The Social Ethics class is currently discussing just war (first when and if wars are just, now looking at justice within war). Here is an interesting interview about our increased reliance on drones. Those in the Social Ethics course will recognize several issues we have been discussing in class (double effect, what counts as a legit target, etc etc).
Thoughts?
I am curious what people think about this: Is it morally permissible to charge higher health insurance premiums to people that smoke or, more controversially, people that are overweight? Might we even say that we ought to do that (not just that it would be permissible)? I read last week that 50% of our health care expenses are avoidable since they stem from smoking, poor fitness, and obesity.
Thoughts?
I’ve posted before on what I see as the dangers and shortcomings of blogging (or “blogologuing” as I like to call it). Here is a nice article on that point.
This is a religious studies post more than a philosophy post.
A few days ago Pope Benedict XVI canonized some new saints. One was Father Damien (a priest known for his work with lepers in Hawaii in the 19th century). Well, it turns out the LDS Church had posthumously baptized him into the LDS Church (read about it here). Not only that, they posthumously married him (remember – he was a celibate priest!), sealing him for eternity to someone named Marie. I had never heard of posthumous marriage, and I find it hard to come up with any justification for it. Setting that aside, I rather suspect that Fr. Damien – assuming he was interested in giving up his celibacy – would have liked being able to choose his wife!
Of course there has been quite a lot of controversy around the LDS practice of baptism for the dead with regards to Nazis and Holocaust victims. For my part, I am not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I simply find it silly and I don’t care. I’ll be frank without intending any disrespect: why should I care about this any more than I would care about someone vesting Fr. Damien posthumously in a Zeus religion, since I think both religions are false and so neither ritual exercise makes any difference?
On the other hand, it is hard to not find it rather disrespectful (even though I can see that it is likely done out of good intentions). Perhaps not only disrespectful but also harmful. I am referring to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I.11 where he argues that posthumous events can have an effect on the dead (if misfortune befalls descendants, or if the deceased person comes to be associated with evil then his reputation that lives on in memory will be harmed). It is worth noting, though, that Aristotle thinks none of these effects are “of such a kind and degree as neither to make the happy unhappy nor to produce any other change of the kind.” So Saint Damien will (or rather is) resting in peace.
Sherlock and I are both Red Sox fans. Stomach punch end to the season this weekend. I always feel sad for a while after it ends, in part because baseball is a game that gives our life a pace – for a few weeks I don’t quite know what to do with myself without the rituals of checking box scores in the morning and listening to the WEEI radio call of games in the evening. And I miss baseball too because, more than other sports, baseball asks fundamental questions (about faith, hope, dreams, despair, the call of home, etc). Another for instance, the statistic fetish in baseball is illustrative of something very basic to the human condition: a desire to apprehend patterns and order in a world that is often marked more by drama than predictability.
No one has offered a better reflection on the end of the baseball season that the late A. Bartlett Giamatti:
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.”
USUPhilosophy 