Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher who teaches at the University of Oxford. His areas of interest include the Simulation Hypothesis (that reality is a computer simulation run by a hyper-advanced ‘post-human’ civilisation) and the ethics of human enhancement (the ethical issues surrounding improving human capacities through science and technology). He is a proponent of…
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First of all, what is ‘fracking’? Hydraulic fracturing, also known as ‘fracking’, involves fracturing shale rock by means of hydraulic pressure – what you do is drill into the ground and inject fluid (water and chemical additives) at a high pressure. Once the shale rock is fractured, shale gas can be extracted and then used…
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Donating your organs for transplantation, or donating your body to medical science, is a very charitable act. I myself do not believe that I will need my body or any of my body parts after I am dead (since I will not exist). I’m a registered organ donor for this reason and plan to donate…
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Louis Wain (1860 – 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats. In his later life, Wain developed schizophrenia, which psychiatrists speculated at the time was brought on by toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be contracted from cats. He was first committed to a mental hospital in 1924. He…
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Thomas Szasz was an American psychiatrist who became a controversial academic figure for his criticism of the foundations of psychiatry. He has been associated with the anti-psychiatry movement (although Szasz himself insisted he was not anti-psychiatry but anti-coercive psychiatry). In books such as The Myth of Mental Illness (1960), as the title suggests, Szasz argues that…
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