S Matthew Liao

Director of the Center for Bioethics

Arthur Zitrin Professor of Bioethics

Professional overview

Dr. Matthew Liao uses the tools of philosophy to study and examine the ramifications of novel biomedical innovations.

A speaker at TEDxCERN, Dr. Liao discussed whether it is ethical for someone to erase certain aspects of their memories and how doing so might affect that individual's identity. He has also given a TED talk in New York and been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other numerous media outlets.

The author and editor of four books, Dr. Liao provides the academic community with a collection of human rights essays. In The Right to be Loved, he explores the philosophical foundations underpinning children's right to be loved, and proposes that we reconceptualize our policies concerning adoptions so that individuals who are not romantically linked can co-adopt a child together.

Dr. Liao provides students with an education grounded in a broad conception of bioethics encompassing both medical and environmental ethics. He offers students the opportunity to explore the intersection of human rights practice with central domains of public health and regularly teaches normative theory and neuroethics. His courses address how the rightness or wrongness of an act is determined and ethical issues arising out of new medical technologies such as embryonic stem cell research, cloning, artificial reproduction, and genetic engineering; ethical issues raised by the development and use of neuroscientific technologies such as the ethics of erasing traumatic memories; the ethics of mood and cognitive enhancements; and moral and legal implications of "mind-reading" technologies for brain privacy.

To learn more about Dr. Liao and his work, visit his website and blog.

Education

AB, Politics (Magna Cum Laude), Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

DPhil, Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Honors and awards

Outstanding Academic Title, The Right to Be Loved, Choice Review (2016)

TEDx Speaker at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland (2015)

TEDx Speaker, New York, NY (2013)

Humanities Grant Initiative, NYU (2011)

Big Think Delphi Fellow (2011)

Areas of research and study

Bioethics

Epistemology

Metaphysics

Moral Psychology

Publications

Publications

Human Rights as Fundamental Conditions for a Good Life

Philosophical foundations of human rights

The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights: An Overview

The Right to be Loved

Editorial

The right of children to be loved

Human Engineering and Climate Change

Intentions and moral permissibility: The case of acting permissibly with bad intentions

Political and naturalistic conceptions of human rights: A false polemic?

Putting the trolley in order: Experimental philosophy and the loop case

The genetic account of moral status: A defense

Why children need to be loved

After Prozac

Bias and Reasoning: Haidt’s Theory of Moral Judgment

Parental Love Pills: Some Ethical Considerations

The basis of human moral status

Time-relative interests and abortion

Agency and human rights

The basis of human moral status

The buck-passing account of value: Lessons from Crisp

Twinning, inorganic replacement, and the organism view

Disclosing clinical trial results: Publicity, significance and independence

Is there a duty to share genetic information?

The duty to disclose adverse clinical trial results

The Loop Case and Kamm's Doctrine of Triple Effect