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Twins Try to Reopen Facebook Lawsuit

Have you ever stolen someone else’s idea? Does it matter if the idea has monetary value or not? According to the Wall Street Journal, “Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the influential social-networking site. Three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals questioned lawyers about whether to toss out a 2008 settlement […]

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RI Governor: First Order is Ethics

Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chaffee makes ethics oversight his first executive order. Do people need to be monitored to do the right thing?

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NY Governor sends employees to Ethics School

Every 2 years, New York state employees will be required to go to Ethics School. Do we need frequent reminders of what is or isn’t acceptable public behavior?

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Economists Petitioned for Code of Ethics

See why 300 leading academics have called upon the American Economic Association to establish a code of ethics.

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Kidney Donations–Some New Ideas

Tom Mayo and I have already posted some thoughts about organ donation in the US and elsewhere on this blog. I’ve just read two interesting recent articles about the problem with regard to kidney transplants in the US. Currently some 80,000 people are on a waiting list for kidneys, and they generally receive dialysis while […]

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Explaining Morality Religiously

The Op-Ed page of the New York Times again has a challenging discussion of morality. The well-known atheist Sam Harris expresses some reservations about President Obama’s nomination of Francis Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/opinion/27harris.html?ref=opinion Harris recognizes Collins’ important scientific accomplishments. But he quotes some statements by Collins about religion and […]

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Peter Singer on the Value of Life

Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine had an article by the eminent utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer with the provocative title, “Why We Must Ration Health Care”: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?ref=magazine It is partly a defense of the idea of a national health insurance program, but it also discusses the idea of ‘rationing’ health care. Singer is brave enough to […]

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“The More Who Die, the Less We Care”

Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times columnist who writes the most about issues of global poverty and disease, has a discussion today of some of the recent work by psychologists and philosophers about empathy and its limits. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/opinion/09kristof.html Kristof has done his homework, and he cites some of the most important thinkers in these fields. […]

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Mortgages and “Homer Economicus”

I’ve blogged a few times now about the causes of the meltdown and some of the commentators on it that I’ve found to be helpful. (As a moral philosopher interested in character I’ve tended to concentrate on writers who have looked at the imprudence and irrational optimism that affected so many people.) A recent column […]

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A New Model for Teaching Ethical Behavior

In the April 24th Chronicle Review, Robert J. Sternberg has an essay in which he describes a model for teaching ethical behavior. One might wonder about the newness. However, there is no doubt about the value of the algorithm he offers. Sternberg’s eight step model of behaving ethically: 1. Recognize that there is an event […]