RPE Research Seminar Series

We are pleased to announce the start of a series of research seminars in Religion, Philosophy & Ethics at the University of Gloucestershire, in Cheltenham.

Religion, Philosophy & Ethics: Research Seminar Series

Wednesday, 21st January 2009, 6pm - 7.30pm, HC204,
Francis Close Hall Campus

Are Buddhist Ethics Kantian?

Speaker: Justin Whitaker

University of Montana / Goldsmiths College

Free of Charge – All Welcome (but let me know that you are coming, if possible - dwebster@glos.ac.uk )

You can find out more about our speaker, Justin, at his blog: American Buddhist Perspective

Cheers,
Dave

Nigel M's new website

Some of you may be interested in a new website from our esteemed colleague, and poet, Dr Nigel McLouglhin.

Nigel is Reader in Creative Writing, and Course Leader for the University's MA in Creative & Critical Writing.

You can listen to him reading his work, and find out about readings, at www.nigelmcloughlin.co.uk

Kuhn, Anamolies, and those pesky Homeopaths

Those who enjoyed RPE201 (Philosophy, Science and Belief) may enjoy the piece at http://apgaylard.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/expect-the-unexpected/ which discusses how to make sense of the role of anomalous results / findings in the context of Kuhn's thought.

It also makes reference to the way that homeopathy has tended to mis-use scientific ideas (see badscience.net for some excellent material on this, and the role of evidence, risk and the like in science). If you want to understand more about evidence-based medicine and the problem with homeopathy - there is a fuller piece at http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/ which is well worth a read...


Dave

Update on The Philosophy Society

Hello,

There was a lively response to Paul Caddle's session on Paradoxes at the meeting last week. Thank you to Paul for bringing the idea and leading the discussion. The next meeting will be the second Thursday of January. The date is the 8th, in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. We decided to read "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville and "The Transcendentalist" by Emerson, the essay that inspired Melville to write Bartleby. There are text links and an audio link for the short story and the essay on the blog for the philosophy reading group that Emily set up last year:

http://readingphilosophy.wordpress.com/

We can use this blog for a discussion of our current reading or for any other comments you may have.

If you have any questions contact Shelley s0510427.

Britain's Worst Argument?

Following from some exercises I have done in classes, and after a chat with the RPE101 students I had a week or two ago – I have decided we could look for Britain’s Worst Argument.

This could be a formal fallacy of some sort - such as:

All philosophers are strange
Jeremy is strange
Therefore, Jeremy is a philosopher

As all students will recognise – this is an invalid piece of reasoning. The first statement only tells us that all philosophers are strange – not that all strange people are philosophers. Jeremy might be a strange plumber – a possibility left open by the first line (premise).

We may find more informal errors – such as people claiming that a point of view is correct because it is new, or indeed ‘ancient’ (as in ‘Ancient Wisdom), or popular.

Another popular approach is to suggest that someone is wrong due to their faults. My friend may be an ugly, smelly, and overbearing individual – but my telling him that does not mean that his argument about the matter at hand is wrong.

We might presume (often wrongly) that because one event precedes another – it causes the latter. E.g. I wore odd socks yesterday, then won at tennis: therefore my sock-wearing led to my victory - - this type of causal fallacy is often the basis for superstitions…

I would like to ask students – and other readers of this blog (anyone really) – to find us the worst pieces of reasoning they can find. International examples are welcome – but we will pick the winner from the British examples submitted…

Use the comment facility on this blog ( www.r-p-e.blogspot.com ) to submit them – or email them to me at dwebster@glos.ac.uk (say if you’re happy for me to post the argument on the blog when you email it).

We may even find a prize under some of the piles of books in my office…

We will post a blog story reporting on out findings (and the winner) in the New Year…

Happy hunting

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Need some help / examples?

See http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

Philosophy Society Update and Paradoxes

The next meeting will be 4th December, 7pm, in the Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. Please come because the Poker Society covets our first Thursday of the month time slot for the Gallery Room. They have the room every Thursday but the first Thursday of the month and would happily take over our slot - their attendance strength surprisingly surpasses ours. If you are interested in becoming a member of the Philosophy Society please pay the membership fee and come to the next meeting!

We know that assignment deadlines are flooding in at this time of year so we decided not to burden semester schedules with extra homework. So for the next meeting there is no preliminary reading. Paul Caddle is going to present Paradoxes for discussion. There is no preparation needed because Paul believes that encountering these paradoxes without any particular agenda will enliven the debate.

Look forward to seeing all of you on December 4th. Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions,

Shelley

Are we 'demonising' children?

We see the launch today a campaign by children's charity Barnados.

