August 2009 Archives

What Should Colleges Teach?

By Jeff on August 27, 2009 6:53 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
What Should Colleges Teach?  -Stanley Fish - NYTimes.com

What Should Colleges Teach? A few years ago, when I was grading papers for a graduate literature course, I became alarmed at the inability of my students to write a clean English sentence. They could manage for about six words and then, almost invariably, the syntax (and everything else) fell apart. I became even more alarmed when I remembered that these same students were instructors in the college's composition program. What, I wondered, could possibly be going on in their courses?

When Philosophy Meets Politics

By Jeff on August 24, 2009 9:55 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
When Philosophy Meets Politics  ~ Factcheck.org

...Indeed, Emanuel is hardly the first philosopher to find himself in hot water for views that are taken out of context. Princeton philosopher Peter Singer (whose views about doctor-assisted suicide are controversial even in their proper context) is a frequent victim of the phenomenon. Rumors about 18th century philosopher David Hume kept him from ever obtaining an academic post. And, of course, no one can really top Socrates, who was actually executed (a fate that Coulter says she'd welcome for Emanuel) for views that he arguably didn't really hold.

As practiced as an academic discipline, ethics is devoted to talking about really difficult cases. A lot of times, those cases involve death, in some form or another. Entire courses, both undergraduate and graduate, revolve around questions of life and death. That's not because academic ethicists are all terribly morbid, a charge I heard from more than one of my students when I taught introductory courses in philosophy and ethics. It's because that's where the hard questions are.


How We Support Our False Beliefs

By webmaster on August 23, 2009 6:21 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Study Demonstrates How We Support Our False Beliefs - UB NewsCenter

The study, "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification" calls such unsubstantiated beliefs "a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice" and considers how and why it was maintained by so many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence.

Co-author Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says, "Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning,' which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

Open Source Textbooks

By webmaster on August 20, 2009 6:15 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Open Source Textbook Company Now At 400 Colleges ~ Wired.com

What did you do this summer? Flat World Knowledge stayed busy on campus and now has 40 times as many students and more than 10 times the colleges using their freemium, open-source digital textbooks. And they did it the old-fashioned way -- one professor at a time.

After a sort of beta earlier this year, Flat World is set to announce on Thursday that over 40,000 college students at more than 400 colleges are going to be using their digital, DRM-free textbooks in the Fall semester, up from 1,000 in 30 colleges in the Spring.

Digital textbooks remain a nascent business and a tough market to enter. At an average cost of $100, textbooks command the highest cover prices in publishing, outside of only some art and coffee table books. Demand is artificially inelastic as students are indentured to cost servitude at the whim of college professors who blithely assign titles a student must own if he or she hopes to do well in a given course. Now, multiply that by 4,5, or even 6 courses per semester and you are talking big bucks.

Tips for New Teachers

By webmaster on August 18, 2009 1:43 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Tips for New Teachers- Chronicle of Higher Education

The first time I ever taught a college class, nearly 25 years ago, I was convinced that, at any moment, one of my students was going to stand up and expose me as a fraud.

Of course, I had good reason to worry: As a brand-new graduate assistant, I was a fraud, as Henry Adams reminded us all recently in his thought-provoking essay, "Academic Bait and Switch."

Do Ethicists Steal More Books?

By webmaster on August 17, 2009 4:16 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Do Ethicists Steal More Books ~Eric Schwitzgebel

If explicit cognition about morality promotes moral behavior then one might expect ethics professors to behave particularly well. However, professional ethicists' behavior has never been empirically studied. The present research examined the rates at which ethics books are missing from leading academic libraries, compared to other philosophy books similar in age and popularity.

Study 1 found that relatively obscure, contemporary ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy were actually about 50% more likely to be missing than non-ethics books. Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were about twice as likely to be missing.

The Omnivore's Delusion

By webmaster on August 10, 2009 12:09 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Omnivore's Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals -- The American

Now, turkeys are raised in large open sheds. Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are not grown in cages. As the critics of "industrial farming" like to point out, the sheds get quite crowded by the time Thanksgiving rolls around and the turkeys are fully grown. And yes, the birds are bedded in sawdust, so the turkeys do walk around in their own waste. Although the turkeys don't seem to mind, this quite clearly disgusts the various authors I've read whom have actually visited a turkey farm. But none of those authors, whose descriptions of the horrors of modern poultry production have a certain sameness, were there when Neimann picked up those 4,000 dead turkeys. Sheds are expensive, and it was easier to raise turkeys in open, inexpensive pastures. But that type of production really was hard on the turkeys. Protected from the weather and predators, today's turkeys may not be aware that they are a part of a morally reprehensible system.

Winning the Ultimate Battle

By webmaster on August 10, 2009 12:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
How Humans Could End War - New Scientist

Among the revisionists are anthropologists Carolyn and Melvin Ember from Yale University, who argue that biology alone cannot explain documented patterns of warfare. They oversee the Human Relations Area Files, a database of information on some 360 cultures, past and present. More than nine-tenths of these societies have engaged in warfare, but some fight constantly, others rarely, and a few have never been observed fighting. "There is variation in the frequency of warfare when you look around the world at any given time," says Melvin Ember. "That suggests to me that we are not dealing with genes or a biological propensity."

UT prepares teachers for Bible classes

By Jeff on August 9, 2009 11:36 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
UT prepares teachers for Bible classes

by Ryan Moore
Daily Texan Staff
Friday, August 7, 2009

During the 2007 legislative session, Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill that requires Old Testament and New Testament history and literature to be added to Texas high school curriculum. The legislation states that all school districts must offer a course as an elective for the 2009-2010 school year if more than 15 students show interest.

