & Ethics

Am I Allowed To Say This?Law is the means by which the simplest ideas are expressed in the most complex language. Civil law is the means by which private arguments are rapidly made public at great expense. Right!  That's the whimsy out of the way.  What follows is my attempt to throw down some ideas for open discussion of the following proposition: The world's nations should get together and formulate an international treaty on libel law. Freedom of speechFreedom of speech is the highest degree of freedom known to mankind.  If you can suppress freedom of speech, you can…

23andMe, Inc., a direct-to-consumer personal genetics company, is arguably the most well-funded and therefore highest profile group out there (being married to a Google co-founder will do that) and by doing a somewhat humorous new study associating traits with single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs - a type of common DNA sequence variation), they may have spurred discussion of some new ethics guidelines to help future science policy. They examined 22 common traits in over 10,000 participants who volunteered to have their personal genetic information included, to look for associations among…

Scientific Consensus Some scientific ideas are so easily grasped that they are easily explained to the general public.  Other ideas can only be fully understood after a minimum level of training and studies in the relevant area.  A few ideas are so obscure, so far removed from everyday experience that only a very few specialists fully understand the topic. Science is a landscape in which anyone may wander.  How pleasant to sit in the green pastures of accumulated knowledge and dip the fingers in a stream of certainty.  But how much more exciting it is to scuba-dive through…

Introduction The use of non-human animal models has allowed the fast progression of scientific discovery over the last several centuries. These experiments have lead to great discoveries that have allowed for the alleviation of suffering, sickness, and disease in both humans and animals. Over the years there have been changes in the way we view the rights of animals that have lead to better treatment of models, and discoveries of methods that reduce the need for experimentation on animals. However, we have not yet reached the point that their use is not necessary. If the use of animals in…

When Art Meets War If you want to make a good historical movie you should find yourself a good historian. If one of the characters is a singer, make sure they sing in a contemporary style. Now add in a stirring contemporary theme tune and you may well have a blockbuster. A war movie which misses an opportunity to show the realities of war is just so much blood and guts.  The realities of war are not just the horrors of bloodshed.  There are realities of psychology, physics and philosophy: of human interactions, of weaponry and of theories of war. War is a contest between human…

Since I do educational outreach programs with living Arthropods (referred to below as BUGS!), I have to actually have bugs. Some people think that’s weird. I’m okay with that. I don’t imagine many would find it surprising that I have always had bugs – or something. I mean Bluegills in the basement bathtub, countless beetles and caterpillars and butterflies in nets and other random containers, tons of rolly-pollies and fireflies… you get the idea. I mean, I drove my Mom nuts!  But this is different. I mean for one thing, I now have a LOT of bugs. more than I ever imagined I’d have.…

Clausewitz On Science Clausewitz On War - yes.  But Clausewitz On Science? Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz is famous for his book Vom Kriege - On War.  In that book he is very specific in stating that there is no 'science of war'. In order for someone to state quite categorically that an area of study is not a science they must first know enough about science to be able to determine the matter scientifically. On War is not a science book.  But I invite my readers to agree with me that Clausewitz was a scientist.  His methods are clearly those of the forensic…

Negative aspect Long time ago I used to think that science is a way to take raw data and logically deduct statements about the world. I used to think that it has some kind of strong metaphysical foundations, which let us prove statements; that we can then trust what we have achieved. That there are many hypotheses, all considered carefully until most of them have been disproved. I could not be more wrong. Science is more like a set of people, who are having their different goals - and the goal of achieving truth is not very common amongst them -, which can be related to money, power,…

The Science Of Whitewash A complaint often leveled against climate scientists is that they fake their graphs and that investigations into such fakery which fail to show fakery must accordingly be a whitewash. I have news for these people. All graphs are fake.An argument often used in philosophy is that nothing can be known as 100% truth.  The same can more properly be argued from the findings of science.  Every bit of knowledge comes from human experience and judgment.  The human brain is easily fooled: illusions, hallucinations and mirages demonstrate this.  We, as human…

Today I am including a guest paper on this blog, from my academic supervisor, Dr Mitzi Waltz.   The paper written back in 2006, and things have improved slightly since, two of the organisations cited have since merged to become "Autism Speaks" and there have been significant appointments to the US Inter Agency Autism Co-ordinating Committee, two colleagues of mine Stephen Shore EdD and Ari Neeman. Here follows the original paper, which has considerably influenced my own research position: “Nothing about us without us” has been a rallying cry for organisations of disabled people since the…