The BBC report is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7732796.stm - and the full video at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7730219.stm - also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7732203.stm for an analysis of the debate.




Is it too easy to blame children for the rise in crime, the fear of crime and social disorder that many assert is around us?

29% of teachers say Intelligent Design should be taught in science lessons

As indicated by this article in the Guardian, this debate seems to have transversed the Atlantic and is gaining momentum in British society.

Whether evolutionary theory is the only legitimate scientific explanation for the existence of life begs the question, 'What is science?' For, if science classes in schools covers that which falls under the remit of science, then creationism and intelligent design must first fulfil the criteria to be a considered science. Otherwise, their place is within religious studies or the general humanities.

Advocates of intelligence design might argue that the problem lies with our education system that delineates so severely between different subjects as if they were self contained entities. The very fact that we place such emphasis on science as a subject that tells us how the world 'really is' assumes that there is something particularly special about its methods and results. Religious studies in contrast, is usually reduced to a minor (and 'easy') subject.

This debate highlights limitations with our education system and the gravitas we give to particular subjects without studying the foundational assumptions upon which they rest. Where, in the national curriculum, is there any real discussion about what is science, and whether scientific methods are better than any other ways of understanding the world? This seems fundamental to the whole argument.

I have no truck with those that believe in intelligent design nor creationism but I do sympathise with their efforts to question the whole system of science education in schools. I would not advocate that either theory gets taught as part of the science curriculum, for they are not sciences, but I do think there should be a place for students to discuss the underpinning assumptions about science.

Love Story?

What is love? We have been talking about this at length in RPE301 - Love, Sex and Death: so I thought students of that course may be interested in this week's episode of 'Imagine' from the BBC: view it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00f5vk9/Imagine_Imagine..._A_Love_Story/

Maybe we can do some more on the blog about the nature of romantic love?

D.

US state curtails child dumping - an odd law?

The BBC reports, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7681139.stm that Nebraska has changed its laws - so that you can no longer 'dump' unwanted children on the state. The limit has been altered to only 3-days old - but before that it was 18 years - as the BBC site says:

The law allowed parents and guardians to leave children up to the age of 18 at hospitals without an explanation or interference from the law.

I must admit this seems rather extreme - but it did make me think: who 'owns' children and is responsible for them? Is it just parents - or all of us?

Update on The Philosophy Society

We had a good turnout for our firsting meeting as The Philosophy Society. Jess prepared some excellent minutes which I will email to those on the mailing list. If you are not on the mailing list and would like to be, let me know and I will add your name. My student number is s0510427.

We had an enthusiastic round of idea spinning for this year's reading agenda. Both Dawkins and Dostoyevsky were suggested again. Most thought it would be a good idea to take a subject and find two differing theories to discuss the subject. Following from that idea we decided to repeat the reading set for the first session, as people had missed the links and were unprepared for discussion.

The short story "The Assembly Line" by the writer B. Traven:

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

The article by Milton Friedman discussing "the business of business is business":

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

If you have the time (it is 20 minutes) have a look at this smart video. It is worth a look because it throws another light onto Friedman's claim that corporate activity must not be controlled by politicians. Friedman may be right, but this video claims that, far from being controlled by politicians, current corporate activity is instead the controller:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64

Our meetings are always the first Thursday of the month. The next one will be at 7pm, the 6th of November, in the Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus.

Please contact me if you have any queries.

Shelley

Tracking ethics in the stock market?

As we watch the Dow Jones and the FTSE100 plummet, you can track the ethical ratings of Corporations at http://www.covalence.ch/ .

As their website says Geneva-based Covalence tracks the ethical reputation of multinationals by sourcing information from companies, the media and civil society. An intersting idea, I thought, for readers of this blog.

Dave

Greetings from Big Sky country…

I’ve been speaking today to the Centre for Ethics here in Missoula, at the University of Montana, about the purpose of teaching Ethics as an academic subject.


Some of the points we discussed were:
¢ In an ethics class we take students – and don’t in our classes in Higher Education –transmit an ethic.
¢ We school our students in the problems of identifying the good – but we refrain from dictating their conclusions.
¢ They come to us, they ponder the good –then we set them loose..
¢ What have we done?
¢ We ask that they understand, but not that they implement…

I asked whether we ought to see ourselves also as helping students develop their moral character? Unlike a more straight empirical discipline, the teaching of ethics may be an area where we wish to bring about in some sense a transformation of the student: should this be our goal?

Dave

Dementia and an 'obligation to die'

There is an interesting post on the ethical issues surrounding dementia at http://www.philosophycirencester.blogspot.com/ - some of you might like to head over there to comment...

Dave

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