Recently in Ethics Category

Would You Take the Morality Pill?

By webmaster on January 31, 2012 6:08 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Are We Ready for a 'Morality Pill?' ~ NYTimes.com

If continuing brain research does in fact show biochemical differences between the brains of those who help others and the brains of those who do not, could this lead to a "morality pill" -- a drug that makes us more likely to help? Given the many other studies linking biochemical conditions to mood and behavior, and the proliferation of drugs to modify them that have followed, the idea is not far-fetched. If so, would people choose to take it

Unfriending Friendship

By webmaster on January 17, 2012 9:19 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Unfriending Friendship ~ The Hoover Institution

Turning to Aristotle's rich treatment of friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics, this essay takes a critical look at the fate of friendship in the new era of digital connection and shows how friendship and virtue are connected, pointing the way toward a recovery of friendship.

The Willpower Trick

By webmaster on January 10, 2012 6:33 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Willpower Trick ~ Wired.com by Jonah Lehrer

In other words, willpower is so weak, and the conscious mind is so overtaxed, that all it takes is five extra bits of information before it becomes impossible for the brain to resist a piece of cake.

Philosophy Bites: the First 168 Interviews

By webmaster on December 31, 2011 5:25 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Philosophy Bites: Links to the first 168 Interviews

1. Simon Blackburn on Plato's Cave
2. Mary Warnock on Philosophy in Public Life
3. Stephen Law on The Problem of Evil
4. John Cottingham on The Meaning of Life
5. Miranda Fricker on Epistemic Injustice

Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong?

By webmaster on December 24, 2011 5:16 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Steven Pinker: Can Science Tell us Right from Wrong?


Steven Pinker at The Great Debate: Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong? from ASU Origins Project on Vimeo.

Willpower

By webmaster on September 9, 2011 11:27 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Willpower - Book Review ~ New York Times

Together with intelligence, self-control turns out to be the best predictor of a successful and satisfying life. But Baumeister and Tierney aren't endorsing a return to a preachy puritanism in which people are enjoined to resist temptation by sheer force of will and condemned as morally irresolute when they fail. The "will" in willpower is not some mysterious "free will," a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself. Willpower consists of circuitry in the brain that runs on glucose, has a limited capacity and operates by rules that scientists can reverse-engineer -- and, crucially, that can find work-arounds for its own shortcomings.

Rapid Progress Toward Peace

By webmaster on August 18, 2011 5:44 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Think Again: War ~| Foreign Policy

[T]he last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace

Why Millions Can Die and We Don't Care

By webmaster on August 15, 2011 4:35 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Statistical Numbing: Why Millions Can Die and We Don't Care ~ Psychology Today

Four year-old Khafra was near death three days ago when he was brought to the refugee camp hospital. He was emaciated, his ribs showing through his taut dry skin. He panted for breath. His desperate eyes bulged. His mother Alyan could only sit at his side and watch, helpless, sad beyond comprehension, but herself too malnourished to cry. Doctors are still not sure Khafran can be saved.

 The famine in the Horn of Africa has left more than 12 million people malnourished, including half of Somalia's population. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are starving, and more than 29,000 children in southern Somalia have starved to death in the last 90 days.

Which of those two paragraphs was more emotionally powerful? It should have been the second, shouldn't it, based on the scale of the suffering, 640,000 starving kids to one? But the first paragraph almost certainly carried more emotional punch.

Does Philosophy Matter?

By webmaster on August 9, 2011 7:56 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Does Philosophy Matter? ~ NYTimes.com

Let's suppose that... a former moral absolutist is now a relativist of some kind, or a former relativist is now a confirmed believer in moral absolutes. What exactly will have changed when one set of philosophical views has been swapped for another? Almost nothing. To be sure you will now give different answers than you once would have when you are asked about moral facts, objective truths, irrefutable evidence and so on; but when you are engaged in trying to decide what is the right thing to do in a particular situation, none of the answers you might give to these deep questions will have any bearing on your decision. You won't say, "Because I believe in moral absolutes, I'll take this new job or divorce my husband or vote for the Democrat." Nor will you say, "Because I deny moral absolutes I have no basis for deciding since any decision I make is as good or bad as any other." What you will say, if only to yourself, is "Given what is at stake, and the likely outcomes of taking this or that action, I think I'll do this." Neither "I believe in moral absolutes" nor "I don't" will be a reason in the course of ordinary, non-philosophical, deliberation.

Is Using 'Study Drugs' Cheating?

By webmaster on August 3, 2011 7:35 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Is using 'study drugs' cheating? - Northern Star Online

If freshman Brian Miller hadn't popped a prescription Focalin pill before his calculus quiz, he would have failed it, he said. Focalin is a prescription medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder that Miller uses to help increase his alertness, concentration, information retention and to help him think "better and more fluidly." Like many college students, Miller sometimes takes medications like Adderall, Focalin and Ritalin, not prescribed to him, to boost his academic performance. Sleeplessness is a side effect of the stimulants and helps students avoid fatigue when staying up all night to finish projects or cram for tests.

The Biology of Ethics

By webmaster on July 2, 2011 7:21 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Biology of Ethics - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Montane voles and prairie voles are so similar "that naifs like me can't tell them apart," she told a standing-room-only audience (younger and hipper than the museum's usual patrons--the word "neuroscience" these days is like catnip). But prairie voles mate for life, and montane voles do not. Among prairie voles, the males not only share parenting duties, they will even lick and nurture pups that aren't their own. By contrast, male montane voles do not actively parent even their own offspring. What accounts for the difference? Researchers have found that the prairie voles, the sociable ones, have greater numbers of oxytocin receptors in certain regions of the brain. (And prairie voles that have had their oxytocin receptors blocked will not pair-bond.)

"As a philosopher, I was stunned," Churchland said, archly. "I thought that monogamous pair-bonding was something one determined for oneself, with a high level of consideration and maybe some Kantian reasoning thrown in. It turns out it is mediated by biology in a very real way."

In Search of the True Self

By webmaster on June 10, 2011 5:06 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
In Search of the True Self - NYTimes.com

Consider again the case of Mark Pierpont. One person might look at his predicament and say: "Deep down, he has always wanted to be with another man, but he somehow picked up from society the idea that this desire was immoral or forbidden. If he could only escape the shackles of his religious beliefs, he would be able to fully express the person he really is."

But then another person could look at exactly the same case and arrive at the very opposite conclusion: "Fundamentally, Pierpont is a Christian who is struggling to pursue a Christian life, but these desires he has make it difficult for him to live by his own values. If he ever gives in to them and chooses to sleep with another man, he will be betraying what was is most essential to the person he really is."

Each of these perspectives seems like a reasonable one, at least worthy of serious consideration. So it seems that we are faced with a difficult philosophical question. How is one to know which aspect of a person counts as that person's true self?

