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Op-Ed article published in New York Times (International Herald Tribune) DELFT, THE NETHERLANDS — Tensions within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration over Germany’s energy policy cut to the heart of a contentious, worldwide debate over the future of nuclear power. The old controversies over nuclear reactors — their dangers, benefits and costs — have been raised to the forefront. But as politicians, energy experts and the general public weigh the pros and cons, one key element in harnessing… Read more .. Human-robot relations is a ‘sexy’ research topic. Conferences such as the 3rd International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships earlier this year (June 23-24, 2010) attract media attention (e.g. nrc.next) and people blog on ‘intimate machines’ and ‘personal robots’. ‘Human-robot relations’ is not only about intimate relations or sex, but covers domains of application ranging from home entertainment and household assistance to health care and military applications. Some try to develop… Read more .. The question of whether someone who committs a horrendous crime is mad or bad keeps cropping up in legal systems around the world. A recent example is Caroline Overington’s very sad story of a 33 year old Australian man who murdered his own 3 year old son that was published in The Australian newspaper here. This question (whether the person is mad or bad) is normally viewed as an epistemic problem — i.e. people worry that maybe the person concerned is just pretending to be mad to get a lighter… Read more .. Here’s an extract from Justice Kennedy’s comments on the recent decision in Graham v. Florida (2010) which raised an eyebrow (well, it raised my eyebrow anyway): No recent data provide reason to reconsider the Court’s observations in Roper about the nature of juveniles. As petitioner’s amici point out, developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds. For example, parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue… Read more .. Last year 3TU.Ethics hosted a round table (see here) as part of a preparation process leading up to ’Innovation, Sustainability, Development - A New Manifesto‘. This Tuesday, June 15th 2010, the manifesto was finally launched during a big event at the Royal Society in London. The New Manifesto was published 40 years after an apparently radical document called ‘The Sussex Manifesto’ appeared in 1970. Reading that document now, one can hardly imagine that it was perceived as… Read more .. Thomas Pogge at the Peace Palacein The Hague, before his lecture started How principled or how pragmatic should one be when it comes to matters of justice? This question was prominently on my mind yesterday. One of the leading philosophers in the area of global justice, Thomas Pogge, gave a public lecture in The Hague, organized by 3TU.Ethics. Preceding the lecture was a small seminar in which the Health Impact Fund (HIF) was an important topic of discussion. This HIF offers pharmaceutical companies… Read more .. Ethics is a mandatory course in the program of virtually all students at Delft University of Technology (TUD). But assuming that the ultimate goal of these courses is not to contribute to ivory tower philosophizing, but to delivering engineers that will make the world a better place (or at least not a worse one), what exactly should we be teaching students in those courses? “Not Kant, but communication skills”, said TUD science communication professor Patricia Osseweijer when the topic briefly came… Read more .. For some people philosophy and engineering may sound like a strange combination. Philosophers are often seen as thinking long and hard about abstract problems, while engineers are seen as hands-on people that meanwhile look for practical solutions to the world’s small and large problems. One may then wonder what added value philosophers have for engineering practice. Today, at the CEPHAD 2010 conference (”The Borderland between Philosophy and Design Research”) Pieter Vermaas, a… Read more .. From December 2-4 the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) organized a conference in Valencia, with this time a focus on “how various social actors can and ought to take responsibility for acting on poverty and expanding human development” (see here for info about this conference). I submitted and presented a small paper arguing for more attention for technology and the responsibility of engineers within development ethics. I drew a bird’s-eye view of relevant changes… Read more .. The 3TU.Center for ethics and technology organized a meeting about innovation and sustainable development in preparation for the New Manifesto. This is meant to give direction to the discussions on development and sustainability. Being part of the meeting I was triggered by the contribution of Jasper Grosskurth on Africa.  He showed beautiful examples of what technology is doing in Africa in line with the base of the pyramid approach. If NGOs and government institutions cannot solve the persistent… Read more ..

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