Is it ever ok to discriminate?
The Supreme Court today heard arguments in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. In the case, the University of California refused to recognize or provide funding or meeting space to the Christian group because it restricted membership to those who signed a “statement of faith.” The University argued that it had the right to insist that any student group it officially recognized admit any student. The Christian Legal Society challenged this, appealing the case all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Constitutional law aside, should an organization be allowed to restrict membership — that is discriminate — on the basis of an individual’s belief?
Philosophy for second graders
Last month Colin and I looked at whether public philosophy should be taught in high schools. Apparently we weren’t being ambitious enough. A New York Times article today looks at Thomas Wartenberg, a Mount Holyoke professor, who explores philosophy a few times a month with second graders at a charter shcool in Springfield, Massachusetts. Wartenberg’s approach is to use classic children’s books as a starting point to look at basic philosophical issues. For example, Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree is used to discuss questions like “how should we treat natural objects?” and “how much is too much for an individual to take from nature?”
The article goes into a long running academic debate over the age at which children develop the capacity for abstract reasoning and quotes Professor Gareth Matthews as claiming that “young children very often engage in reasoning that professional philosophers can recognize as philosophical.” In fact, in the 1970s, Columbia professor Matthew Lipman claimed that thinking about philosophical questions could actually help children develop critical reasoning skills.
“A lot of people try to make philosophy into an elitist discipline,” Wartenberg, the Mount Holyoke professor argues, “but everyone is interested in basic philosophical ideas; they’re the most basic questions we have about the world.” Amen.
-Marc
Tea Partyers for Medicare
Inconsistency or philosophical conservatism?
The New York Times had a fascinating look yesterday at the demographic and ideological makeup on the Tea Party movement. Long discussed, but little studied, The New York Times and CBS commissioned a poll this month to get a detailed look at the profile and attitudes of Tea Party supporters.
The poll found that the 18 percent of Americans who associate with the Tea Party movement tend to be white, male, married, over 45 and on the “very conservative” end of the ideological spectrum. Tea Partyers express “fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, [ ] rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.”
But here’s the surprising stuff. While Tea Party supporters believe the goal of their movement is reduce the size of government and favor doing so even if it means cutting domestic programs, most happily partake in the three most expensive domestic programs: public education, medicare and social security. And they assert that these programs are “worth the cost to taxpayers.”
So what gives? Read more
Internet fun or child exploitation?
The Washington Post‘s On Success blog has a fascinating discussion on the morality of parents using their kids as profit centers. The discussion stems from the viral video of a woozy 7-year old David DeVore after getting a tooth removed at the dentist. His father, apparently, has turned the video’s popularity into a successful business. Check out the discussion and some of the hilarious parody videos.
-Marc
Naked guy not guilty!!
Remember naked guy? A jury Wednesday found him not guilty. Let freedom (to be naked) ring.
-Marc
Manipulating morality
Engadget, a site you should definitely read if you’re a tech geek like me, has an interesting post about neuroscientists at MIT who have successfully changed people’s views on moral questions by using magnets to interfere with activity in certain regions of the brain. The research has important implications for our understanding of the human capacity for moral judgment.
-Marc
Take me out to the (expensive) ball game
Should Congress amend tax laws to lower the price of entertainment?
The New York Times had an op-ed yesterday by two professors who argue that an old tax law allowing businesses to avoid paying taxes on entertainment expenses with a “business purpose” is largely responsible for the high price of tickets for Major League Baseball games. Their suggestion? Altogether eliminate the business entertainment tax deduction or at least limit the amount that businesses are allowed to write-off.
Unfortunately, the authors provide no framework within which to make a considered judgment of their arguments. They make a compelling case for how the tax exemption led to higher ticket prices, but offer no discussion of why the law exists in the first place or what the consequences might be of its repeal.
Obviously there is a market distortion created by the tax exemption on business entertainment expenses: the after-tax cost for entertainment is higher for individuals than for a business. The question is whether the benefits of this loophole outweigh the costs. Read more
Reality Philosophy?
Not really public philosophy, but maybe “reality philosophy?” NYU will be hosting a conference on the MTV reality show Jersey Shore. Among the speakers: philosopher Derek Parfit on situational ethics.
Situational Ethics: Would you jump on the grenade? by Derek Parfit. Abstract: We can, I think, describe situations where we should hook up. But are there situations where it is impossible to say if we should hook up? My targets are two. First, he who wishes to hook up but is hindered by the third wheel. Second, he who wishes to hook up but can only do so with the third wheel. Some people say they are different, but they are not.
-Marc
How many chances should government get?
Is it even worth trying to get Haiti right?
The Washington Post reports that at an international donor conference today, the U.S. will pledge $1 billion to reconstruct the Haitian government as part of an international effort to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged state. The U.S. has a long history of such aid to Haiti — roughly $4 billion since 1990 — with, admittedly, little clear lasting impact to show. Yet as the Post article notes, “this time, U.S. officials say, they will do things differently.”
Of course this is a common refrain every time someone wants to try something that was unsuccessful in the past. Yet two decades of failure should leave us, at the very least, skeptical of the U.S. government’s ability to get it right. So how many chances should it get? At what point should we say, even if the goal of reconstructing Haiti is right, our inability to do it means the policy is wrong?
Shielding “the cloud” from the government
A broad coalition of tech companies and organizations spanning the political spectrum, including the ACLU and Americans for Tax Reform, have formed a group called Digital Due Process to push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws, The Wall Street Journal reports. In particular, the group will lobby Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, years before the Internet gained widespread use and more than two decades before the advent of “cloud-based” computing. Currently information stored in the cloud can be accessed through a simple subpoena, whereas Digital Due Process is pushing for a requirement of a search warrant showing probably cause. So, should there be stricter privacy protections for the cloud? Or is this data somehow different from other personal information?
-Marc
Share us