Markets and Morality

An interview with Elizabeth Anderson. Here’s the overview from Philosophy Talk:
Does the free market provide incentives for behavior that is problematic from a moral perspective? Or does the free market punish morally problematic behavior? Is respecting the free market itself moral, insofar as respecting the free market is also respecting individual freedom of choice?

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Health Care and Letting Die

[ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: The issue at hand in this post is whether people have positive rights. Please focus comments on that issue.]
The following exchange developed here. Since the issue deserves attention in and of itself, here it is, beginning with a proposed answer to the question “Should we let a cancer patient die just because s/he [...]

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“One Nation, Uninsured: The Ethics of National Health Insurance Coverage”

Here is the abstract for Kenneth Brummel-Smith ’s plenary session at this Saturday’s conference:
The concept of universal health insurance coverage is vastly popular. The big question is what system should be used to achieve it – private, employer-based coverage, a public-private mixture, or a single payer system. Most of the debate about the choices is [...]

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“Reckless Justice: Some of the Follies of National Health Insurance”

Here is the abstract for Tristram Engelhardt ’s plenary session at this Saturday’s conference:
All over the world, national health insurance systems are in crisis. Because they face the challenges of the moral hazard (people using all benefits to which they are entitled, even when the use is minimally beneficial), the political hazard (politicians promising benefits [...]

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Abstracts of Papers, Part 1

Here are abstracts of the papers for the conference’s first concurrent sessions. Over the course of the next week, I’ll post the abstracts both for the other concurrent sessions and for the plenary sessions, as well.

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A Graduate Conference for Feminist Philosophers, Call for Papers

I was visiting the web-page of the Philosophy Department at the University of Western Ontario, and noticed that they had an open call for papers for an upcoming graduate student conference on feminist philosophy (Sept. 18-20). The Keynote speaker is Alice MacLachlan (York University).
 Here is an excerpt of their description of the conference: “This conference aims [...]

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Globalization and the Struggle for Peace and Human Rights…

…is the topic of the Global Studies Association of North America’s 2009 Conference. 
May 8th through the 10th.
Click here for more details.
Co-Sponsored by the Peace Studies Program at Florida Atlantic University.
Keynote Speakers include: Ginette Apollon (“Human Rights in Haiti”), Farshad Araghi (“The Global Food Crisis: Event or Conjecture?”), Stephen E. Bronner (“America and Darfur: Notes for a [...]

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I love being a woman!

Just stopping by the blog with some girl power to my sisters across the world to celebrate International Women’s Day. I hope each and every one of us get to live to see the day when women are no longer beaten, forced to bear children, battered, forced into prostitution, abused, discriminated against, held in slavery, [...]

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Miranda Fricker on Epistemic Injustice

An interview at Philosophy Bites:
Testimonial injustice occurs when others fail to treat you seriously as a source of knowledge. In this interview Miranda Fricker, author of a recent book on the topic, explains this concept which lies at the intersection between epistemology and political philosophy.
This interview is from 2007, but I just found out about [...]

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The Tacit Political Contract in the Tragic Age of Socrates

In the Platonic dialogue Crito, Crito visits his friend, Socrates, while the aged philosopher patiently awaits his execution in an Athenian jail. Crito came to convince Socrates to avoid his impending death by fleeing Athens. Socrates, though, refuses. He justifies his decision by, primarily, putting forth an argument about political obligation. Socrates’ argument of political [...]

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“The Obama Effect”

Readers who have followed recent philosophical discussions on implicit bias and schema disruption (here, for example) may be interested in this study reported at The Situationist attempting to test whether having an African-American president has changed the way African-American students perform on tests, and whether it has enhanced their ability to overcome stereotype threats that [...]

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A Situationist Interpretation of MLK Jr.

At The Situationist. Here’s a snippet:
To be sure, King is most revered in some circles for quotations that are easily construed as dispositionist, such as: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by [...]

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Conference Papers

Congratulations to the students whose papers have been accepted for presentation at the 12th Annual Northeast Florida Student Philosophy Conference at UNF on February 7th:
“How to Motivate the Maxim that ‘Ought Implies Can’ to Defend the Principle of Alternate Possibilities”
Sean Armil (University of Florida)
“On the Limitations of Formal Methods”
Wataru Asanuma (Florida State University)
“A Defense of [...]

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The Milgram Experiment

The Milgram Experiment is standard in psychology classes and a hypothesis Stanley Milgram raised has been increasingly taken up and examined by philosophers, “[O]ften it is not so much the kind of person a man as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” This hypothesis, the situationist [...]

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Academeology: A Book by Female Science Professor

An academic blogger, Female Science Professor, began blogging anonymously in 2006. Her blog postings have been collected in a book which might interest our readers who like reading and thinking about science, intersections of philosophy and science, the production of scientific knowledge and the workings of academia. Female Science Professor is, well, a female scientist [...]

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Links for the Holiday

As many people prepare to eat holiday feasts and go shopping on Black Friday, over at the Utah State philosophy blog, Harrision Kleiner talks about Peter Singer’s argument on moral duties for helping the poor. And while Americans react to seeing Sarah Palin give an interview as a turkey is slaughtered behind her, Kleiner calls [...]

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Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy

It’s a flurry of podcasts! Here’s information about the conference these podcasts come from:
“Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy” will explore philosophical questions about three specific populations — people with autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and those labeled “mentally retarded.” We will raise ethical and foundational questions regarding both theoretical and practical matters. The areas to [...]

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Happy Halloween!

And don’t eat too much candy!

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Simone de Beauvoir in Philosophy Now

The current issue of Philosophy Now marks the 100th birthday of Simone de Beauvoir with several informative articles about her work.

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To Those who Call Abortion, Murder

2 Kings 17:17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire.

Some claim that abortion is murder.
To restate this, there are some who claim is that there are rooms all over America, where individuals are murdering innocent children with the consent of their mothers. To date, between thirty and forty million innocent children have [...]

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Bernard Williams Lecture in Nine Parts

Below are youtube links to a lecture Williams gave in 2002 at Princeton entitled “Unavoidable Human Prejudice.” In it, Williams discusses speciesism, Singer’s utilitarianism and the unavoidable human prejudice.

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Sure, I beat my kids. What? Don’t you?

A few years ago, when my boys were 1 ½ years old, one of them ran from me while I was taking him out of the car in a crowded parking lot. He ran headlong right in front of an oncoming car. Despite what is often said about aging female drivers, the operator in this [...]

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Could Political Views Be Driven By Biology?

That’s the title of this short bit on NPR. In a nutshell, a researcher measured participants’ stress by using perspiration tests and blinking tests while showing them photos of disturbing things (an open wound with maggots) and administering random disturbing sounds (white noise).
According to the NPR report, there seems to have been a correlation between [...]

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The Individual contra Society

Society is the complex interaction of many and various groups, institutions, and disciplines (here to be understood as professional fields). While the configuration of the various social groups varies from one particular society to another, all are amalgams of participating, that is, acting, individuals. Actions, however, are the exclusive domain of individuals. An aggregate entity [...]

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The Cobell Case

I thought it was time to finally put up some info on the Cobell Case. This case is called the largest class-action suit against the United States. And it is a pretty huge issue considering it is about the mismanagement of a whole lot of Indian money. It’s only right for someone blogging about American [...]

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