CAPE - Center for Applied and Professional Ethics

03/17/2025

The Center for Applied and Professional Ethics (CAPE; formerly IAPE), together with OU's Department of Psychology, is very pleased to invite you to this year's Spring Ethics Lecture. We are excited that Kent Berridge (James Olds Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Michigan) will present on Friday, 3/28, 12:55-1:50pm (Porter Hall Rm 102).

"Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain"

We hope to see you at the event!

About the lecture: Wanting and liking for pleasant rewards usually go together. But the brain separates wanting and liking mechanisms, creating potential for the two to diverge. Addictive desires can arise even without expectation of pleasure or actual pleasure when reward is received. I’ll show a laboratory example as 'wanting for what hurts’, which can also create narrowly focused addictions. Counterintuitively, reward ‘wanting’ may also overlap in mechanisms with forms of fear. These conclusions have been applied to several clinical conditions, ranging from addictions, to anhedonia, to paranoia.

11/13/2024

The IAPE is pleased to invite you to this year's Virtual Fall Ethics Lecture. We are excited that Sorin Baiasu (Keele University, UK) will present on Wednesday, 11/20, 6-7:30pm.

"Overcriminalisation and Dishonesty."

The registration link is active: tinyurl.com/CAPEFall24Lecture

We hope to see you at the event!

Abstract: The paper begins with a presentation of one way in which the distinction between civil and criminal justice can be drawn. This distinction relies on a particular reading of Kant’s Universal Principle of Right, in the Metaphysics of Morals. The paper next considers the vexed issue of the appropriate standard for testing dishonesty and the risk of overcriminalisation that an inappropriate standard might bring about. I will make reference particularly to Ghosh, Hayes and Ivey. In the final part of the paper, I will draw some lessons for what an appropriate test of dishonesty should be, given the particular Kantian distinction between civil and criminal justice presented at the beginning of the paper.

About the speaker: Sorin Baiasu is Professor of Philosophy at Keele University and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University. His publications include: Kant and Sartre: Re-discovering Critical Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), Kant on Practical Justification: Interpretive Essays (edited with Mark Timmons, OUP 2013), Sincerity in Politics and International Relations (edited with Sylvie Loriaux, Routledge 2017) and Kantian Citizenship: Grounds, Standards and Global Implications (edited with Mark Timmons, Routledge 2025 forthcoming). His work has been financially supported by the British Academy, the European Commission and the European Research Council. This year, he has been awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant on “Kantian Justice: A Desert-sensitive Responsibility-enhancing Theory."

03/29/2024

IAPE Reminder: Stefan Bird-Pollan Lecture, Today! -

03/04/2024

Join us for an important public lecture!

02/21/2024

IAPE Newsletter Spring 2024 -

Bringing together faculty and students from a variety of Ohio University's departments and disciplines, the Institute aims at:

02/14/2024

11/08/2023

IAPE Reminder: Paola Romero Lecture, Tomorrow! -

10/07/2023

IAPE Newsletter Spring 2023 -

Bringing together faculty and students from a variety of Ohio University's departments and disciplines, the Institute aims at:

10/28/2022

Here it is! The second IAPE presentation of the semester will take place on November 10th at 4:30. See the flyer for additional details and we hope to see you all there!