7 DEC 2015 · Presented on November 18th, 2015 at Purdue University. Many philosophers think that human and animal minds are radically different from one another. Either they differ architecturally, in such a way that only humans have genuine concepts and propositional attitudes (while animals at best have proto-concepts and proto-attitudes), or humans possess a second mind (a conscious System 2 mind) that nonhuman animals lack. This article will argue that both views are mistaken. All mammalian minds share the same core architecture. Humans differ only in what they can do with it.

28 OCT 2015 · Presented September 18, 2014 at Purdue University. There is much philosophical literature on the duty to rescue. If one can save another who is at risk of losing life or limb at relatively little cost to herself, she is morally obligated to do so. Yet little has been said about the other side of the issue: what moral obligations might potential rescuees have to rescuers? In cases where the need for rescue could have been reasonably avoided, it is intuitive to think that the benefitted agents should have taken certain precautions to reduce the risk of imposing rescue burdens on others. That is, there is a duty to take rescue precautions. I argue that one public policy implication of this duty is that given the clinician's duty to provide emergency medical treatment to all people regardless of ability to pay, some of the uninsured have a moral duty to purchase health insurance. This duty is enforceable and it cannot be escaped by waiving a right to rescue.

28 OCT 2015 · Presented on November 6, 2014 at Purdue University. We are witnessing the emergence of a new biopolitics in the United States that relies on re-inventing race in biological terms using cutting-edge genomic science and biotechnologies. Some scientists are defining race as a biological category written in our genes, while the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries convert the new racial science into race-based products, such as race-specific medicines and ancestry tests, that incorporate false assumptions of racial difference at the genetic level. The genetic understanding of race calls for technological responses to racial disparities while masking the continuing impact of racism in a supposedly post-racial society. Instead, I call for affirming our common humanity by working to end social inequities supported by the political system of race

28 OCT 2015 · Presented on February 26, 2014 at Purdue University