#moral reflection

By Eric Schwitzgebel The Splintered Mind blog Originally posted June 23, 2014 Here is an excerpt: As regular readers will know, Joshua Rust and I have done a number of studies -- eighteen different measures in all -- consistently finding that professors of ethics behave no morally better than do socially similar comparison groups. These findings create a challenge for what we call the booster view of philosophical moral reflection. On the booster view, philosophical moral reflection reveals moral truths, which the person is then motivated to act on, thereby becoming a better person. Versions of the booster view were common in both the Eastern and the Western philosophical traditions until the 19th century, at least as a normative aim for the discipline: From Confucius and Socrates through at least Wang Yangming and Kant, philosophy done right was held to be morally improving. The entire blog post is here.

Lisbeth Zwerger for Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

John Wooden 

The role of the government continues to be a hotly debated subject. In particular, its legitimate functions and justifications pertaining to enforcing universal rights to liberty and rights to equality. In the U.S., using the measure of government spending as a percentage of national income, over the last fifty years government provisioning for non-defense items has grown--a lot. Perhaps the recent U.S. election outcome even turned on the questions of universal health care for all and tax reform. These are issues that affect everyone and it’s responsible and even fun to become involved in contributing your ideas on what a fair system ‘should’ look like. In this 45 minute video a Yale University professor provides a very nice introductory exposition on how important philosophers have framed their thinking and arguments on the subject. I like it a lot.

What's your interpretation of the Greek myth of Sisyphus? I like Albert Camus's thought that "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" as "the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

Davies, W. (Principal Investigator), Aguirre, A., Bae, J. and Derejko, K.  November 2011. “Society, justice and health: A student-initiated course”, Presented at poster session Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association, Washington, D.C.