Ethical Issues
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This course provides an opportunity to study and discuss issues and events having recent international impact and/or interest. The course will present a multidisciplinary perspective on specific subjects with the intent of linking students with the scholars and scholarship involved in understanding and explaining current international issues, events, and crisis.
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This survey course introduces students to the important and basic material on human fertility, population growth, the demographic transition and population policy. Topics include: the human and environmental dimensions of population pressure, demographic history, economic and cultural causes of demographic change, environmental carrying capacity and sustainability. Political, religious and ethical issues surrounding fertility are also...more
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Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture, & Law is a class that examines the historical and scientific study of genetic engineering in medicine, agriculture, and law, including examination of social, ethical, and legal issues raised by new technology. About the Professor: Dr. Bob Goldberg is a plant molecular biologist who specializes in the area of plant gene expression. The goal of his research has been to understand how plant cells...more
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First, Professor Shiller discusses today's changing financial system and recent market stabilization reform introduced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The financial system is inherently unstable and would benefit from more surveillance, particularly for consumer protection issues, given the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Although this particular reform might not be successful, more regulators and policymakers are talking about...more
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Kleiner presents the three options for the course's term paper, which fall into two main categories: a research paper or a project to design a Roman city. For the research paper, she suggests cities and monuments not covered or mentioned briefly in the lectures, which embody some of the themes and issues raised in the course. Such topics include, in the Eastern Empire, the Roman cities of Corinth and Gerasa (Jerash), the Library of Celsus...more
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The markets for debt, both public and private far exceed the entire stock market in value and importance. The U.S. Treasury issues debt of various maturities through auctions, which are open only to authorized buyers. Corporations issue debt with investment banks as intermediaries. The interest rates are not set by the Treasury, the corporations or the investment bankers, but are determined by the market, reflecting economic forces about...more
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Summary Of Previous Lecture (Analyzing General Periodic Phenomena As A Sum Of Simple Periodic Phenomena), Fourier Coefficients; Discussion Of How General The Fourier Series Can Be (Examples Of Discontinuous Signals), Discontinuity And Its Impact On The Generality Of The Fourier Series, Infinite Sums To Represent More General Periodic Signals, Summary Of Convergence Issues, Convergence: Continuous Case, Smooth Case (Fourier Series...more
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Insurance provides significant risk management to a broad public, and is an essential tool for promoting human welfare. By pooling large numbers of independent or low-correlated risks, insurance providers can minimize overall risk. The risk management is tailored to individual circumstances and reflects centuries of insurance industry experience with real risks and with moral hazard and selection bias issues. Probability theory and...more
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Behavioral Finance is a relatively recent revolution in finance that applies insights from all of the social sciences to finance. New decision-making models incorporate psychology and sociology, among other disciplines, to explain economic and financial phenomenon, such as erratic stock price variations. Psychological patterns such as overconfidence and perceived kinks in the value function seem to impact financial decision-making, but...more
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Estrin talks about the personal connectivity cycle. The cycle of connecting people is the notion of people being able to connect to each other and connect to information anywhere. This means true mobility and ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity, she says. The enablers of this cycle are economic and behavioral. From an IT demand perspective, she explains, the real win is in the consumer devices and services and not in the IT...more
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Although the harm principle as introduced in the last lecture seems straightforward at first glance, today Professor Shapiro discusses its ambiguities. If it "must be calculated to produce evil to someone else," who will be doing the calculations? Second, what does "calculated" mean? Does committing harm imply mens rea, or should strict liability be observed? The class discusses such issues as prostitution, free trade, same-sex marriage,...more
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In this lecture, Professor Paul Fry takes on Knapp and Michaels's influential article, "Against Theory." The historical context of the piece is given and key aspects of the theorists' critical orientations, specifically their neo-pragmatism, are defined. A lengthy discussion of the relationships between, on the one hand, intention and meaning and, on the other hand, language and speech follows with reference to Saussure, deconstruction,...more
