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.