This article was in the Herald Journal today. Most everyone I talk to agrees that grade inflation is a problem. It is so difficult to battle though, because to work against it one needs to have everyone else (at least everyone else in your department and perhaps everyone else at the university and perhaps everyone else at every university) working against it with you. Otherwise you just look like a jerk who is being unfair.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Congratulations to Jon Adams, who was awarded Chinn Scholarship from the American Atheists in recognition of his work here at Utah State (columns in the Statesman, the co-founding of SHAFT, and his involvement with College Dems and Love is for Everyone). The award comes with a nice financial scholarship, as well as a trip to Atlanta for a ‘fun-filled weekend of events with Keynote Speaker Richard Dawkins’ (that is a quote from the website which I’ll admit I chuckled at, though in all seriousness I know Jon will have the opportunity to have dinner with Dawkins, just he and the 2 other award winners, which is pretty cool).
So back slaps to Jon (even from theists like me!) on being recognized by a national organization for his work.
Correction: this talk is at 5:30, not 6pm.
As part of Religious Diversity Week, Harrison Kleiner will give a presentation called ‘Religion and Sex: John Paul II’s Theology of the Body’ on Tuesday (March 17) at 6pm in the TSC Sunburst Lounge.
I hope the talk will be of some interest to not only those interested in religion, but to philosophers generally. JPII’s phenomenological as well as personalist leanings are on full display in the ToB, and I see shades of Levinas and the pomo focus on the ‘gift’ throughout.
I first read Barzun’s book ‘The House of Intellect’ in college, on the recommendation of a Politics professor of mine who was advising me on my academic future. The House of Intellect has incredible foresight – written in 1959 but one would think it was written last year.
I still reference the book on some occasion when I teach. One of my primary pet peeves with my students is their tendency to put ‘I feel’ in front of everything they say. My response: ‘Don’t be such a wuss. Assert what you think is the case, if you are wrong don’t worry, someone will tell you!’ I also still get annoyed at the nearly exclusive emphasis on teaching technique (‘engaging the students’) and a corresponding decline in attention paid to the actual content of courses. I don’t know if I am a good teacher, but I know I teach great books. If everyone did that, I think we’d be in better shape.
Here is a recent review of the old book. The book is worth reading for those interested in education in America (and the anti-intellectualism it has helped foster).
So Obama has decided that federal funds should go to embryonic stem cell research. For those unfamiliar with the debate, pro-lifers have no issues with stem cell research per se (they are not anti-science). Rather they are opposed to scientific research that crosses ethical boundaries. Some will say that they are putting ‘ideology ahead of science’. This is a convenient and intentionally deceptive line because everyone thinks ethics should constrain science. For instance, no reasonable person thinks it would be morally permissible to use people as involuntary subjects of scientific studies.
I won’t bother here with the more dogmatic argument that life begins at conception. If we had dogmatic understanding, the matter would be easy to discern. One of these two scenarios would hold:
(a) The embryo is human (has human rights) and we know that.
(b) The embryo is not human and we know that.
I think most would agree that in case (a) the destruction of embryos for scientific experimentation is morally wrong and that in case (b) there is no prima facie moral reason to refrain from the destruction of embryos.
While this is an important discussion, I am more interested in starting on Obama’s own turf. Obama claims to not know when human life begins (that is, when the unborn has recognizable human rights). It is, as he famously remarked, ‘above my pay grade’. So let us assume that no one knows when human life begins. Objectively speaking, there is a metaphysical fact of the matter, but we will assume a kind of skepticism as to those metaphysical facts. Then what?
Assuming this skepticism, it seems to me there are then 2 possible scenarios:
(c) The embryo is human, but we don’t know that.
(d) The embryo is not a human, but we don’t know that.
What of the moral permissibility of destroying embryos, assuming Obama’s skepticism?
Let’s look at case (c) in this way: Imagine you are in the demolition business. If you are going to blow up a building, you have the moral responsibility to be sure that there are no people inside. If you blow up a building and it turns out there are people inside, you bear moral responsibility for their death. It is not murder, but it is manslaughter. Pleading ignorance would not exonerate you. Sure, you did not know there was a person in there, but you didn’t know there wasn’t either. The act was, at best, incredibly irresponsible and involves real moral culpability (even if that moral culpability falls short of murder).
Let’s turn to case (d): Imagine your demolition company blows up a building without first checking that it was empty of people. Even if you luck out and there are no people, you’ve still acted in an incredibly irresponsible way – really every bit as irresponsible as in case (c). We call this criminal negligence.
Based on these arguments that start with Obama’s own proclaimed ignorance of when human life begins, he has just allowed for government sanctioned and funded manslaughter or, at best, government sanctioned and funded criminal negligence.
That seemed too easy – what have I missed?
USUPhilosophy 