Religions have come to be intimately tied to morality and much recent research has shown that theists and nontheists differ in their moral behavior and decision making along several dimensions. Here we discuss how these empirical trends can be explained by fundamental differences in group commitment, motivations for prosociality, cognitive styles, and meta-ethics. We conclude by elucidating key...

The paper proposes moral and ethical guidelines for medical treatment at the edge of viability. The proposed principles are defended on the grounds of a general conceptual framework presented by elucidating the notions of viability, the edge of viability, person, sanctity of human life, dignity, and the slope of dignity protection, as well as the distinction between ethics and morality.

background: in the majority of countries, active direct euthanasia is a forbidden way of the deprivation of the patients’ life, while its passive form is commonly accepted. this distinction between active and passive euthanasia has no justification, viewed through the prism of morality and ethics. therefore, we focused on attention on the moral and ethical implications of the aforementioned med...

Intelligent machines are a risk to our freedom and our existence unless we take adequate precautions. In order to survive and thrive, we are going to have to teach them how to be nice to us and why they should do so. The fact that humans have evolved to have what appear to be multiple different systems of ethics and morality that frequently conflict on any but the simplest issues complicates th...

Neuroethics applies cognitive neuroscience for prescribing alterations to conceptions of self and society, and for prescriptively judging the ethical applications of neurotechnologies. Plentiful normative premises are available to ground such prescriptivity, however prescriptive neuroethics may remain fragmented by social conventions, cultural ideologies, and ethical theories. Herein we offer t...

When I first studied ethics as part of my theological training this centred on the Decalogue. While some special attention was paid to issues in social ethics as well as the challenge of the New Morality popularised by Bishop Robinson and Joseph Fletcher, the approach was in the main deontological. It was based on the “oughts” or necessity (Gk. deon) of God's law. Probably this approach was rep...