PEA Soup

Postdoc opportunity

Liz Harman asked me to post the following announcement:

To those on the job market, and those with students on the job market:

Anyone who does ethics should seriously consider applying for the Harold T. Schapiro Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioethics at Princeton. The ad says (and we really mean it) "an applicant may have a background in any area of ethical studies, not necessarily in bioethics." The application requires a 1,500-word research proposal, so you do have to have in mind a serious research project in bioethics. But you do not have to already be doing bioethics! Princeton is a wonderful place to spend one to three years! Please feel free to email me if you have specific questions about the postdoc.
Best,
Liz

Elizabeth Harman

eharman@princeton.edu

More NEH

The following comment, from an anonymous NEH reviewer, was posted over at IHE due to some (length-related?) problem with posting it here.  It is worth reading. 

What does the NEH have against us? (Updated and edited)

Once again the NEH has announced the “Enduring Questions” grant competition:

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/EnduringQuestions.html

The announcement raises many troubling questions.

The Paper Towel Dispenser Puzzle

Let me be the first PEA Souper to follow the blogging trend of linking to FAILBlog, and direct you to this real-life instance of the toxin puzzle.

Journalism Ethics bleg

I need to help develop an undergraduate course on ethics in journalism and the media, to be taken primarily by aspiring TV/film writers and producers.  Have any of our readers ever taught such a course?  Anyone willing to share syllabi, advice about texts, etc.?  Thanks!

Objective and Subjective Hedonism

You are offered a choice between two experience machines.

Machine A is just like the ones you already know about.  You'll be on the experience machine until you are 120 years old, getting lots of various sorts of pleasure.

Machine B offers exactly the same experiences as Machine A.  However, the experiences are crammed into a much shorter period of time:  just one day.  The first 12 hours of this day seem to last 12 hours.  The next 6 hours seem to last 12 hours.  The next 3 hours seem to last 12 hours.  And so on (as in Sorensen's "The Cheated God").  A fraction of a second before the 24 hours are up, the machine kills you painlessly.  At that time it seems to you as if you have lived 120 highly pleasant years.

Which machine should you choose?

CFP: BSPC

The 2008 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference has posted its call for papers.  As far as I know, this is the only philosophy conference where you can win a prize for sustaining a physical injury.  (Visit to ER may be required to claim prize; only one winner per year.)  Needless to say, I will be there.

Happiness: Good or Bad?

Psychologist Wray Herbert has written an article for Newsweek about happiness. The title is “Can You Be Too Happy?” How could you be too happy? Too happy for what? Sounds crazy. Let’s take a look!

Happiness on MSNBC

Check out this interview on MSNBC with Psychiatrist Dr. Donald E. Rosen, conducted by MSNBC health editor Jane Weaver. I’m breaking it down FJM-style.

Philosophical Utilitarianism

In “Contractualism and Utilitarianism” Scanlon introduces what he calls “philosophical utilitarianism” (PU). PU is the view that “the only fundamental moral facts are facts about individual well-being.” PU is supposed to be answering a different question from the one answered by more familiar versions of utilitarianism. It is a view in what Scanlon calls “philosophical ethics,” which means that it is supposed to explain “why anyone should care” about morality at all; to “make clearer to us the nature of the reasons that morality does provide.” It’s supposed to do some other things too.

I don’t understand PU, nor do I understand how it could be thought to do any of the things Scanlon wants a philosophical theory of morality to do.