by Daniel A. Kaufman The clusterfuck that is the Indiana “bathroom bill” (and every other similar piece of legislation) has drawn a lot of negative attention to some pretty terrible people, which, I guess, is a good thing, but it also has brought to light a number of confusions that seem to surround issues of sex, gender, and segregated environments; […]
By Daniel Tippens This is third in the series that began with Dan Tippens’ “A short note on the ethics of liver transplantation” and is a reply to Dan Kaufman’s “Moral judgment and medical resource scarcity.” Dan Kaufman provided some very important insights into the discussion regarding the ethics of organ scarcity, and I am grateful that he took the […]
By Daniel A. Kaufman This is second in the series that began with Dan Tippens’ “A short note on the ethics of liver transplantation” Dan Tippens has started an important conversation – one that we must have, given that we live in a society whose population is aging and whose medical costs seem capable of rising without end. Having read […]
By David Ottlinger On a bright, cold day in April (actually it was late March), undergraduate Cory Goldstein was on his San Francisco State University campus. [1] He was confronted by two fellow students, both African American, who stood in his path. Goldstein is white. The first, a young woman, looked up to the second and asked, “Do you have […]
By Daniel Tippens This is the first of what will be several rounds of dialogue between Dan Kaufman and Dan Tippens on “moralizing medicine.” As in a real conversation, each entry will consist of relatively short bursts of points and counterpoints that not only will keep the exchange moving, but will leave room for development of the relevant ideas in […]
by Mark English A commenter’s disapproving reference to a ‘comma splice’ in a discussion thread dealing with America’s increasingly polarized social and political environment [1] brought to mind Karl Kraus, the Viennese journalist and writer; and, in particular, this famous story about a 1932 meeting (told by the composer Ernst Křenek): ‘At a time when people were generally decrying the […]
By Daniel A. Kaufman Just got finished teaching Copi’s “Essence and Accident” (1) and Cartwright’s “Remarks on Essentialism” (2), in my Knowledge and Reality course, and the issues strike me as important – and interesting – enough, for an edition of Course Notes. The question of whether the things in the world have essential properties or “essences” is a longstanding […]
By Daniel Tippens There is an age-old philosophical question that dates back to the ancient Greeks: Is it better to live longer, or to live shorter with a higher quality of life? To be clear, agreeing with the first position doesn’t mean you don’t care about quality of life, it just means that you value quantity of life more. I […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/utilitarianism.pdf One of the two most well-known, most influential works in moral philosophy – the other is Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals – Utilitarianism has the virtue of being highly readable, intuitively plausible (at least on first glance), and blissfully short. Moral philosophy done at its very best. The theory is based on a […]
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