Everyday Ethics

Rights are something that most people take for granted.  Few individuals are capable of explaining what rights actually are, and even fewer can give you any coherent reasons for thinking that we have them.  Despite this widespread ignorance of such a core principle in our system of government, most people have a positive view of [...]

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It is a commonly held belief that scientific inquiry is a value-free endeavor.  This ideology of science states that because ethical claims, concepts, and ideas cannot be verified empirically, they are not real in a sense that is relevant to science.  This position has recently been widely challenged, and this ideology continues to erode under [...]

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I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I have developed an appreciation of morning talk radio.  My drug of choice is the Adam Corolla Show, featuring an intelligent, humorous, and slightly irritated man making comments and observations about the state of our world.  It harbors no pretenses of being a legitimate news outlet and this [...]

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The compassionate, bleeding heart liberal in me is desperately clinging to a desire to help my fellow man as much as humanly possible, without regard to financial burden or legislative backlog.  This point of view seemed very simple during my undergraduate upbringing, especially considering the number of sociology classes that  I took.  Sociology is a [...]

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The next enormous economic stimulus package has just passed the House and is being debated in the Senate, with much hullabaloo being created over the fact that no House Republicans voted for it, and that it appears to be loaded with funding for programs that won’t obviously stimulate the economy.  I think the National Endowment [...]

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Most people will agree that there is something wrong with lying, and some would go so far as to claim that you should never lie, even when doing so will protect another person from harm.  But misrepresentation is often another story altogether.  Those who view lying as clearly wrong will nonetheless misrepresent themselves to others, [...]

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In several previous articles, I shared some of my experiences with applying to philosophy graduate programs, in an effort to help future applicants avoid my own mistakes. Now that the application process is complete, I am in the midst of a new challenge: the waiting game. It’s difficult to sit and wait [...]

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Positive thinking is something of a new age mantra in contemporary society. As the study of the mind becomes more sophisticated, there is an increasing awareness of our ability to control our emotions, manipulate our moods, and make choices about how happy we are as people. The merits of positive thinking are usually [...]

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