Philosophy

The moral side of murder

Oct 082010

The video below features Michael Sandel of Harvard University teaching a course on Justice.

In the first part of this video, we are presented with four moral dilemmas:

First Moral Dilemma: You are the driver of a trolley car.

You are the driver of a trolley car traveling 60mph towards a group of five workers working on the track. You try to stop only to learn the breaks are out. You know for sure that if you crash into the five workers they will all die. You notice a side track on which a single worker is working. Your steering wheel works and it is possible for you to divert the trolley onto the side track and miss the five workers but if you do that then you are sure you will kill the one worker. So you have the choice: Do you kill the five or the one?

Sandel asks the audience what they would do. The overwhelming majority say they would kill the one person to save the five. Continue reading »

Ada in the Cloud

Musings 1 Response »

Sep 052009

If you haven’t already heard, it’s a girl. Learning the sex of our baby-to-be has, I think, really caused the news to sink-in for a lot of people. Whereas most were congratulatory but otherwise quiet about the big news, once they found out the sex they suddenly got excited. As the news spreads, the amount of advice increases. That’s fine, of course. I like advice.

Speaking of advice, here is an email and video which my mom sent to me last week: Continue reading »

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Reviews No Responses »

Sep 022007

Last year I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. This book is a narration of a father’s motorcycle trip across the American northwest with his son. There are many philosophical chautauquas sprinkled throughout the milestones of the trip. More so than it tells a story, the book lays the foundation of a philosophy that seeks to unite themes of eastern and western thought. Continue reading »

Seinfeld and Philosophy

Seinfeld and Philosophy Reviews No Responses »

Aug 272007

In March 2006, I finished reading Seinfeld and Philosophy. This book is terrible. Don’t read it. There are a few interesting points and a few interesting insights, but none of the essays in this book add up to anything interesting. A few essays (most notably, the one on “The Costanza Maneuver”) get so caught up in semantics that any actual meaning gets lost along the way. It seems, however, that most of the reviewers on Amazon.com would disagree. These reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about.

Ideas to die for

Musings No Responses »

Jul 082007

Dan Dennett talks about toxic memes and their virus-like ability to wipe out entire cultures. Dennett’s assertion that memes are, in some cases (communism, capitalism, Islam, Catholicism, and many more), essentially deadly parasites is an interesting perspective. Continue reading »