Commit Yourself

By webmaster on June 2, 2011 11:26 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Commit Yourself - Reason Magazine

If you want a sharper incentive, you can even pick an individual enemy or an organization that stickK.com calls "an anti-charity." Democrats, for instance, might find it especially motivating to know that if they fail to live up to a binding personal commitment on stickK.com, some of their hard-earned money will go to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Anti-charities apparently are highly motivating; stickK.com says they have an 80 percent reported success rate. "All stickK is doing," Karlan told me, "is raising the price of bad behavior--or lowering the cost of good behavior."

What's especially appealing about ventures like stickK.com is not just that they give us the tools to constrain ourselves but that they are voluntary. We are fortunate to live in a time when the biggest problem that many of us face is coping with our own appetites in the face of freedom and affluence. Inevitably our failures--bankruptcy, obesity--bring calls for government to protect us from ourselves. But there are ways we can protect ourselves from ourselves without trampling the rights of others.

Early Modern Philosophy Texts

By webmaster on May 6, 2011 11:24 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Early Modern Philosophy Texts ~ Jonathan Bennett

When students are introduced to the great philosophical works of the early modern period, it is usually in the hope that they will engage with the thoughts and arguments that the texts present. The teaching experience of many of us suggests that most students simply cannot understand these texts. The increasing rate of change in the English language ensures that fewer and fewer of today's readers can cope with the writings of the 16th-18th centuries. There are difficulties of syntax, length and complexity of sentences, words that are no longer current, still-familiar words used in meanings that they now do not have, arcane references to other philosophers which today's students will seldom understand or be required to follow up; these and other factors create forbidding obstacles to engaging with these early modern texts. I reduce the obstacles so that students can more easily come to grips with the philosophical thoughts the texts express. Once they do that, they still won't have an easy time, because the material itself is hard; but their efforts will go into getting philosophical understanding, not decoding old prose.

My versions are faithful to the content of the originals, but are plainer and more straightforward in manner. I could have made them even plainer, but that would have taken them further than I wanted to go from the stylistic feel of the originals. I love the original texts, and am glad to have spent years wrestling with them in their pristine form. I do wish, though, that through the years I could also have read them sometimes with all my energy going into the philosophy.


Considering Future Generations

By webmaster on May 5, 2011 7:55 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
What will happen to us? - The Boston Globe

"It turns out that the reduction of existential risk turns out to be one of the most important things we can do," he says. "It turns out, if you act and consider all good -- including that of future generations -- you could outweigh the good you can do today by eliminating world hunger, say, or curing malaria." Saving a billion from famine today is, by this calculation, a minor concern compared with making sure no extinction-level event snuffs out the opportunity for a trillion more to live in the centuries to come.

In Defense of Flogging

By webmaster on April 27, 2011 7:13 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
In Defense of Flogging - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

No punishment is as easy or seemingly satisfying as a physical beating. I learned this not because I beat people, but because the good citizens I swore to serve and protect often urged me to do so. It wasn't hard for me to resist (I liked my job, and besides, I wasn't raised that way), but I agreed that many of the disrespectful hoodlums deserved a beating. Why? Because, as the old-school thinking goes, when people do wrong, they deserve to be punished...

For most of the past two centuries, at least in so-called civilized societies, the ideal of punishment has been replaced by the hope of rehabilitation. The American penitentiary system was invented to replace punishment with "cure." Prisons were built around the noble ideas of rehabilitation. In society, at least in liberal society, we're supposed to be above punishment, as if punishment were somehow beneath us. The fact that prisons proved both inhumane and miserably ineffective did little to deter the utopian enthusiasm of those reformers who wished to abolish punishment.

Cool Hunting

By Jenna Oliver on April 21, 2011 2:28 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The Merchants of Cool (Frontline)

Merchants of Cool Frontline Documentary

The Merchants of Cool is a powerful Frontline documentary film on marketing popular culture to teens now available to view online. Correspondent Douglas Rushkoff takes the viewer inside the world of "cool" and takes a hard look at pop culture, media and society. This report on marketing popular culture to teens Ad executives and PR insiders go "cool hunting" in the underground world of teen trends and what they find and exploit creates a powerful media tool for the merchants of cool. This insightful look at how media, culture and adolescent entitlement collide was made at the cusp of the millenium, but is still relevant in today's face paced and converging world of social media and pop culture.

Why Living Longer Destroys Faith

By webmaster on April 14, 2011 4:08 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Why living longer destroys your faith - The Week

Ever wonder why church attendance appears to be down just about everywhere? British researchers have found a surprising culprit: life expectancy. Economists at the University of East Anglia in England say -- in a study published in the International Journal of Social Economics -- that as people in developed countries live longer, they put off worrying about deep spiritual questions when they're young, and put off going to church.

Defending Moral Relativism

By webmaster on March 24, 2011 12:31 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response ~ Philosophy Now

One might summarize these points by saying that relativism does not undermine the capacity to criticize others or to improve one's own values. Relativism does tell us, however, that we are mistaken when we think we are in possession of the one true morality. We can try to pursue moral values that lead to more fulfilling lives, but we must bear in mind that fulfillment is itself relative, so no single set of values can be designated universally fulfilling. The discovery that relativism is true can help each of us individually by revealing that our values are mutable and parochial. We should not assume that others share our views, and we should recognize that our views would differ had we lived in different circumstances. These discoveries may make us more tolerant and more flexible. Relativism does not entail tolerance or any other moral value, but, once we see that there is no single true morality, we lose one incentive for trying to impose our values on others.

The Myth of Joyful Parenthood

By webmaster on February 6, 2011 11:24 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Myth of Joyful Parenthood - Association for Psychological Science

All this makes sense from a historical perspective, the scientists point out: In an earlier time, kids actually had economic value; they worked on farms or brought home paychecks, and they didn't cost that much. Not coincidentally, emotional relationships between parents and children were less affectionate back then--and childhood was much less sentimentalized. Paradoxically, as the value of children has diminished, and the costs have escalated, the belief that parenthood is emotionally rewarding has gained currency. In that sense, the myth of parental joy is a modern psychological phenomenon.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

By webmaster on January 11, 2011 10:57 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ.com

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America.

Is it Honest to be Polite?

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 8:57 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Manners Make the Mannequin ~ Big Questions

Is it honest to look for the positives in an otherwise distasteful situation? Is it honest to search for some element of shared interest, and focus on that, to get someone to warm up to you? Is it honest to yourself and others to admit mistakes, knowing that it might give you the upper hand in the rest of the negotiations?

Should you honestly tell your roommate she looks fat in her summer white pants, or that he should dump his clingy girlfriend? When you put on a big smile for your sixth interview of the day in a seemingly hopeless job search, are you being honest? And where is the line between direct communication and hurtful, unnecessary insults?

