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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
I recently ran across a good paper, written in 2005 and posted to the SSRN website: “A Survey of Ethics Courses in State College and University Curricula,” by Angela Hernquist. Her final question is one that students should be asking their professors and deans in every department and school on this campus: “If the manner […]
Simon Lee, a medical anthropologist in the Department of Clincial Science at UTSW will be leading a dinner conversation on “Quality of Care and Clinical Trial Recruitment: System Ethics and Disparities in Access.” For more information about the NTBN, click here.
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 […]
Steve Sverdlik has given us a cogent commentary on today’s Op Ed column by David Brooks. I particularly like Steve’s reference to researchers/theorists who are squaring the evolutionary argument for altruism and empathy with the (broader? more traditional?) evolutionary processes of competition and natural selection. (It’s still a jungle out there!) I hope readers of […]
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 […]