"Philosophers" haven't had "serious philosophical issues" with this topic since Spinoza. Heck, even the Stoics. It's theology that has a problem, not philosophy

"Philosophers" haven't had "serious philosophical issues" with this topic since Spinoza. Heck, even the Stoics. It's theology that has a problem, not philosophy, where theology crafts its ideas, very often, from the architectures of philosophical thought. Outside of a theological context, there isn't much of a debate anyway. Again: the Stoics. We do ask philosophers about "right to die" and "permissibility of stem cell research from humans". Philosophers outline the conditions under which we rationally approach these things — they obviously do not license or themselves permit such behavior. No one asks a philosopher if that philosopher personally thinks some act is okay or not okay... I'm just not sure what to say here. That's not what philosophy is about, but I have a strange feeling that "it's all personal opinion anyway" really motivates this idea that philosophers do not contribute meaningfully to law and morality. They inform ultimately what becomes legislation. Bertrand Russell was all over popular science in the 20th century. So was Bernard Williams. Dworkin. HLA Hart. The countless articles on ethics on JSTOR. All the philosophical journals. Stacks and stacks on anthologies collecting debates on abortion. ExPhi puts current opinion in the context of great thinkers of the history of philosophy, and helps us understand why we have the opinions we do have. We don't ask them to describe the scientific innerworkings of these techniques. We do ask them to explain these things in broader cultural terms, and in that case the Scientist often times plays Philosopher, where that person so too must pick up a great work of Philosophy. Ethics Committees are real things. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it's radically in error and shockingly misleading...