These are questions our great-grandparents would have dismissed out of hand. In their world, there was virtue in being polite, and if you didn't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. During the inner-directed 1960s, however -- the era of the Human Potential Movement and self-actualization -- sincerity and expressions of visceral emotions became our new definition of honesty. And these ideas stuck.

The New Science of Morality

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 8:54 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The New Science of Morality ~ Edge.org by Sam Harris

The truth is, science is not value-free. Good science is the product of our valuing evidence, logical consistency, parsimony, and other intellectual virtues. And if you don't value those things, you can't participate in the scientific conversation. I'm saying we need not worry about the people who don't value human flourishing, or who say they don't. We need not listen to people who come to the table saying, "You know, we want to the cut heads off adulterers at half-time at our soccer games because we have a book dictated by the Creator of the universe which says we should." In response, we are free to say, "Well, you appear to be confused about everything. Your "physics" isn't physics, and your "morality" isn't morality." These are equivalent moves, intellectually speaking. They are borne of the same entanglement with real facts about the way the universe is. In terms of morality, our conversation can proceed with reference to facts about the changing experiences of conscious creatures. It seems to me to be just as legitimate, scientifically, to define "morality" in this way as it is to define "physics" in terms of the behavior of matter and energy. But most people engaged in of the scientific study of morality don't seem to realize this.

Trolleyology

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 8:25 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Matters of life and death ~ Prospect Magazine

Trolleyology encapsulates the deepest tensions in our moral outlook. To tease out our moral intuitions, philosophers have come up with ever more ingenious scenarios. The trolley is usually racing towards five unfortunates and the reader is presented with various means to rescue them at the cost of another life, involving props such as obese gentlemen, footbridges, trapdoors and lazy Susans. Some of the examples are so complex that, in the words of one exasperated philosopher, this branch of ethics "makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes [a US brand of study guides]." But at its root the trolley problem is a philosophical detective story, attracting some of the smartest minds in moral philosophy.

Does Humanitarian Aid Fuel Conflict?

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 8:20 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Humanitarian aid and catering conflicts ~ The New Yorker

Polman puts it more provocatively. Sowing horror to reap aid, and reaping aid to sow horror, she argues, is "the logic of the humanitarian era." Consider how Christian aid groups that set up "redemption" programs to buy the freedom of slaves in Sudan drove up the market incentives for slavers to take more captives. Consider how, in Ethiopia and Somalia during the nineteen-eighties and nineties, politically instigated, localized famines attracted the food aid that allowed governments to feed their own armies while they further destroyed and displaced targeted population groups. Consider how, in the early eighties, aid fortified fugitive Khmer Rouge killers in camps on the Thai-Cambodian border, enabling them to visit another ten years of war, terror, and misery upon Cambodians; and how, in the mid-nineties, fugitive Rwandan génocidaires were succored in the same way by international humanitarians in border camps in eastern Congo, so that they have been able to continue their campaigns of extermination and rape to this day.

An Amoral Manifesto

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 5:57 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
An Amoral Manifesto (Part I) ~ Philosophy Now

However, if I were only trying to persuade a Kantian vivisectionist of the error of her ways, its usage, it seems to me, would pass muster even morally. I would be using reasoning to show my interlocutor that what she was doing violated her own moral/theoretical commitments. My own view of morality itself would be irrelevant; my interlocutor can assume what she likes about my meta-ethics. It would be exactly as if I were talking with a religious believer about the proper treatment of other animals: whether or not the believer knew I was an atheist, it would be perfectly proper for me to try to convince her that there is Biblical support for a benign 'stewardship' of other animals - would it not? I need not believe in the concept of stewardship myself, nor in its divine sanction, in order to invoke it undeceivingly when arguing with someone who does. Just so, it seems to me, morality.

Benjamin Franklin on American Happiness

By webmaster on December 31, 2010 5:50 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Benjamin Franklin on American Happiness ~City Journal

According to the philosophers of the pursuit of happiness, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, this situation is no American accident; it's the human condition properly understood. Nature condemns us to shop until we drop. According to Hobbes, there is no "repose of a mind satisfied" and "felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter." Human beings are inclined to a perpetual, restless desire for power after power that ends only with death. Locke is no cheerier. He tells us that human desire always looks beyond present enjoyments to an absent good, and the minute we find ourselves contented by something, a new "uneasiness" disturbs us and "we are set afresh on work in the pursuit of happiness." By this argument, the pursuit of happiness means that happiness as such is the Holy Grail.

Cleanliness and Morality

By webmaster on December 28, 2010 5:31 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
A Sense of Cleanliness ~ Edge.org

The question it all boils down to is whether feeling clean or dirty, or warm or cold at the moment, do these influences play an appropriate role or is it an influence that should be ruled out? Is it something that we should ignore is it something we actually should pay attention to? To what extent do we want to control for these feelings and get rid of them? Or rather, regulate them and say, "These must not play a role".

To be honest, the whole idea that feelings play such a powerful role for morality is still quite new, and we are really doing the basic studies. We are doing the basic science of just looking at the really specific effects in the laboratory and we then have to take these effects out of the laboratory and apply them.

At the end of the day, I suppose one goal could be to let people know that these are the effects that exist, and feelings play a role. So if you pay attention to where your decisions are coming from or what might be influencing them, you might be able to control some of these effects.

Religious People Out-Reproduce Secular Ones

By webmaster on December 25, 2010 5:56 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Religious people out-reproduce secular ones by a landslide ~ Scientific American

In fact, Blume's research also shows quite vividly that secular, nonreligious people are being dramatically out-reproduced by religious people of any faith. Across a broad swath of demographic data relating to religiosity, the godly are gaining traction in offspring produced. For example, there's a global-level positive correlation between frequency of parental worship attendance and number of offspring. Those who "never" attend religious services bear, on a worldwide average, 1.67 children per lifetime; "once per month," and the average goes up to 2.01 children; "more than once a week," 2.5 children...

The whole situation doesn't bode well for the "New Atheism" movement, in any event. Evolutionary biology works by a law of numbers, not moralistic sentiments. Blume, who doesn't try to hide his own religious beliefs, sees the cruel irony in this as well:

Some naturalists are trying to get rid of our evolved abilities of religiosity by quoting biology. But from an evolutionary as well as philosophic perspective, it may seem rather odd to try to defeat nature with naturalistic arguments.

Should the Professor Give a Kidney?

By webmaster on December 25, 2010 5:41 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Philosophy class gets a real-world question ~ The Washington Post

In late August, students in Philosophy 380 at St. Mary's College of Maryland received an unusual assignment centered on this question: Should the professor donate a kidney to a stranger? Organ donation, a subject ancient philosophers hardly could have imagined, often comes up nowadays in college courses because of the ethical implications of the many stunning breakthroughs of modern medicine.

