Serenity Layer

In the case of scientific enhancement of healthy humans – bionics – much of the ethical argumentation for and against it seems to revolve around whether or not it is natural. While it is is a  naturalistic fallacy  to draw moral conclusions from such claims, as David Hume and G.E. Moore have taught us not to do, this is often done. I suppose there are few who would say it is not OK to rescue lives using implantable machines but how about enhancing the body and/or mind of those in no need of rescuing? You can, clearly, say that it is not natural to implant things into a person who was born one way. On the other hand, you may say it is natural to do so, as it is a next logical step in the evolution of mankind, and Darwinian evolution is natural. Both claims have their merits, and his shows that, it matters  what kind of natural  you mean. If you want to entangle your ethics in the question of naturalism, you need to choose. There are some alte...

Those who were of a certain age in the heyday of grunge music really know what teen spirit smells like. We, who missed that, have to settle for our own experiences for such olfactory impressions. As father to two teen-age daughters, who are quite well brought up in matters of hygiene, this is seldom something I encounter, though it is a familiar phenomenon since sometimes a band of teens of both sexes invade the house, leaving after them... well, you know, some teen spirit. What I frequently meet, though, are a few teen-behaviours worthy of neologisms for their proper understanding and inclusion into our language: Teen spilling   (noun. Swe:Tonårsrest, Fin: Teinijätös)  is one of my favourite frustrations. It means that little drop of milk left in the container or that last one biscuit in the box of cookies, left for the impression that all did not run out and - I believe above all - so that the teenager would be spared dealing with the waste. My younger daughter, in particula...

I will know an honest man when he lies about being so I am sure you have all encountered, and perhaps done it yourself, that a sentence is started with " honestly..."  or " to be honest..."  or some similar token of intended special sincerity . It is a peculiar thing to say. Is it to be taken that the speaker otherwise is not speaking in earnest, that nothing else said has been or will be honest or true? Or, as I would like to think, so that what follows is something that should be treated with elevated suspicion? There is a company in the United States that is called Honest Inc.and it runs the website honest.com, peddling consumer goods. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would ever trust shopping there. I have sometimes had a tricky relationship with the truth. As I child, I would have rather lied than take the consequences of something bad I did, and so I did. And lied about lying. Later in life,  to be honest,  I have not had dif...