Sep 092013
 
 September 9, 2013  Tagged with:

mondayseminar400Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, will be speaking on Sep. 16 as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 p.m. in room 101, West Duke Building.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is a faculty leader of KIE’s Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making program area. He has served as the co-director of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project and co-investigator at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He has worked on ethics (theoretical, applied, and empirical), philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and informal logic. Sinnott-Armstrong is the author of Morality Without God? and Moral Skepticisms and editor of Moral Psychology, volumes I-III. His articles have appeared in a variety of philosophical, scientific, and popular journals and collections. He has received fellowships from the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, the Princeton Center for Human Values, the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University, and the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Sinnott-Armstrong earned his bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and his doctorate from Yale University. His current work is on moral psychology and brain science as well as the uses of neuroscience in legal systems.

Sep 062013
 
 September 6, 2013

BrainsonTrialMoral Attitudes and Decision-Making at KIE

PBS will be airing a new series, Brains on Trial, hosted by Alan Alda, examining neuroscience and the law. Airings on WUNC-TV will be Wednesday Sep. 11 and Sep. 18 at 10:00 pm.

In addition, KIE faculty Walter Sinnott-Armstrong will be participating in a panel discussion on the subject with other Duke professors to be aired on WUNC-TV Thursday, Sep. 12 at 10:00 pm.

Mar 012013
 
 March 1, 2013  Tagged with: , ,

The Ethics of Globalization and the Globalization of Ethics

The annual Kenan Distinguished Lecture for 2013 features Canadian scholar, author and former politician Michael Ignatieff. He will be speaking on the globalization of ethics that has accompanied the globalization of commerce and communications. What ethical values do human beings share across all our differences of race, religion, ethnicity, national identity, and material wealth?

Ignatieff served in the Parliament of Canada and was Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He currently holds joint appointments at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. His books include The Needs of Strangers (1984), Scar Tissue (1992),Blood and Belonging (1993), The Warriors Honour (1997), Isaiah Berlin (1998), The Rights Revolution (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), and The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004).

Thursday, April 18
Fleishman Commons, Sanford School of Public Policy Building
5:30 – 6:45 p.m. (Reception to follow)

Free parking will be available in the Sanford Lot behind the Sanford Building.

This event has additional support from the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke.

Nov 192012
 
 November 19, 2012

Neuroscientists have recently developed ways to detect consciousness in patients with severe brain injury who show little or no outward sign of consciousness. These new methods raise a host of questions for scientists, philosophers, lawyers, ethicists and medical practitioners.
Join us for the workshop “Finding Consciousness” to discuss these interdisciplinary issues.

The workshop is free and open to the public. However, space is limited and registration is required. For registration and a full schedule, visit the conference website.

Speakers include:
Jeffrey Baker, MD, PhD · Timothy Bayne, PhD · James Bernat, MD · Nita Farahany, JD, PhD · Jack Gallant, PhD · Valerie Gray Hardcastle, PhD · Jennifer Hawkins, PhD · Adrian Owen, PhD · Richard Payne, MD · Nicholas Schiff, MD · Caroline Schnakers, PhD

This conference is sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services; Bioethics at the NIH; Duke Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and History of Medicine; Duke Institute for Brain Sciences; Kenan Institute for Ethics; Duke Department of Philosophy; and Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Nov 092012
 
 November 9, 2012

The Moral Attitudes and Decision making MADLAB is currently moving into its newly renovated space in the West Duke Building. The lab is a vertically-integrated, interdisciplinary laboratory, co-directed by Phil Costanzo(Psychology and Neuroscience), Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics), and Stephen Vaisey (Sociology), where faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergrads work together on shared research projects. The lab is currently underway in a new facility in the West Duke Building. An opening reception is being held to celebrate the opening of the new lab space.

Opening Reception
November 19, 5:00-7:00 pm
100 West Duke Building
Refreshments will be served

Nov 072012
 
 November 7, 2012

Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making will be hosting visiting scholar Yoel Inbar, Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Tilburg University, December 10-12. Inbar will be working with the MADLAB research group.

Inbar will be giving the last lecture in the Monday Seminar Series on December 10th, 12:30-1:30 in 101 West Duke.

Inbar’s research concerns the interplay between two general mental processes that influence judgment: rational, deliberate analysis, and intuitive, emotional reactions. His work looks at the interaction between these two kinds of thinking and the implications for people’s beliefs, actions, and choices. Examinations explore how intuition affects our choices; how our moral beliefs determine our own actions and our judgments of others; and how the emotion of disgust can predict our moral and political attitudes.

For more information on his visit, please contact Nina Strohminger at nina.strohminger@duke.edu.

Sep 292012
 
 September 29, 2012

A Plea for Humanism

Doug MacLean, Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be speaking October 8th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

MacLean’s talk will examine Peter Singer’s criticism of moral theories and moral practices that favor the interests of human beings over the like interests of non-human animals — “speciesism” — likened by Singer to racism and sexism.  MacLean will examine Singer’s argument, suggest that it rests on a naïve conception of our relation to animals, and argue that morality depends on assuming that human beings are uniquely important.

MacLean’s current research focuses on practical ethics and issues in moral and political theory that are particularly relevant to practical concerns. Most of his recent writing examines how values do and ought to influence decisions, both personal decisions and government policies. He has written more general survey articles on risk analysis, risk aversion, and environmental ethics.

Sep 282012
 
 September 28, 2012

As part of the Duke University Family Weekend 2012, KIE will be holding a reception for students and their families.

Saturday, October 22
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Kenan Institute for Ethics
101 West Duke Building

Aug 242012
 
 August 24, 2012

The first official talk in the 2012-2013 Monday Seminar Series will be given by Nina Strohminger on the role of disgust in moral judgment on September 17 at noon. Strohminger is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute working under the supervision of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Dan Ariely, and David Pizarro.