We Believe Experts Who Confirm Our Beliefs

By webmaster on December 15, 2010 5:44 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
We believe experts who confirm our beliefs ~ Physorg.com

"It's our values that determine the credibility that we give to experts," according to Éric Montpetit and Érick Lachapelle, professors at the Université de Montréal Department of Political Science. "We judge based on our political predispositions. This highlights the limit of rationality when shaping an opinion."

Montpetit and Lachapelle adapted a study conducted by American researchers Kahan, Jenkins-Smith and Braman and surveyed 156 of their own undergraduate students to know where they stand on the political spectrum. They were then asked to evaluate the credibility of fictitious researchers.

For instance, students were presented with the description of Oliver Roberts, a professor of nuclear engineering at Berkeley and a Princeton graduate. To some, he was described as concerned about the impact of buried nuclear waste on human health and the environment. To others he was described as a defender of this safe practice. For 85 percent of students wary about nuclear waste, he was considered credible when he was also described as wary. His credibility dropped to 61 percent when he defended the practice.

To Give or Not to Give?

By webmaster on December 10, 2010 8:03 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
To Give or Not to Give: It's All About the Brain ~ Marketplace interview with Jonah Lehrer

The first thing to note about giving away money is that it feels really good. For instance, several brain scanning experiments demonstrate that donating to a worthy cause leads to activation in the dopamine reward pathway. It's the same part of the brain that's turned on when we have sex, or eat a slice of chocolate cake. In fact, there is typically more "reward-related" activity when we donate money than we receive an equivalent amount. Giving is literally better than getting, at least from the perspective of the brain.

Link to read the transcript or listen to the audio.

Speech and Harm

By Jeff on November 15, 2010 8:09 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Speech and Harm  -NYTimes.com
By Ernie Lepore

...why are slurs so offensive? And why are some more offensive than others? Even different slurs for the same group vary in intensity of contempt. How can words fluctuate both in their status as slurs and in their power to offend?

Morality Put to the Test

By webmaster on October 23, 2010 5:41 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Morality put to the test - New Scientist

Long thought to be off limits to science, morality has been considered the exclusive preserve of philosophers and theologians. Not any more. In this special report a new generation of scientists share their wide-ranging insights.

Is Pure Altruism Possible?

By webmaster on October 20, 2010 5:24 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Is Pure Altruism Possible? - NYTimes.com

Still, doubting altruism is easy, even when it seems at first glance to be apparent. It's undeniable that people sometimes act in a way that benefits others, but it may seem that they always get something in return -- at the very least, the satisfaction of having their desire to help fulfilled. Students in introductory philosophy courses torture their professors with this reasoning. And its logic can seem inexorable.

Other Women's Voices

By Jeff on October 19, 2010 10:34 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

OTHER WOMEN'S VOICES
 Translations of women's writing
before 1700

Links that will take you to passages from over 125 women writers. The entries are on women who produced a substantial amount of work before 1700, some or all of which has been translated into modern English. Each entry will tell you about the print sources from which the translated passages are taken; it will also tell you of useful secondary sources and Internet sites, when those are available.

Morals Without God? - NYTimes.com

By webmaster on October 18, 2010 4:52 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Morals Without God? - NYTimes.com

Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant -- I will get to this -- but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.

Procrastination

By webmaster on October 10, 2010 12:23 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker

Philosophers are interested in procrastination for another reason. It's a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia--doing something against one's own better judgment. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you're simply saying "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," you're not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that's the most efficient use of your time doesn't count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy. In one study, sixty-five per cent of students surveyed before they started working on a term paper said they would like to avoid procrastinating: they knew both that they wouldn't do the work on time and that the delay would make them unhappy.

Not Telling Them Straight

By webmaster on August 26, 2010 1:02 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Chilean officials dropping wait-time news gently to 33 trapped miners - CNN.com

As Chile labors carefully to rescue 33 trapped miners, the nation is subtly working to buoy their hopes and psychological equilibrium by not telling them straight out just how long it could take to free them from the bottom of a dark and craggy shaft...

Authorities believe it would be too much of a psychological blow to tell the miners that experts estimate it could take three to four months to drill the men out.

Capitalism Has Made Society Kinder

By webmaster on August 21, 2010 3:11 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Capitalism has made society 'kinder'~ National Post

Social scientists -- and economists in particular -- have long been baffled with the way people in large societies are so trusting and fair in dealings with strangers. Many academics have argued it is a throwback to a time when humans were hunter-gatherers.

Mr. Henrich and his colleagues say their findings indicate playing fair with strangers is a behaviour that was favoured as the size of societies and populations grew.

The emergence and growth of markets allowed for the exchange of goods, skills and knowledge and enabled large complex societies to emerge and function, Mr. Henrich says, noting that humans in large societies are not nearly as selfish as some would suggest.

Ewwwwwwwww!

By webmaster on August 16, 2010 3:40 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Ewwwwwwwww! - The Boston Globe

Research has shown that people who are more easily disgusted by bugs are more likely to see gay marriage and abortion as wrong. Putting people in a foul-smelling room makes them stricter judges of a controversial film or of a person who doesn't return a lost wallet. Washing their hands makes people feel less guilty about their own moral transgressions, and hypnotically priming them to feel disgust reliably induces them to see wrongdoing in utterly innocuous stories.

Today, psychologists and philosophers are piecing these findings together into a theory of disgust's moral role and the evolutionary forces that determined it: Just as our teeth and tongue first evolved to process food, then were enlisted for complex communication, disgust first arose as an emotional response to ensure that our ancestors steered clear of rancid meat and contagion. But over time, that response was co-opted by the social brain to help police the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Today, some psychologists argue, we recoil at the wrong just as we do at the rancid, and when someone says that a politician's chronic dishonesty makes her sick, she is feeling the same revulsion she might get from a brimming plate of cockroaches.

Spend Less and Find Happiness

By webmaster on August 9, 2010 8:13 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness - NYTimes.com

Inspired by books and blog entries about living simply, Ms. Strobel and her husband, Logan Smith, both 31, began donating some of their belongings to charity. As the months passed, out went stacks of sweaters, shoes, books, pots and pans, even the television after a trial separation during which it was relegated to a closet. Eventually, they got rid of their cars, too. Emboldened by a Web site that challenges consumers to live with just 100 personal items, Ms. Strobel winnowed down her wardrobe and toiletries to precisely that number.

Her mother called her crazy.

Philosophy and Faith

By webmaster on August 2, 2010 7:45 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Philosophy and Faith - NYTimes.com

At this point, the class perks up again as I lay out versions of the famous arguments for the existence of God, and my students begin to think that they're about to get what their parents have paid for at a great Catholic university: some rigorous intellectual support for their faith. 

Soon enough, however, things again fall apart, since our best efforts to construct arguments along the traditional lines face successive difficulties.  The students realize that I'm not going to be able to give them a convincing proof, and I let them in on the dirty secret: philosophers have never been able to find arguments that settle the question of God's existence or any  of the other "big questions" we've been discussing for 2500 years.