Textbooks May Become History

By webmaster on August 9, 2009 6:14 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
As Classrooms Go Digital, Textbooks May Become History - NYTimes.com

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions -- or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

The Mystery of Altruism

By webmaster on August 8, 2009 6:51 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Altruism - 05 August 2009 - New Scientist

If you believe there is no such thing as altruism, you are in good company. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins writes that we must "try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish". Even if we are nice to members of our family, that doesn't count because there is a pay-off, at least in biological terms: they share some of our genes, so by helping them we indirectly further our own genetic immortality. Meanwhile, other acts of seeming altruism are often just reciprocity. If you scratch my back, then I scratch yours - no matter how much later - that's not selfless either.

This all makes good evolutionary sense, since spending time and energy helping someone without any return puts you at a distinct disadvantage in the survival stakes. The only trouble is that in recent years evidence has amassed that people do commit acts of genuine altruism. In experimental game-playing situations, for example, many people will share money with a stranger even when there is nothing in it for them. This has led biologists to conclude that altruism is a part of human nature. What they cannot decide is how or why it evolved.

Can Culture Be Encoded in DNA?

By webmaster on August 7, 2009 4:31 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
New Research Says "Yes" ~ Daily Galaxy

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientists isolated a Zebra Finch, preventing it from learning the songs of its parents (and probably pissing off a bunch of PETA activists). These finches are known to learn their song from elder male relatives, which is why the scientists were surprised to see the same songs emerge from a colony of these utterly isolated birds.

They didn't get it right immediately. The first isolated bird, cut off from its culture, emitted a cacophonous screeching about as melodious as nails being dragged down a pieces of broken blackboard which were, in turn, being dragged down an even larger blackboard. It even tried to teach its kids the same, but they obviously thought "that sucks" (in bird) and made a few improvements. After four generations, the original finch songs reappeared, meaning that either

a) Cultural information can be genetically encoded or
b) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has embarrassingly bad sound insulation.

We're going to assume a) for now.

The Truth About Grit

By webmaster on August 5, 2009 7:35 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Truth About Grit - The Boston Globe

Although biographers have long celebrated Newton's intellect - he also pioneered calculus - it's clear that his achievements aren't solely a byproduct of his piercing intelligence. Newton also had an astonishing ability to persist in the face of obstacles, to stick with the same stubborn mystery - why did the apple fall, but the moon remain in the sky? - until he found the answer.

In recent years, psychologists have come up with a term to describe this mental trait: grit. Although the idea itself isn't new - "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration," Thomas Edison famously remarked - the researchers are quick to point out that grit isn't simply about the willingness to work hard. Instead, it's about setting a specific long-term goal and doing whatever it takes until the goal has been reached. It's always much easier to give up, but people with grit can keep going.

The Erasure of Islam

By Jeff on August 4, 2009 5:47 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

The Erasure of Islam -- The Philosophers' Magazine

What Enlightenment? It may have been good for Europe, but for the rest of the world in general, and Islam in particular, the Enlightenment was a disaster. Despite their stand for freedom and liberty, reason and liberal thought, Enlightenment thinkers saw the non-West as irrational and inferior, morally decadent and fit only for colonisation.

Father Guilty in Prayer Death Case

By webmaster on August 2, 2009 6:57 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Father Guilty in Prayer Death Case - ABC News

A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.

Dale Neumann, 47, was convicted in the March 23, 2008, death of his daughter, Madeline, from undiagnosed diabetes. Prosecutors contended he should have rushed the girl to a hospital because she couldn't walk, talk, eat or drink. Instead, Madeline died on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing...

Neumann, who once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, testified Thursday that he believed God would heal his daughter and he never expected her to die. God promises in the Bible to heal, he said.

Sudan's Defiant Trouser Woman

By webmaster on August 2, 2009 6:54 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
'Whip Me if You Dare' says Lubna Hussein,  - Telegraph

As the morality police crowded around her table in a Khartoum restaurant, leering at her to see what she was wearing, Lubna Hussein had no idea she was about to become the best-known woman in Sudan. She had arrived at the Kawkab Elsharq Hall on a Friday night to book a cousin's wedding party, and while she waited she watched an Egyptian singer and sipped a coke.

She left less than an hour later under arrest as a "trouser girl" - humiliated in front of hundreds of people, then beaten around the head in a police van before being hauled before a court to face a likely sentence of 40 lashes for the "sin" of not wearing traditional Islamic dress.

The officials who tried to humiliate her expected her to beg for mercy, as most of their victims do.

Instead she turned the tables on them - and in court on Tuesday Mrs Hussein will dare judges to have her flogged, as she makes a brave stand for women's rights in one of Africa's most conservative nations.

The Science of Decision-Making

By webmaster on August 1, 2009 9:17 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Science of Decision-Making -- Science Friday Archives

Paper or plastic? Steak or salmon? Stay or go? Every day, we make thousands of decisions, most minor, some major. But how does your brain make the choice? In this hour, we'll take a look at the science of decision making. Can your genes influence split second decisions? And how do your emotions influence the way you decide?

Link to the Podcast of this story from the Science Friday website.

The Good, the Bad and the Intentional

By webmaster on August 1, 2009 9:14 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The Good, the Bad and the Intentional - The Psychologist

In 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair inaugurated the ongoing war in Iraq, both men surely knew that civilian deaths would be one of the costs of the military engagement. But did Bush or Blair intentionally cause these deaths?

How you answer this question is likely to turn on your moral stance towards the war - whether you see it as an immoral violation of international law, or a liberating intervention in an oppressive regime. That's the message emerging from research in the burgeoning field of experimental philosophy, which applies empirical methods to age-old questions such as how the beliefs, desires and intentions behind certain actions affect how others view these actions.
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