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 […]
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 […]
Yesterday’s New York Times again contained an op-ed piece about moral philosophy. Nicholas Kristof wrote about Peter Singer and the movement for animal rights that he more or less launched in 1973. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html?em Once again a professor is bound to find a few errors and misconceptions in a newspaper story on his specialty. It’s not […]
I am not used to opening the morning paper and seeing an op-ed piece on general issues in moral philosophy. But today’s New York Times has such a piece by David Brooks . http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=1 Brooks reads widely. He is aware that many philosophers these days are sympathetic to the arguments of psychologists and cognitive scientists […]
The number of executions in the US is falling, but capital punishment has not disappeared, as some had predicted. It is interesting, as a philosopher, to see what sorts of considerations have an effect in public life on the popularity of this form of punishment. A few years ago discussion focused on the possibility of […]
There has been quite a lot of discussion in the last few years generated by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. I have not followed if closely. But, being a moral philosopher, I am certainly interested in one aspect of it: the relation of religion and morality. It is often said that morality is based on […]
One of the most insightful economists writing about the meltdown is Robert Shiller, of Yale. He is also one of the few economists who gets credit for predicting at least some of it. In a recent column in The New York Times he added some reflections about how the behavior of consumers and lenders led […]
The United Kingdom has just completed a review of its organ donation system. The British, like others, have a long waiting list of people who need organ transplants. It is estimated that 1000 people a year there die while waiting for an operation. (In the US the number is above 7000 per year.) The Guardian […]
We are living through the greatest economic crisis since World War II, if not the Great Depression. It will take regulators, political scientists, economists, and historians years to sort out all of the sources of the crisis, although we can hope that concrete steps will be taken soon to right the economy, and restructure the […]