Courage and Honesty

By webmaster on August 1, 2010 7:49 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

"None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear." 

Bertrand Russell

How Money Restricts Life's Pleasures

By webmaster on July 31, 2010 1:47 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

 

It's a mystery why money doesn't make us happy, because it feels like it damn well should. With money we can buy whatever we want, go wherever we want, even be whoever we want. Surely that should make us happy?

And yet study after study shows that in affluent societies money might bring satisfaction, but it doesn't bring much happiness.

Perhaps, as people become really rich, they don't choose more enjoyable activities (i.e. they stay in the office working)? Perhaps material goods just can't make us happy? Or perhaps there is always someone richer, spoiling the party with their more impressive wealth?

The New Science of Morality

By webmaster on July 31, 2010 1:41 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Scientists engaged in the scientific study of human nature are gaining sway over the scientists and others in disciplines that rely on studying social actions and human cultures independent from their biological foundation. 

 No where is this more apparent than in the field of moral psychology. Using babies, psychopaths, chimpanzees, fMRI scanners, web surveys, agent-based modeling, and ultimatum games, moral psychology has become a major convergence zone for research in the behavioral sciences. 

So what do we have to say? Are we moving toward consensus on some points? What are the most pressing questions for the next five years? And what do we have to offer a world in which so many global and national crises are caused or exacerbated by moral failures and moral conflicts? It seems like everyone is studying morality these days, reaching findings that complement each other more often than they clash.

The Busy vs. Lazy Paradox

By webmaster on July 25, 2010 7:31 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Forced to wait for fifteen minutes at the airport luggage carousel leaves many of us miserable and irritated. Yet if we'd spent the same waiting time walking to the carousel we'd be far happier. That's according to Christopher Hsee and colleagues, who say we're happier when busy but that unfortunately our instinct is for idleness. Unless we have a reason for being active we choose to do nothing - an evolutionary vestige that ensures we conserve energy.

The World's Happiest Countries

By webmaster on July 23, 2010 7:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

uantifying happiness isn't an easy task. Researchers at the Gallup World Poll went about it by surveying thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being. 

First they asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a "life evaluation" score between 1 and 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their "daily experiences"--things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged. 

 Subjects that reported high scores were considered "thriving." The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings

Why Money Makes You Unhappy

By webmaster on July 23, 2010 11:26 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Why Money Makes You Unhappy | Wired Science | Wired.com

Money is surprisingly bad at making us happy. Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness, especially in developed countries. 

Even worse, it appears that the richest nation in history - 21st century America - is slowly getting less pleased with life... Needless to say, this data contradicts one of the central assumptions of modern society, which is that more money equals more pleasure....

But the statistical disconnect between money and happiness raises a fascinating question: Why doesn't money make us happy? One intriguing answer comes from a new study by psychologists at the University of Liege, published in Psychological Science. The scientists explore the "experience-stretching hypothesis," an idea first proposed by Daniel Gilbert.

The Narcissist

By webmaster on July 17, 2010 7:05 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

There used to be theories that deep down narcissists feel unworthy, but recent research doesn't support this. Instead, it seems, the narcissist's self-directed passion is deep and sincere. 

His self-love is his most precious possession. It is the holy center of all that is sacred and right. He is hypersensitive about anybody who might splatter or disregard his greatness. If someone treats him slightingly, he perceives that as a deliberate and heinous attack. If someone threatens his reputation, he regards this as an act of blasphemy. He feels justified in punishing the attacker for this moral outrage.

How Facts Backfire

By webmaster on July 12, 2010 7:49 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
How facts backfire - The Boston Globe


In the end, truth will out. Won't it? Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

Why Parents Hate Parenting

By webmaster on July 7, 2010 6:02 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Why Parents Hate Parenting -- New York Magazine

From the perspective of the species, it's perfectly unmysterious why people have children. From the perspective of the individual, however, it's more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines

Ignore it, Intimidate it, or Reason it Away

By webmaster on July 4, 2010 6:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

What do people do when confronted with scientific evidence that challenges their pre-existing view? Often they will try to ignore it, intimidate it, buy it off, sue it for libel, or reason it away. 

The classic paper on the last of those strategies is from Lord in 1979: they took two groups of people, one in favour of the death penalty, the other against it, and then presented each with a piece of scientific evidence that supported their pre-existing view, and a piece that challenged it. Murder rates went up, or down, for example, after the abolition of capital punishment in a state, or comparing neighbouring states, and the results were as you might imagine. Each group found extensive methodological holes in the evidence they disagreed with, but ignored the very same holes in the evidence that reinforced their views.

Foetus 'cannot feel pain before 24 weeks'

By webmaster on June 25, 2010 8:27 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Nerve endings in the brain are not sufficiently formed to enable pain to be felt before 24 weeks, according to the report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which had been commissioned by the Department of Health.

The report said: "It can be concluded that the foetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation."


Lincoln on the Ethics of Belief

By webmaster on June 16, 2010 12:57 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him. 

 ~ Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper (from Antony Flew: How to Think Straight p17)

The Bright Side of Wrong

By webmaster on June 14, 2010 11:33 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The bright side of wrong - The Boston Globe

Is there anything at once so routine and so loathed as the revelation that we were mistaken? Like the exam that's returned to us covered in red ink, being wrong makes us cringe and slouch down in our seats. It makes our hearts sink and our dander rise...

Being wrong, we feel, signals something terrible about us. The Italian cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini summed up this sentiment nicely. We err, he wrote, because of "inattention, distraction, lack of interest, poor preparation, genuine stupidity, timidity, braggadocio, emotional imbalance,...ideological, racial, social or chauvinistic prejudices, as well as aggressive or prevaricatory instincts." In this view -- and it is the common one -- our errors are evidence of our gravest social, intellectual, and moral failings.

Are the Ten Commandments the Basis For Our Laws?

By webmaster on June 9, 2010 8:54 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

People seem to accept that our laws are based on the morals of the Old Testament laid out in the Commandments, but as a proper skeptic, I decided to take a look myself. Why not go over the Commandments, said I to myself, and compare them to our actual laws, as well as the Constitution, the legal document framed by the Founding Fathers, and upon which our laws are actually based?

Prisoner's Dilemma

By webmaster on June 6, 2010 5:31 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
game theory image.gif

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1899#comic

The Evolution of Empathy

By webmaster on May 29, 2010 6:44 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Calculus of Felicity

By webmaster on May 13, 2010 12:44 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The Magic Cure

By webmaster on May 10, 2010 8:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The magic cure - The Boston Globe

But as evidence of the effect's power mounts, members of the medical community are increasingly asking an intriguing question: if the placebo effect can help patients, shouldn't we start putting it to work? In certain ways, placebos are ideal drugs: they typically have no side effects and are essentially free. And in recent years, research has confirmed that they can bring about genuine improvements in a number of conditions. An active conversation is now under way in leading medical journals, as bioethicists and researchers explore how to give people the real benefits of pretend treatment...

