Ethics
is loyalty too dirty of a word?
I’m working through some thoughts regarding ethics and causes. Specifically, I’m wondering about the differences between loyalty and commitment. After reading Josiah Royce’s The Philosophy of Loyalty for a creative democracy philosophy course at Oregon State, I was moved by his discussion of loyalty as the ultimate virtue. According to Royce, all other virtues are [...]
“politically correct”?
Last night at the dance club a friend expressed that he was uncomfortable at another gay bar where a 60-year-old man showed up in a dog collar, calling it “sad.” I started asking questions about why he was uncomfortable, noting that this may well be liberating for this person, and that it seemed unfair to [...]
writing is a duty
I love this statement: A textbook based on a community perspective valuing audience and ethics would begin much differently [than textbooks that start with "Writing is an important means of expressing yourself"]. Maybe like this: “You have a duty and an obligation to write, not because you have ‘the truth’ and must share it with [...]
what are our moral responsibilities regarding technology?
In The Whale and the Reactor, Langdon Winner notes that our culture has severely limited the moral questions that have salience when it comes to technology. As a society, we limit our questions to issues of public safety and health; harm to resources, the environment, or wildlife; and exaggerated social stresses. These concerns are of [...]
Baron: “From Pencils to Pixels” (1999)
In “Pencils to Pixels,” Dennis Baron argues that “the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies” (17). He shows, through explaining the adoptions of the pencil, the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter, that new technologies go through similar stages of adoption, dependent “on accessibility, function, and authentication” (16). [...]
Kant attack ad
A friend sent me this. Funny:
Some post-Watson thoughts
I’m in a coffee shop in Louisville, thinking about the conference, what I learned, and what I missed. I’m bummed that I got into town Thursday afternoon, in time to miss some cool talks Thursday that I wanted to see. After riding the city bus to my hotel, and then riding the wrong city bus [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #5: The Future of Typified Bodies and Identities
In Chapter 3 of The Ethics of Identity, Kwame Anthony Appiah notes that there are two interrelated questions we should ask regarding identities: “how existing identities should be treated; and what sort of identities there should be†(108). According to Appiah, to ask to be treated with equal dignity despite marginalized identities is not enough, [...]
educated souls and goth makeup in schools
I love coincidence — it’s not “mere” as we would like to think, but instead useful. Just after finishing reading Chapter 5 of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity, in which he devotes space to “Educated Souls” — the role of education in a liberal society — I saw this post at sociological images, [...]
coca-cola and the banality of evil
Awhile ago, Joseph Orosco asked on his blog, How responsible are people, qua consumers, for the crimes committed by corporations operating in a globalized world? This is an interesting question, one I’ve thought about quite often over the last 10 years (since I started boycotting Dominoe’s because the owner supposedly supported anti-choice groups — I [...]
