PEA Soup

Consumers’ Obligations in Labor Disputes

Over at The Business Ethics Blog, Chris MacDonald has a very interesting post on ethical issues surrounding the labor dispute at the Westin St. Francis, the site of the 2010 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association.  Specifically, he asks what obligations the existence of such a dispute might impose upon consumers.  Should consumers stay away from businesses when unions are calling for a boycott, or are on strike?

Chris raises a number of good points in his post, and I won’t repeat them here.  And I won’t try, just yet, to answer the big question of what consumers have all-things-considered reason to do in such situations in general, or in the situation faced by the APA in particular.  But I do want to set out a few questions that I think are worth addressing in the course of trying to answer that larger question.  I’d be curious to hear what PEA Soupers think about them, as well as what they think about the other issues Chris raises.

CFP: BSPC

The 2010 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference will be held Aug. 1-5.  The call for papers, commentators and chairs can be found here.

CFP: Third Annual Rocky Mountain Ethics (RoME) Congress (Feb. 15 deadline)

University of Colorado, Boulder 
August 5-8, 2010 
Boulder, Colorado

an international conference geared to offer the highest quality, highest altitude discussion of ethics, broadly conceived

Scheffler's paradox: Persons vs. animals

“Scheffler’s paradox” is a puzzling feature of the moral beliefs of most deontologists. According to these beliefs, it is wrong for you to kill an innocent person even if your killing the innocent person is the only way to prevent five killings of innocent persons from being perpetrated by someone else. What could possibly explain this?

This feature of deontologists’ beliefs cannot be explained purely by their commitment to the moral importance of such distinctions as doing vs. allowing, intending vs. foreseeing, or the like. Most deontologists think that there are stronger reasons against doing harm to non-human animals than against allowing harm to animals; many also think that there are stronger reasons against acting with the intention of harming an animal than against causing such harm to an animal without intending it. But surely you could permissibly kill one bear if that is the only way for you to save five other bears from being killed by someone else. In general, it seems that Scheffler’s paradox does not really arise for killing non-human animals.

So what is the special feature of persons that lies behind Scheffler’s paradox?

University Ethics Requirements

My university is supposed to certify to the NSF that all university graduate students (undergraduate and postdoctoral researchers too) have had training in the responsible and ethical conduct of research.  I'm curious whether other philosophy departments offer a general course in Research Ethics for such reasons. It seems to me as though it is a good way to make Philosophy central to the mission of the University.  I'd appreciate hearing about your experiences and advice.

Secondly and relatedly, I also wonder how many secular colleges require all students to take a course in ethics in order to earn their undergraduate degree.  I know that plenty of Catholic colleges have such a rule, but what about other kinds of colleges?

The Epistemology of Advance Directives

Here’s the familiar hard case: At 50, younger-Meredith (YM), just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, signs an advance directive (AD) expressing her preference that her doctors do not give her extraordinary treatment to keep her alive if she gets ill after having become demented.  Meredith is an intellectual, someone who values the life of the mind, and she feels that to be kept alive when demented would make of her life a cruel joke.  At 60, older-Meredith (OM) is demented but seemingly quite content with her life when she contracts pneumonia.  When asked if she wants to be kept alive via extraordinary treatment, OM says yes.  Whose preferences are morally authoritative, YM’s or OM’s?

The Two Desire-Satisfaction Views

I've recently been mulling over what seems to be a disagreement between desire-satisfaction view theorists about the proper way to formulate a desire-satisfaction view about well-being.  (This thought has been inspired by discussions I've had on this blog with Chris Heathwood and Doug Portmore, and my recent unhealthy obsession with Ben Bradley's book "Well-Being and Death" which I recommend to any and all.)  Briefly, I thought I'd lay out the two proposed options and the plusses and minuses of both and ask everybody for some input: which one do you prefer?  Are there other arguments in favor of either side that I'm missing?

Interviews for grad school admissions?

I've recently been advising a student who is trying to gain admission to philosophy grad school. One of the programs to which he has applied has invited him for a campus visit, one component of which will be an interview with the department's faculty.

I must admit I was a bit taken aback when he told me about the interview, since it does not seem to be a common practice for grad school admissions (at least in philosophy — I'm not sure about the norms in other disciplines). With that in mind, I was hoping readers might have advice or insight about these interviews.

If you were interviewed as part of the graduate school admissions process, what kinds of questions were you asked and how might a student best prepare for such an interview?

If you've been on 'the other side' and have conducted such interviews, what are faculty hoping to learn from them and what would you recommend students do to prepare for them?

NEW Pictures

Speaking of Paul McNamara...many of us Soupers had a great time last weekend at the first annual Normative Ethics Workshop in Tucson.  Paul was one of the main speakers, as were Jamie Dreier, Doug Portmore, and Robert Johnson.  Many other Soupers were chairing or in attendance as well. Feast your eyes on our visual delights here.  (Thanks to Mark Timmons, both for organizing the conference and for allowing us to link to the photos.) 

Welcome, Paul McNamara

We are pleased to announce that Paul McNamara has accepted our invitation to become a contributor to PEA Soup. Paul is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. He specializes in ethical theory with an emphasis on deontic logic and the philosophy of moral language. Welcome aboard, Paul!