But any attempt to harness the placebo effect immediately runs into thorny ethical and practical dilemmas. To present a dummy pill as real medicine would be, by most standards, to lie. To prescribe one openly, however, would risk undermining the effect. And even if these issues were resolved, the whole idea still might sound a little shady--offering bogus pills or procedures could seem, from the patient's perspective, hard to distinguish from skimping on care

The Moral Life of Babies

By webmaster on May 5, 2010 12:22 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Moral Life of Babies - NYTimes.com

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the "naughty" one. But this punishment wasn't enough -- he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

 

A Hoax!

By webmaster on May 4, 2010 3:54 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
e091207_pett.jpg

USATODAY.com by Joel Pett Dec 7th 2009

The Death of Embarrassment

By webmaster on May 4, 2010 12:28 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Death of Embarrassment ~ In Character, A Journal of Everyday Virtues

What ever happened to embarrassment? Why are an increasing number of us comfortable bringing our private activities - from personal hygiene to intimate conversation - into public view? Bernstein and others place some of the blame on the desensitization wrought by reality television and social networking sites like Facebook, both of which traffic in personal revelation. To be sure, television and Internet video sites such as YouTube have made all of us more comfortable in the role of everyday voyeurs. We watch others cook, work, shop, argue, sing, dance, stumble, and fall - all from a safe remove. The motley denizens of reality television regularly put themselves into questionable and embarrassing situations so that they can later discuss, for our viewing enjoyment, how questionable and embarrassing their conduct was. If we are less easily embarrassed, it must be in part from vicariously experiencing so much manufactured embarrassment on the screen.

Many people see the decline of embarrassment as a good thing. "Why shouldn't I be able to do X?" people often say after having done something outrageous or transgressive. But this misunderstands the distinction between embarrassment - a mild but necessary correction of inappropriate behavior - and shame, which is a stronger emotional response usually involving feelings of guilt about more serious breaches of conduct.

Blame It on Mr. Rogers

By webmaster on April 30, 2010 12:36 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled - WSJ.com

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself.

Animal Experimentation and Neglected Interests

By Emily on April 30, 2010 10:37 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Duty and the Beast: Animal Experimentation and Neglected Interests

D. Benatar, 2000 

From the Department of Philosophy, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

I take it that the moral dilemma many people feel about animal experimentation is that they value its benefits yet simultaneously recognise that these benefits are at considerable cost to animals. The question then becomes: Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Glib answers to this difficult question are frequently offered from both sides of the animal experimentation dispute. For many opponents of animal experimentation, the answer is obviously negative. For many animal experimenters and their defenders, the answer is obviously affirmative.

Hand Over Your Brain

By webmaster on April 26, 2010 12:31 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
How Charisma Can Make You Hand Over Your Brain ~ Inkling Magazine

In other words, there is some reason to believe that when religious subjects listened to Christians they perceived as being charismatic--even if the speaker did not make a special effort to use persuasive words or tone of voice--they actually "turned down" the parts of their brains responsible for judging what they heard and, in Schjoedt's words, effectively "handed them over" to someone else.

Provocative? Certainly. But if you happen to be an atheist, don't congratulate yourself on your clearheadedness just yet. What Schjoedt's experiment really shows is how our expectations about others' charisma (or authority, or just-plain-specialness) can modulate the brain's ability to process and judge incoming information. And we're all subject to those expectations, even if we don't all apply them to faith-healing Christians. Schjoedt has this to say:

If our interpretation of the results is correct, our study may be indicative of a general effect of stereotype interaction. Doctors, judges, teachers, officers, etc., who are recognized as having special competencies, may all benefit (or suffer) from 'stereotype' effects, and this neural mechanism may play a central role in the general dynamics of social authority and obedience as observed in the early behavioural studies by Stanley Milgram...


Separate truths

By webmaster on April 26, 2010 8:33 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Separate truths -- The Boston Globe

It is misleading -- and dangerous -- to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom

We pretend that religious differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world's religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous, and more deadly. False rumors of weapons of mass destruction doubtless led the United States to wade into its current quagmire in Iraq. Another factor, however, was our ignorance of the fundamental disagreements between Christians and Muslims, on the one hand, and Sunni and Shia Islam, on the other. What if we had been aware of these conflicts as of 9/11? Would we have committed 160,000 troops to a nation whose language we do not speak and whose religion we do not understand?

Up from Slavery - Reason Magazine

By webmaster on April 9, 2010 8:34 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Up from Slavery - Reason Magazine

Has there ever been a golden age of liberty? No, and there never will be. There will always be people who want to live their lives in peace, and there will always be people who want to exploit them or impose their own ideas on others. If we look at the long term--from a past that includes despotism, feudalism, absolutism, fascism, and communism--we're clearly better off. When we look at our own country's history--contrasting 2010 with 1776 or 1910 or 1950 or whatever--the story is less clear. We suffer under a lot of regulations and restrictions that our ancestors didn't face.

But in 1776 black Americans were held in chattel slavery, and married women had no legal existence except as agents of their husbands. In 1910 and even 1950, blacks still suffered under the legal bonds of Jim Crow--and we all faced confiscatory tax rates throughout the postwar period.

Why We Must Ration Health Care

By webmaster on March 30, 2010 1:10 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Why We Must Ration Health Care - NYTimes.com

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

Magnets and Morality!

By webmaster on March 30, 2010 9:48 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Morality Study Narrows Gap Between Mind And Brain ~ NPR

Scientists have found a surprising link between magnets and morality. A person's moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

People in the study read stories designed to produce moral judgments. One such story begins with a woman named Grace putting powder in her friend's coffee. After that, the story can go in several different directions.

In one version, Grace believes she's putting sugar in her friend's coffee. But it turns out to be poison and her friend dies. In another version, Grace believes she's putting poison in the coffee but it turns out to be sugar and her friend is fine.

People who hear these stories generally forgive Grace for unwittingly poisoning her friend, says Liane Young, a researcher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And, she says, they usually condemn Grace for the failed attempt to do harm.

"We judge people not just for what they do, but what they're thinking at the time of their action, what they're intending," Young says. But, she says, a brief magnetic pulse was able to change that.

Enlightenment Fundamentalism?

By webmaster on March 29, 2010 8:32 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Bonfire of the Intellectuals - Slate Magazine

Is there a paradox at the heart of Enlightenment values? Should a belief in "tolerance" extend to the intolerant? Must Enlightenment values stop short of challenging multicultural values? Or do multicultural values sometimes entail moral relativism? One key issue, for instance, is whether Ayaan Hirsi Ali's campaign against female genital mutilation makes her--as the intellectuals Berman attacks have called her--an "Enlightenment fundamentalist," the flashpoint buzz phrase of the controversy.

