Ethics in Brief Volume 18, Nos. 1 and 2 (2012)

The first two issues from Volume 18 of Ethics in Brief, published by The Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, are now available online:

Tom Miller, ‘The Folly of Attributional Personhood’, Ethics in Brief 18, 1 (2012)

Following the Enlightenment and Empiricist movements, neuroscience has become increasingly harnessed by secular philosophers and ethicists in an attempt to determine scientifically who or what a person may be. However, such an approach is problematic given that the history of cognitive neuroscience is littered with patients who, after sustaining brain damage, lose focal cognitive abilities without apparently diminishing their value and worth as a person. This article explores the historical foundation of this materialistic approach to personhood and its scientific, philosophical and ethical consequences.

Jonathan Chaplin, ‘A Time to Marry – Twice’, Ethics in Brief 18, 2 (2012)

This article argues for a separation between the two stages of the solemnization of marriage: the civil and the religious. While this would be a good thing in itself, the possibility that same-sex marriage could soon be legalized adds greater urgency to the question and requires the church to reflect more urgently and boldly than it has done so far, both on the relation between church and government with respect to marriage and on its own distinctive theology of marriage.