philosophical questions
sort by: Relevancy | Title try advanced search for more options
-
Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature pairs central texts from Western philosophical tradition (including works by Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Hobbes, Kant, Mill, Rawls, and Nozick) with recent findings in cognitive science and related fields. The course is structured around three intertwined sets of topics: Happiness and Flourishing; Morality and Justice; and Political Legitimacy and Social Structures.
-
Environmental Politics and Law (EVST 255) This lecture covers site restoration law by looking at the US Navy's use of the island of Vieques as weapons testing ground. Vieques residents are filing a civil suit against the US government, which raises issues of burden of proof, scientific certainty with respect to exposure amounts and health impacts, and how the government protects citizens from environmental hazards. Professor Wargo trace...more
-
The class's examination of Nozick's minimal state has raised a number of important questions, most of which are rooted in his troublesome model of compensation. Nozick would respond with his threefold account of justice: (1) justice in acquisition, (2) justice in transfer, and (3) rectification of past injustices. Nozick brilliantly demonstrates that "liberty upsets patterns"--even though we can originally start off with any just distribut...more
-
Environmental Politics and Law (EVST 255) The United States' fragmented, piecemeal approach to environmental law is presented through the cases that led to the creation of major environmental statutes such as the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The variety of federal agencies and levels of government that participate in creating and implementing regulation contribute to the fragmentation of American envir...more
-
SARS, avian influenza and swine flu are the first new diseases of the twenty-first century. They are all diseases of globalization, or diseases of modernity, and while relatively limited in their impact, they have offered dress-rehearsals for future epidemics. As information about SARS spread internationally in 2002, in spite of China's campaign of silence, the global response had a curiously twofold character: on one hand, the mobilizatio...more
-
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the largest public health campaign ever launched, began in 1988 with the ambition of achieving its goal by the year 2000. In the decade since this deadline was missed, the initiative has suffered a number of setbacks, notably in the tropical world. Four major types of problems have impeded the eradication effort: operational, biological, political and religious. Northern Nigeria offers a case study ...more
-
Companies today need to be nimble and adaptable to the changing environment and market around them. Being nimble is important. The second skill is to think through when you're going to ship your product. If you think about the innovation; is it a 2x improvement, is it a 10x improvement? Think about what the market will be when you ship your product. If you have a four-year development cycle, youwill have a physical product that's going to ...more
-
The main focus of today's discussion is Rawls's third and most problematic principle, the difference principle, which states that income and wealth is to be distributed "to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged individual." This stems from the logic that what is good for the least advantaged individual will be good for the second-least advantaged, and the third, and so on. But what if slightly benefiting the least advantaged person ...more
-
The trial of Adolf Eichmann, as presented in Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, is the topic of discussion. Professor Shapiro asks students what made them uncomfortable, not only about Eichmann's actions as a Nazi officer, but also the actions of Israel in capturing, extraditing, trying, and executing him. This begs the questions, what makes a government legitimate? And more specifically, was the Third Reich illegitimate and was Eichma...more
-
The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely important figure not only in contemporary political philosophy, but also in the field of philosophy as a whole. The class is introduced to some of the principal features of Rawls's theory of justice, such as the original position and the veil of ignorance, two of Rawls's most important philosophica...more
-
This lecture gives a brief history of the young field of financial theory, which began in business schools quite separate from economics, and of my growing interest in the field and in Wall Street. A cornerstone of standard financial theory is the efficient markets hypothesis, but that has been discredited by the financial crisis of 2007-09. This lecture describes the kinds of questions standard financial theory nevertheless answers well. ...more
-
Kelley talks about how the observation phase is the most overlooked part of the development process. Kelley hires social scientists to watch people complete tasks instead of asking them usability questions. He prefers to see them as customers instead of users and strongly believes that customer satisfaction comes with understanding their values. He gives examples of how his team will observe a customer in their usual environment instead of...more