Science Can Answer Moral Questions

By webmaster on March 26, 2010 12:45 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

How do morals change?

By webmaster on March 26, 2010 7:25 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
How do morals change? ~ Nature

Where does morality come from? The modern consensus on this question lies close to the position laid out by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. He thought moral reason to be "the slave of the passions". Hume's view is supported by studies that suggest that our judgements of good and evil are influenced by emotional reactions such as empathy and disgust. And it fits nicely with the discovery that a rudimentary moral sense is universal and emerges early. Babies as young as six months judge individuals on the way that they treat others and even one-year-olds engage in spontaneous altruism.

All this leaves little room for rational deliberation in shaping our moral outlook. Indeed, many psychologists think that the reasoned arguments we make about why we have certain beliefs are mostly post-hoc justifications for gut reactions. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, although we like to think of ourselves as judges, reasoning through cases according to deeply held principles, in reality we are more like lawyers, making arguments for positions that have already been established. This implies we have little conscious control over our sense of right and wrong.

The New Commandments

By webmaster on March 8, 2010 1:28 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The New Commandments ~ Vanity Fair by Christopher Hitchens

It's difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words "Thou shalt not." But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature--why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone--you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Guilt Ships Passing in the Night

By webmaster on March 6, 2010 5:19 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Women and Men are Guilt Ships Passing in the Night ~ N e u r o n a r r a t i v e

What the research team found is that women in all three age groups experienced significantly higher feelings of habitual guilt than men, with the 40-50 year-old bracket experiencing the most. Female children and teens also experience more guilt than males in their respective age groups. The correlation with interpersonal sensitivity followed suit for all age groups (women higher, men lower) - but, for men in the 25-33 age bracket the sensitivity score was especially low. The researchers noted that with such low scores, men in this group have a serious empathetic guilt handicap. Safe to say, not an appealing personality trait.

The Ethical Dog

By webmaster on February 19, 2010 11:53 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Ethical Dog~ Scientific American

Every dog owner knows a pooch can learn the house rules--and when she breaks one, her subsequent groveling is usually ingratiating enough to ensure quick forgiveness. But few people have stopped to ask why dogs have such a keen sense of right and wrong. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups--and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality.

Ethics and the Placebo Effect

By webmaster on February 13, 2010 5:56 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

More Than Moral Metaphors

By webmaster on February 13, 2010 5:45 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Dark rooms and sunglasses promote deceit and selfishness ~ Not Exactly Rocket Science

The English language is full of metaphors linking moral purity to both physical cleanliness and brightness. We speak of "clean consciences", "pure thoughts" and "dirty thieves". We're suspicious of "shady behaviour" and we use light and darkness to symbolise good and evil. But there is more to these metaphors than we might imagine. The mere scent of a clean-smelling room can take people down a virtuous road, compelling them to choose generosity over greed and charity over apathy. Meanwhile, the darkness of a dimmed room or a pair of sunglasses can compel people towards selfishness and cheating.

The Evolution of Empathy

By webmaster on January 25, 2010 11:23 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Evolution of Empathy ~ Greater Good Magazine

We are so used to empathy that we take it for granted, yet it is essential to human society as we know it. Our morality depends on it: How could anyone be expected to follow the golden rule without the capacity to mentally trade places with a fellow human being? It is logical to assume that this capacity came first, giving rise to the golden rule itself. The act of perspective-taking is summed up by one of the most enduring definitions of empathy that we have, formulated by Adam Smith as "changing places in fancy with the sufferer."

The Compassionate Instinct

By webmaster on January 21, 2010 10:03 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Compassionate Instinct ~ Greater Good Magazine

First consider the recent study of the biological basis of compassion. If such a basis exists, we should be wired up, so to speak, to respond to others in need. Recent evidence supports this point convincingly. University of Wisconsin psychologist Jack Nitschke found in an experiment that when mothers looked at pictures of their babies, they not only reported feeling more compassionate love than when they saw other babies; they also demonstrated unique activity in a region of their brains associated with the positive emotions. Nitschke's finding suggests that this region of the brain is attuned to the first objects of our compassion--our offspring.

But this compassionate instinct isn't limited to parents' brains. In a different set of studies, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University found that when subjects contemplated harm being done to others, a similar network of regions in their brains lit up. Our children and victims of violence--two very different subjects, yet united by the similar neurological reactions they provoke. This consistency strongly suggests that compassion isn"t simply a fickle or irrational emotion, but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains.

Perfectly Happy

By webmaster on January 12, 2010 5:57 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Perfectly Happy - The Boston Globe

IF YOU WERE given the choice, and you wanted to reduce human suffering by as much as possible, would you cure blindness or back pain? It seems a silly question. The thought of losing one's sight is, to most people, as frightening as it is depressing: we would no longer be stirred by sunsets or landscapes or the expressions on the faces of our loved ones. Everyday chores would become more difficult, crossing the street perilous. Many sports and pastimes would simply be off-limits, and we would lose a good deal of our independence.

Back pain, on the other hand, is just back pain.

But in fact, it's back pain that causes more misery. Most blind people would like to be able to see, of course, but once they've figured out how to live a sightless life, their blindness doesn't really make them unhappy. Chronic pain, on the other hand, sours our mood with every new twinge, and we never really adapt to it....

Happiness can mean, among other things, simply being in a good mood, or it can mean being broadly satisfied with one's life. Which one we choose to focus on changes the sorts of policies we pursue.

"Thousands of years of philosophers have struggled to define this term," points out Swedloff. "Do we mean, 'How do I feel right now? Am I in a pleasurable state or in an unpleasurable state?' Or we might mean, 'Am I flourishing? Am I becoming the best that I could be?' A heroin addict who's just had a fix, there's very little doubt that she's happy, but is she flourishing?"


Child Sacrifice in Uganda

By webmaster on January 8, 2010 2:30 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda -- BBC

They capture other people's children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits... They bring them in small tins and they place these objects under the tree from which the voices of the spirits are coming," he said.

Asked how often clients brought blood and body parts, the witch-doctor said they came "on average three times a week - with all that the spirits demand from them."

The Ethicist: Who Gets the Best Offices?

By webmaster on January 6, 2010 2:08 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Who Gets the Best Offices? - The Ethicist NYTimes.com

I am a faculty member at a university undergoing major campus renovations, including new office spaces. Departments were asked to determine their own ways of assigning rooms, but the task is complicated by factors like seniority and rank -- does someone with tenure deserve a better room? Some faculty members have greater teaching demands and might need larger rooms to meet with students. What is the most ethical way to allocate offices: seniority? Rank? Lottery?

