Everyday Ethics

One of the core principles of everyday ethics and a principle purpose of this site is to help people to recognize ethical questions and revelations of ethical knowledge in their own everyday experiences. Sometimes this is harder than others. Recently, a great example of everyday ethics appeared in the news, when a story was published [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

A “stupid” job has many nuances  and qualities that make it what it is.  Often, stupid jobs are steeped in policies, rules and regulations, or other guidelines that cause the opposite of their intended goal to occur.  For example, I was recently a case manager for a public social program.  This program has the best [...]

[Read more →]

I resisted the Facebook phenomenon as long as I could, but the lure of rekindling connections with long-lost friends proved to be too much to resist.  Now that I have joined “the Book,” I find myself somewhat troubled by certain types of posts that many individuals find perfectly acceptable, but that are reasonably worth questioning [...]

[Read more →]

Most of us don’t give much thought to the fact that many of our relationships with other people are defined by some degree of reciprocity.  To some extent, reciprocity is the very nature of human interpersonal relations.  Although these relationships can be extremely beneficial for the parties involved, it is important to be aware of [...]

[Read more →]

Modern society has a somewhat puzzling view concerning treatment of animals.  Pet animals are seen as de facto members of our families, yet the very same animals are also used for research, product testing, and agriculture.  Most people spend very little time thinking about the reasons for the relationship that humans have with animals, and [...]

[Read more →]

In a recent article, we discussed the role of philosophical rhetoric in moral deliberation, and the way in which both of this election’s presidential candidates demonstrate some positive and negative attributes in their rhetorical styles.  But we haven’t said much about why the very nature of rhetoric is so frustrating, and can sometimes play a [...]

[Read more →]

After watching the last presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I think its only appropriate to say something about rhetoric, and how it applies to our everyday ethical practices.  Luckily, these two candidates offer a great starting point for conversation, as they both do certain things very well, and other things very poorly.  [...]

[Read more →]