CEPPA St Andrews

Tomorrow! St Andrews's own Alice Murphy will be giving a CEPPA talk titled: “Invasive” Species and the Aesthetics of Nature. Find all the info here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-...

Health professionals should be involved in setting research priorities Clinician researchers can influence the prioritisation and impact of research and ensure its benefits are spread fairly, write Joseph Millum and Leah Pierson Health professionals play a critical rol...

Leah Pierson and CEPPA director Joseph Millum's newly published paper argues that clinician researchers can influence the prioritisation and impact of research and ensure its benefits are spread fairly. You can read the full article here: www.bmj.com/content/391/...

He argues that homelessness and associated deaths are 1) the result of homeless people being dehumanised, and so ignored as insufficiently morally important to be worth spending resources on protecting, 2) entirely avoidable, and 3) should not be an accepted feature of our social landscapes.

Homeless deaths hit a record high last year – and every one of them was preventable Britain’s housing crisis is not just a policy failure but a moral one, says Bradley Hillier-Smith. When we treat the homeless as ‘nuisances’ and ‘pests’, we deny their humanity – and our own

Our very own @bradleyhsmith.bsky.social recently published an article in The Independent outlining how homelessness is a moral problem. Read it here: www.independent.co.uk/voices/homel...

Check out the review of our own Bradley Hillier-Smith's book in Ethics and International Affairs: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This week, St Andrews Philosopher & specialist in medical ethics, Dr Joseph Millum, will give a talk on Ethical Decision-Making for Minors at the University of Louisville School of Medicine Healthcare Ethics Speaker Series

Register for the talk here:

events.teams.microsoft.com/event/44358c...

Interested in how policy makers, industry experts and local communities grapple with the limits of knowledge and distant future societies? Check out today's event by the Centre for Energy Ethics. Happening at 4pm. All details here: energyethics.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/gover...

Tomorrow we welcome Michael Otsuka. He'll be giving a CEPPA talk titled 'How Non-existence is worse for us'. All the details and the abstract here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-...

Tomorrow, Federico Luzzi from @abdnphilosophy.bsky.social will be giving a CEPPA talk titled 'Against Excellence as the Norm of Ambition'. You can find all the info here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-...

The National Institutes of Health has two two-year Fellowship Opportunities in the Department of Bioethics. One is for a post-baccalaureate and one for a post-doc. See all info here:
www.cc.nih.gov/bioethics/ed...

No talk this week. However, tomorrow we are opening this years Philosophy and Film Club. All info here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/film-a...

Welcome back! For our first CEPPA talk of the year, we are welcoming Ben Colburn from the University of Glasgow. His talk is titled 'Moral Blackmail'. You can find the abstract and all info here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-...
See you on Thursday!

Check out CEPPA Director Mara van der Lugt on the Gray Area Podcast!

Jens Timmermann's new book 'Kant and the Supposed Right to Lie' is out! Congratulations to him. Read it or buy it here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/k...

Understanding and Consent: The Case for Minimalism Published in The American Journal of Bioethics (Vol. 25, No. 7, 2025)

How much do patients need to understand to give valid consent? Not that much, argues Joseph Millum. Congratulations to him for his newly published commentary in the American Journal of Bioethics! Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

WHO guidance on the ethics of health research priority setting This guidance aims to synthesize current good practice for incorporating ethics into health research priority setting. It is relevant to anyone making decisions about what research to support or condu...

New guidance from the World Health Organisation on the ethics of health research priority setting has just been published. St Andrews philosopher Joseph Millum was the lead writer!
www.who.int/publications...

In this article, they argue that the NHS's plan to test the entire genome of every newborn by 2030 to "predict and prevent illness" confuses 'prediction' with 'risk' of developing an illness. This, they argue, is an inaccurate and potentially dangerous mistake.

The NHS plan to genetically test all newborns sounds smart – until it creates patients who aren’t sick The promise and peril of sequencing every baby’s genome.

Congratulations to Luca Stroppa and Emilia Wilson, who just published an article in 'The Conversation' based on their research on the 'Early Diagnosis: Handling Knowing' project at CEPPA. Read it here: theconversation.com/the-nhs-plan...

The paper argues that rights entail not only negative duties but also positive duties to protect and assist right-holders against violations of their rights, and these are grounded in the very same justification of rights and negative duties: the inviolable moral status of persons.

Rights, Duties, and Inviolability Rights entail corresponding negative duties not to violate those rights. On this, all rights theorists agree. Yet, in our non-ideal world, these negative duties and thereby persons’ rights are pervas....

Congratulations to our own Bradley Hillier-Smith, whose new paper 'Rights, Duties, and Inviolability' was just published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy.
Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Health research funding is scarce. How can it be allocated fairly? Join us at noon on June 23 for the launch of WHO’s new Guidance on the Ethics of Health Research Priority Setting, written by CEPPA's own Joseph Millum:
www.who.int/news-room/ev...
#healthresearch #ethics #prioritysetting

Congratulations to Patrick Winther-Larsen, who just presented at the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions Conference! You can also find him at the Understanding Value XIII Conference (14-16 July) and the 15th Salzburg Conference of Young Analytic Philosophy (3-5 September).

Next Monday!

Assisted Dying Bill Scotland: Why fears about coercion of vulnerable people are misguided In countries which allow it, there is no evidence that people are coerced into assisted dying

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Last week, CEPPA's very own Joseph Millum (together with Ben Colburn) wrote about the assisted dying bill for 'The Scotsman'. Find the piece here or email the authors for a copy: www.scotsman.com/news/opinion...

Postdoc available at McGill. Studies of Translation, Ethics, and Medicine (STREAM) are looking for a postdoc in Bio-Ethics. You can read all about it here: www.translationalethics.com/wp-content/u...

A philosophical view of our ethical obligations to refugees | Aeon Essays You can believe in border control yet protect those fleeing to safety. So what is our ethical obligation to refugees?

Our own Bradley Hillier-Smith has just published a piece in Aeon. In it, he establishes what an ethical response to refugees would be, how it is possible, and how we can achieve it. Read it here:
aeon.co/essays/a-phi...

Join us next month (June 16th) for a celebration of all things CEPPA in our annual CEPPA Fest: a one-day conference featuring talks by our cherished members and some esteemed guests. You can find the schedule and registration link here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-...

This week, in our final CEPPA talk of the academic year, Vid Simoniti will be talking to us about 'Merely Imagined Moralities'. You can find the abstract and all info here: ceppa.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/event/ceppa-.... See you there!

Last week, we were very fortunate to have David Enoch with us as he delivered the 2025 Knox Lecture. Here is a small snapshot of the talk in question. Thank you dearly David!