Link to an archive of The Ethicist columns

The History of Child Abuse

By webmaster on January 6, 2010 11:09 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The History of Child Abuse

By the time historical records begin, the widespread sexual use of children is well documented. The Greek and Roman child lived his or her earliest years in an atmosphere of sexual abuse. Girls were commonly raped, as reflected in the many comedies that have scenes that were considered funny of little girls being raped. Both Greek and Roman doctors report that female children rarely have hymens--just like the Indian and Chinese girls I described above. In order to find out if your young wife was really a virgin (girls usually married before puberty to older men), one had to use mystical tests for virginity, since intact hymens were so rare.

Boys, too, were regularly handed over by their parents to neighboring men to be raped. Plutarch has a long essay on what was the best kind of person a father should give his son to for buggering. The common notion that this occurred only at "adolescence" is quite mistaken. It began around age seven, continued for several years and ended by puberty, when the boy's facial and pubic hairs began to appear. Child brothels, rent-a-boy services and sex slavery flourished in every city in antiquity. Children were so subject to sexual use by the men around them that schools were by law prohibited from staying open past sundown, so their pedagogues--slaves who were assigned to protect them against random sexual attack--could try to see that their teachers didn't assault them.

Link to an e-text of Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd DeMause. Part I focuses on the history of childhood by Lloyd DeMause

Link to a podcast by Dan Carlin called Suffer the Children which explores the history of child abuse.  Carlin references DeMause.

Theism, Atheism and Morality

By webmaster on January 5, 2010 12:06 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Openmindedness

By webmaster on January 5, 2010 11:41 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Link here for Youtube.com video.

Putting Faith in its Place

By webmaster on January 5, 2010 11:19 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Critical Thinking

By webmaster on January 5, 2010 11:06 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks


Link here for original: Critical Thinking ~ Discovery magazine.

Dolphins Should Be Treated as Persons

By webmaster on January 3, 2010 5:39 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' - Times Online

Dolphins have been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as "non-human persons".

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

The Science Behind Failed Resolutions

By webmaster on January 2, 2010 6:29 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Science Behind Failed Resolutions - WSJ.com

There's something unsettling about this scientific model of willpower. Most of us assume that self-control is largely a character issue, and that we would follow through on our New Year's resolutions if only we had a bit more discipline. But this research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn't built for success.

Everybody knows that the bicep has practical limitations: If we ask the muscle to hold too much, it will give out and drop everything on the floor. And just as our muscles get tired after a tough workout, and require a rest to recuperate, so does the poor prefrontal cortex need some time off.


Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now

By webmaster on January 2, 2010 6:26 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Psychology Behind Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now - NYTimes.com

When there is no immediate deadline, we're liable to put off going to the zoo this weekend because we assume that we will be less busy next weekend -- or the weekend after that, or next summer. This is the same sort of thinking that causes us to put the gift certificate in the drawer because we expect to have more time for shopping in the future. We're trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained, but we're not accurate in our estimates of "resource slack," as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

More Women Than Men Believe in God

By webmaster on January 2, 2010 6:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Studies confirm that more women than men believe in God.~ Double X

While the number of male nonbelievers was rocketing, the overall totals were slowed by women hitching themselves to the anchor of faith: "Gender difference is a brake on the growth of the No Religion population," says the study, which found that 19 percent of men were no longer denizens of a religious America, while only 12 percent of women live outside the faithful fold. In the past, one could say that women tended the hearth, and men participated in the marketplace. But today?

Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death: Sedation

By Jeff on December 27, 2009 11:22 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Months to Live
By Anemona Hartocollis  /  New York Times
December 26, 2009


In almost every room people were sleeping, but not like babies. This was not the carefree sleep that would restore them to rise and shine for another day. It was the sleep before -- and sometimes until -- death.

Free Will and Ethics

By webmaster on December 20, 2009 7:00 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Free Will and Ethics~ The Frontal Cortex

It turned out that students who had read the anti-free will quote were significantly more likely to cheat on the mental arithmetic test; their exposure to some basic scientific spin - your soul is a piece of meat - led to an increase in amorality. Of course, this is a relatively mild ethical lapse - as Schooler notes, "None of the participants exposed to the anti-free will message assaulted the experimenter or ran off with the payment kitty" - but it still demonstrates that even seemingly banal materialist concepts can alter our ethical behavior.

When Religion is an Excuse to Stop Thinking

By webmaster on December 18, 2009 6:06 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks


Religion in the Military

By webmaster on December 16, 2009 10:36 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Christopher Hitchens on Religion in the Military ~ vanityfair.com

James Madison was the co-author with Thomas Jefferson of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which became the basis of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Not accidentally the first clause of our Bill of Rights, this amendment unambiguously forbids any "establishment of religion" in or by these United States. In his "Detached Memoranda," not published until after his death, Madison even wrote that the appointment of chaplains in the armed forces, and indeed in Congress, was "inconsistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principles of religious freedom." He could never have foreseen a time when state-subsidized chaplains would be working to subvert the Constitution, and violating their sacred oath to uphold it. Let us be highly thankful that we have young soldiers and sailors and air-force personnel who, busy and devoted as they already are, show themselves brave enough to fight back on this front too.

Humans Wonder, Anybody Home?

By webmaster on December 15, 2009 6:56 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Humans Wonder, Anybody Home? - Science News

Many people (some scientists among them) would like to believe that consciousness sets the human mind apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But whether in humans or other creatures, behavioral signs of cognizance all arise from the tangled interactions of neurons in the brain. So a growing number of scientists contend that animals with brain structures and neural circuitry similar to humans' might experience something like human awareness, even if a bit less sophisticated.

Still, everyone agrees that consciousness is one of science's great unsolved mysteries. Something goes on in the heads of people when they are seeing, thinking or feeling that does not occur during dreamless sleep. For two decades or so, researchers have been conducting studies to see what kinds of brain activity match up with those specific experiences.

Bacteria, Game Theory and Decision-Making

By webmaster on December 14, 2009 8:38 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Bacteria provides new insights into human decision-making ~ Science Daily

The researchers discovered in their study that the bacteria's game theory decision making process is far more advanced than the well-known game theory problem known as the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Classic Prisoner's Dilemma, when applied to two prisoners, gives them the following offer: If only one prisoner pleads guilty, the one that cooperates gets two years in jail while the other one gets six years. If both of them admit guilt, then they will be imprisoned for four years. However, if none of them pleads guilty, they go free with no punishment. The temptation is not to admit anything, but the prisoners never know whether or not the other prisoner cooperated and pled guilty.

Because the number of participants in a bacterial colony can be up to 100 times the number of people on earth, the bacteria need to construct a more complex form of game theory.

Animals Killed for Food in the United States

By webmaster on December 11, 2009 8:25 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks


http://www.upc-online.org/slaughter/2000slaughter_stats.html

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