Readers, Due to both illness and professional obligations, I will not be able to update the blog this week. Look for new posts on Monday, Dec. 5. Michael.
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A blog exploring morality, politics, and religion.
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You +1’d this publicly. Undo If you’re looking for some Thanksgiving reading, you might consider Raymond Tallis’ intriguing review in the Wall Street Journal of two new books on cognition: Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter, by Terrence Deacon, and Who’s in Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga. Here’s a taste: The world of academe is currently in the grip of a strange and worrying epidemic of biologism, which has also captured the popular imagination. Scientists, philosophers and quite a few toilers in the humanities believe—and would have the rest of us believe—that nothing fundamental separates humanity from animality. Biologism has two cardinal manifestations. One is the claim that the mind is the brain, or the activity…
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Many people believe that careers in the banking industry necessarily demand selfishness and unethical behavior. One consequence of this thinking is that ethically concerned youngsters tend to shy away from careers in finance and investing. Yet Oxford University philosopher Will Crouch is warning young people to not automatically consider banking a less ethical option than others. In fact, Crouch argues that people with a strong interest in ethics should opt for careers in banking. His reasoning: … if ethical people went into finance — and then gave back a slice of their higher salaries — the impact would be greater than a career as a charity worker. “We are calling on people to be like Robin Hood, but by earning the money rather than…
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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops last week held a major news conference in which they attempted to recast the current debates on hot-button issues like marriage equality and reproductive rights as a struggle to preserve “religious liberty” from a government and culture working to restrict the church’s rights, reports the New York Times. From the Times: The bishops have expressed increasing exasperation as more states have legalized same-sex marriage, and the Justice Department has refused to go to bat for the Defense of Marriage Act, legislation that established the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. “We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said…
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One week ago today, The Huffington Post marked Veteran’s Day with a wide range of articles that covered everything from what you can do to help veterans to a story about a couple who returned to Normandy to renew their wedding vows. Yet the Post published one essay that struck me as bizarre: “Who Then Shall Mourn Our Drones?”, by Michael Vlahos. Vlahos remarks that Veteran’s Day has historically been about recognizing the sacrifice of others and renewing our resolve to defend and fight for values such as liberty. He then writes: During the past decade, unmanned vehicles of all sorts, but especially flying drones, have been replacing living American soldiers and airmen. These robot warriors — really a form of spirit possession by…
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Yesterday I posted video of a recent panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Inquiry in New York City (full disclosure: my place of employment) on science and free will. This is not a subject near to my intellectual pursuits, but nonetheless, it has been on the forefront of recent philosophical thought. As such, here are a couple articles you might find interesting: Gary Gutting, writing on the New York Times philosophy blog The Stone, asks “what makes free will free?” Eddy Nahmias, also writing on The Stone, posits that neuroscientists proclaiming the end of free will are using a flawed notion of the concept. Matthew Taylor, in a new series on BBC Radio 4, argues that advances in brain science force us to…
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A panel discussion on science and free will, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry in New York City, and featuring:
* Hakwan Lau, Columbia University.
* Alfred Mele, Florida State University.
* Jesse Prinz, City University of New York.
* Adina Roskies, Dartmouth College.
* Massimo Pigliucci, City University of New York.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
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Tagged: ethics, free will, morality, neuroscience, philosophy, science
Last month, I argued on this blog for a pluralist approach to ethics. My essay originally appeared on the blog Rationally Speaking in May. Here is what I wrote: The idea I would like to propose is that while each ethical system discussed so far has its shortcomings, we can assemble a mature moral outlook by piecing together parts of each of the different systems put forth by philosophers over the centuries. My colleague at Rationally Speaking, Ian Pollock, has now entered his own attempt at a pluralist ethic: “the ugly theory that could.” Pollock’s article is much longer than mine, though that provides him more room to flesh out his theory. More importantly, however, we agree on his main point: … in order…
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Tagged: consequentialism, ethics, kant, morality, pluralist, utilitarianism, virtue
That’s what Robert Proctor, a historian of science at Stanford University, argues in his forthcoming book Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition. Proctor writes that public education is insufficient as a weapon against cigarettes — a highly addictive and often deadly drug — and that an outright ban is perhaps the only way to stop cigarette use. From the book’s website: The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the…
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The nonprofit research organization Public Religion Research Institute yesterday released the 2011 American Values Survey, the newest edition of its extensive annual survey that gauges Americans’ beliefs on important issues at the intersection of religion, values, and politics. Here are a couple of the most interesting findings: A strong majority (60 percent) of Americans agree that the country would be better off if the distribution of wealth was more equal, while 39 percent disagree. Seven-in-ten (70 percent) Americans favor “the Buffett rule,” a proposal to increase the tax rate on Americans earning more than $1 million per year, compared to only 27 percent who oppose it. A majority (53 percent) of Americans believe that one of the biggest problems in the country is that…
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THE MORAL PERSPECTIVE 