Happy (Philosophical) Holidays!

"A will whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of autonomy is a holy, absolutely good will." -Immanuel Kant, philosopher

To my friends, all of whom are men and women of good will: may you have peace and eudaimonia this holiday season, and in the year ahead.

The Great MG Debates of Aught Nine

Based upon your observation this morning, your homework this evening is as follows...

Task the FIRST: STATE, as clearly and simply as you know how, one argument you heard given during the debate. ABSOLUTELY VITAL to remember: the structure of a philosophical argument (i.e., its parts). If you need refreshing, go back to your notes from early October and review the terms premise and conclusion. Remember, too, the argument you type is probably going to be a paraphrase of what the 8th grader said - I don't expect word-for-word transcription.

Task the SECOND: EVALUATE this argument. In order to do so, it will be necessary to use terms such as inductive, deductive, sound, unsound, valid, invalid, cogent, uncogent, true, false. Again, review your notes if you need to do so.

Task the THIRD (optional): If you're feeling munificent, and would like to show those 8th graders how it's really done... construct an excellent original argument to support either the affirmative or the negative. By "excellent," of course, I mean either deductive and sound or inductive and cogent.

A Real-World Ethics Question

As reported this Monday (12/14) in the legal blog Above The Law.

The setup: University of Oregon law professor accidentally emails students the final exam questions instead of study guide. Read about what happens next, how the prof sees it, and one blogger's analysis here.

Empathy, Us, and Them

This link is to a discussion among psychologists and neurobiologists about the origins of one particularly "human"-seeming emotion - empathy. Two issues I found interesting:

1. Church's study on the behavior of rats in response to electric shocks

2. mirror neurons

HW: In your comments below, identify two items from the article that piqued your interest, and briefly explain something about them to me - why you thought they were interesting, or what connections you see between them and what we've discussed in class.

oh and BTW............

omg i realy think we should have that party..........................................................

just wanted u to kno i checked the blog and the sub kinda sucked

Military Ethicist in the news

Yes, Virginia, there is an actual job called "military ethicist." George Lucas Jr. (!), a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, has recently published a book about the role of academic social scientists in military actions. He was interviewed yesterday by the Chronicle of Higher Education about an ongoing debate about the morality of anthropologists participating in the military's Human Terrain System program.

Mr. Lucas, remarking on the value of philosophical advice on military decisions, comments:

In the 1950s, when [the medical community] discovered that they were
involved in ethically thorny issues that were outside their domain of expertise,
they called in philosophers and theologians.

Random Philosophical Humor

http://xkcd.com/103

That's all I'm sayin'.

whoot

plz just give me credit

Tonight's....errr...last night's homework

I was kind of counting on the quotes being here on the blog, since I've only got the names, sorry.

The Hidden Question of Ethics

Pursuant to today's discussion: your (HW) 150-word comment below: What (essentially) is human nature (like)?