The Limits to Rights

What are rights? Can they only be ascribed to human beings or also to animals... the environment... inanimate objects?

Jonathon Wolff, Christopher Stone and Kenan Malik discuss these questions on the BBC Radio 4 'Law in Action' programme.

It is definitely worth listening to this articulate and stimulating discussion.

The Philosophy Society

We had an exciting response to The Philosophy Society at the Freshers' Fayre. Over 70 people expressed interest and want to be included on the mailing list. All those (bar two - because their email addresses were disabled) have received an email as a reminder that our first meeting is 2nd October, at 7pm, in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. We will discuss the direction for the group. Please bring suggestions of books, essays, short stories, ideas, issues that you may like to discuss in the future.

For those who may be interested but did not receive the email I have set some reading for discussion. I thought an interesting theme may be Business Ethics, as some business students showed an interest in the philosophy group. A very short story by the mysterious writer Traven shows one point of view and the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman shows another.

http://academics.triton.edu/uc/traven.html

https://webmail.glos.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html

You may also like to have a look at the philosophy reading group blog from last year organised by Emily. We can use this blog this year to engage in discussion.

http://readingphilosophy.wordpress.com/

Look forward to meeting all of you Thursday.

Shelley

Group Discussions...

Following the post about the skills philosophy/ethics students need, we hagve been using the 187 (Skills) module to discuss what procedures might best enable group / class feedback discussions, and whether any ground rules are needed for them... Comments for this post will reflect the in-class thinking - and further comments, as ever, are welcome...