Science

This post originally appeared on November 18, 2014 Imagine you check your email and find a congratulatory message from your boss announcing that your colleague has just been promoted. This … Continue reading "Is Envy Always Malicious? (Part One)"

Dr. Sharon Crary, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at DePauw, has studied Ebola virus extensively and was part of the Center for Disease Control’s response team during the Ebola outbreak … Continue reading "Dr. Sharon Crary on the Ebola Outbreak"

Back when Microsoft Windows XP and Intel’s Pentium 4 Processor were technology du jour, not much was known about the origins of the raw minerals integral to the technology we … Continue reading "Look Inside: The Moral Implications of Personal Choice"

On Monday, President Obama announced that “a free and open Internet was as critical to Americans’ lives as electricity and telephone service” and should be regulated as such. This approach, called … Continue reading "A Free and Open Internet"

Apple’s new iWatch, expected to hit markets early in 2015, advances time keeping to a whole new level. Not only does the iWatch keep accurate global time, automatically adjusting to … Continue reading "WARNING: Technological Invasion"

One would certainly hope that, as far as environmental regulation goes, we are better off than we were fifty years ago. We would hope that novels like Rachel Carson’s ground-shifting Silent … Continue reading "Politicizing a Tragedy, 30 Years after Bhopal"

As the outbreak of Ebola enters its seventh month, the ethical dilemmas facing the world continue to increase. While the issue of experimental treatments remains unresolved (see my previous post … Continue reading "The Ethics of an Epidemic"

Government surveillance is a political hot topic, and Twitter has now taken its stand on it. The company has decided to sue the U.S. Government about a law that does … Continue reading "Twitter, Transparency, and National Security"

Last week we published the abstract of Erik Wielenberg’s new book, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. In this guest post, Wielenberg, Professor of Philosophy at DePauw … Continue reading "Can moral laws exist without God? A brief introduction to “Robust Ethics”"

Over the past two weeks, reports of a Liberian man with Ebola being treated in Dallas have captivated our public discourse. Some worry that this may be a “Patient Zero” … Continue reading "Ebola: No Longer a Microscopic Problem"

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leak about the NSA surveillance programs, tech companies have been quick to respond to consumer concerns about the privacy of their data. Google and … Continue reading "New Privacy Battle Between Tech Companies and the Feds"

The FDA is currently debating whether skin shocking devices should be banned for use on patients with autism and developmental/intellectual disabilities that display self-harmful or violent behaviors. The only treatment … Continue reading "The FDA and Banning Shock Therapy"

The outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa has captivated the international community since it began in February 2014. Although Ebola has broken out before, this is the largest outbreak ever. … Continue reading "ZMapp: The Solution to Ebola?"

There is no question that, in many cases, it is ethically wrong to kill. But is it possible for it to be ethically wrong to save a life? In an “ethically … Continue reading "Can Death Row Inmates Save Lives?"

This article, by DePauw History professor David Gellman, originally appeared in Historians Against Slavery on August 15, 2014. If all the great abolitionists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were … Continue reading "Abolitionists Unfrozen"

The shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest in Ferguson raises a host of obvious ethical issues. One that isn’t so obvious is that it highlights the potential importance of knowing … Continue reading "Ferguson and Net Neutrality"

A few weeks ago, Brian Crecente asked me to comment on whether or not I thought video game designers had a moral obligation to think about how they design games … Continue reading "More Thoughts on Designing Addictive Video Games"