It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

Your grades are now posted. Harpy Nu Year!

Final Exam

Just a reminder: the final exam is Monday, December 19th, in our normal classroom at 11:00 a.m. You'll have 50 minutes to take it.

Rational-Empirical Babies

Psychologist Alison Gopnik wrote a book called The Philosophical Baby. It's loaded with cool insights on the rationalism-empiricism debate. Here's an interview with Gopnik about the book, and here's a review. Below is her appearance on The Colbert Report.

Nihilism

Here is the (mildly depressing) approach to the meaning of life mentioned in our class discussion on Wednesday:

• "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus
• "The Absurd" by Thomas Nagel

It Pays to Believe?

Here are some links on Pascal's Wager:

• Links to several articles on the argument.
• Here's an audio interview on the argument and Pascal's entire work Pensées.
• NOTHING TO LOSE? Is there really not much to lose in this wager? This cartoon thinks otherwise.
• WHICH GOD? With so many religions out there, which God should we believe in? This cartoon dinosaur has the most practical solution.
• More on decision theory, the branch of math Pascal uses to argue that belief in God is a good bet.
• Some related entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: evidentialism vs. nonevidentialism, religious versions of nonevidentialism (or fideism), other pragmatic arguments for believing in god, and Pascal's other contributions to philosophy.

My Identity is Personal

Two cartoons on personal identity:

1. Does physical or psychological continuity matter? Let's think about teletransportation...
2. Perhaps our identity is all in the way we're arranged:

Vaudevillian Dialectic

Kantian Links

Here are some links related to Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics:

• An intermediate overview of Kant's theory of ethics.
• An advanced overview of Kant's ethics.
• Kant's theory is deontological (which is a fancy word that basically means morality is about more than just the consequences of an action). Here's an advanced overview of deontological ethics.
• Some harsh criticisms of Kant's ethical judgments. My favorite excerpt: "Kant's philosophical moral reasoning appears mainly to have confirmed his prejudices and the ideas inherited from his culture. Therefore, we should be nervous about expecting more from the philosophical moral reasoning of people less philosophically capable than Kant."
• A 3-minute video on Kant's ethics is below:

The Psychology of Happiness

Since utilitarianism focuses so much on happiness, I thought I'd share some links on the cool new psychological research on happiness popping up lately.

• Here's a great overview of the psychology of happiness. And here is another, and another.
• Recent studies suggest that our baseline level of happiness doesn't change much throughout our life. So, even if we won the lottery, we wouldn't wind up that much happier. This is potentially very depressing news, although some say there's room for some optimism, and others think the research is wrong.
• There's an insightful, accessible book by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert called Stumbling on Happiness. One of his big points is that we often don't know what makes us happy. Here's Gilbert's appearance on The Colbert Report:
• And here's Gilbert giving an awesome TED talk on his research:
  
  

Utilitarios!

Here are some links on the theory of utilitarianism:

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill
• An advanced encyclopedia article on utilitarianism and other theories that focus on consequences of an action.
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating utilitarianism. A short video intro on it is below. Also, there's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.

Religion and Free Will Journal Guideline

Worth: 15% of your overall grade

New Due Date: the beginning of class on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Assignment: The assignment is to keep a journal during our section on philosophy of religion and free will. I want you to write several short journal entries about the various arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as an entry on our section on free will. We’ll be going over all these topics in class during the next few weeks. Each entry should be around two paragraphs long.

This assignment is a chance for you to do philosophy. I want you to demonstrate that you understand what we are reading and discussing. (Present each argument in your own words.) In addition to this, I want you to critically evaluate each argument we read and discuss. (Are any premises questionable? Does the argument provide enough support for its conclusion?) It is also a chance for you to give your opinion on these arguments, and defend your opinion with good reasons.
You should have the following journal entries, in this order:

1) An entry explaining and evaluating the cosmological argument (Aquinas reading).

2) An entry explaining and evaluating the ontological argument (Anselm & Guanilo readings).

3) An entry explaining and evaluating the design argument (Hume reading).

4) An entry explaining and evaluating the problem of evil argument (Sober and Augustine readings).

5) A philosophy of religion wrap-up entry where you discuss your thoughts about God after reading these philosophers and discussing this in class. Has your opinion about God changed? Have your reasons for your opinion changed?

6) An entry on free will (Nagel, Sober, Maimonides, Aristotle, and Hospers articles). Do you think we have free will? Why or why not? Consider the various arguments for and against free will we’ve studied in class, as well as the various theories (libertarianism, hard determinism, and compatibilism).

There is no length requirement. (Again, the suggestion is around two paragraphs per journal entry.)