Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Uncategorized category.
A New Term
A new quarter, and a new site!
For Winter 2008, this blog continues at http://lifeboatsandtrolleys.wordpress.com/. Thank you Edublogs for a great quarter!
The Promise of Sustainability Contest
If you have opted to write a paper for the final class assignment, please do consider submitting it to the “Promise of Sustainability” essay contest.
There are three $300 prizes, and certainly any essay from this class would be highly competitive for the “most persuasive” prize, since our efforts all quarter have been on increasing the clarity and strength of our arguments. In addition to the cash prizes, some additional essays will be chosen for the final publication, and this in itself is a prize worth aiming for!
But PLEASE NOTE: the DEADLINE is TODAY!.
An interesting lecture
This lecture/panel discussion is eligible to count as a replacement grade, if you write up a summary and critically engage with one of the arguments (about 1.5 pages of writing). One reason it should be especially interesting is that Bill Johnson is black and is the former mayor of Rochester, so I’m sure he has very personal insights about race and being a public figure.
SUBLIMINAL RACISM
AND THE 2008 CAMPAIGN
BRIAN BARRY
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
WILLIAM A. JOHNSON
Departments of STS/Public Policy, and Sociology and Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
KIJANA CRAWFORD, moderator
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
DATE: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29
TIME: 7-8:30 P.M.
PLACE: ROOM 1125, CARLSON (Bldg. 76)
The Qatsi Trilogy
You had some questions about the film clips we watched in class yesterday, so I looked them up. And of course Wikipedia had some of the best information.
The first clip was the trailer for Koyaanisqatsi, which was released in 1982.
The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living’, and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
The second clip was the Introduction to Powaqqatsi, released in 1988.
Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “parasitic way of life” or “life in transition”. While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization.
The first scene is of a gold mine in Brazil, called Serra Pelada, in which the miners carry sacks of dirt for processing. Towards the end of a scene, we see some workers carrying another who has been struck by a falling rock.
Sustainability and Carbon Footprints
Our next reading for course is this New Yorker article about carbon footprints. One thing we’ll discuss in class is the subtitle about “confusing morality and science.”
In addition, see the course schedule for instructions about completing two carbon footprint models.
The footprint models show what percentage of the Earth’s resources would be required if everyone on the planet lived a lifestyle just like yours. If everyone were to use equal amounts of the earth’s resources at a renewable level, and if we set aside just 12% of those resources for all the other species, about 39 acres would be available per person. Currently the global population uses abotu 58 acres per person. That is clearly not sustainable in the long run! Many scientists believe that we should set aside about 33% of the earth’s resources for other species, which reduces the human share and makes our current consumption look even more harmful.
Thanks to Environmental Science professor Karl Korfmacher for collecting the carbon footprint model resources.
Reminders
This is a reminder that the Ethical Experience Project is due on Monday. It is worth 20% of the final course grade.
In grading the project, I’ll be looking for several things:
1. the quality of your activity. Did you have an original idea? How much time and effort did the activity require? How challenging was it to you, or how far out of your comfort zone? Does it open up ideas or opportunities for future ethical actions?
2. the quality of your written description of the activity. Is your story interesting to read? Do you provide enough background information so that I understand the context of your activity? Do I get a clear picture of what you did, why you did it, and how it affected your thoughts and actions? Was the activity what you expected, or did it present unexpected challenges or surprises? Does your narrative give a vivid picture while excluding unnecessary or irrelevant detail?
3. the depth of your reflections. Have you made the relevance to the course topic (or to Deep Economy) apparent? Do you make use of the experience to examine a difficult question? Did you learn something or expand your horizons, and have you reflected critically on what you learned? Can you relate something about your experience to one of our ethical frameworks or to one of the ethical problems that we’ve discussed? Do you use it to highlight some particular conception of “the good life” or of “right action”? What impact did your activity have on other people, now or in the future? Were your attitudes transformed as a result of the experience, and if not, what were the obstacles to transformation? Is there something you wish you had done differently, or do you have advice to pass on to future students about this activity?
Finally, let me remind you that the reading for Monday is the essay by Garrett Hardin in our Moral Philosophy textbook.
How Green Is Our Campus?
The College Sustainability Report Card was issued this week, and RIT scored a C-.
Oh, but don’t feel too bad, because at least our score is up from last year! Also, even the leaders only scored an A-. Read about other area campuses here.
But surely, as a technological institute, we can make larger efforts to improve our sustainability score, especially since such strong reasons have been given for the role that technology can play in finding ways to improve sustainability without devolving to a 19th century lifestyle.
Philosophy Club
Two students interested in philosophy have decided to hold a first/preliminary meeting of a philosophy club on Friday the 24th (next Friday).
It will be:
Date: 10/24
When: 2:30pm
Where: In the Idea Factory of the library.
They ask people who come to have read the first chapter of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. They are looking for people who would like to read and discuss philosophical texts on their free time. They have other plans and ideas for the club as well, but the focus is on a student-run reading group as opposed to a faculty-led discussion.
Blog Issues
If you’re interested, you can view my assessment of the recent blog outage at my other blog.
Films that examine environmental ethics
We haven’t had a film clip in class for a couple of weeks, but we’ll find time for more viewing toward the end of the course. Ethics is amenable to learning through the film medium because learning to think philosophically is not just about amassing knowledge but about identifying and thinking through problems and observing how others frame ethical problems.
Here are some of my recommendations for films that are related to the issues raised in Deep Economy and other problems in environmental sustainability. Many of these have trailers available on the web. I’d love to hear your further suggestions!
About our energy economy:
About climate change:
About wildlife:
About local economies:
About waste:
- The Story of Stuff (20 min., online)
About food:
About industrialization and natural environments:
- Manufacturing Landscapes (showing on campus in January)
Reminder: Peter Singer Lecture
Peter Singer will be speaking on
“A Better, More Sustainable World”
at 2:30 tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 3)
in the Golisano Auditorium (Building 70).
I hope to see you there!
Here is an interesting interview with Peter Singer and a review of his book, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, in which he applies utilitarianism to decisions about food.
More events and resources
I’m sure that many of you are thinking about your project and hoping to complete it before we get into a rush in the second half of the quarter.
I see that there is a public lecture about mass extinction on October 2. It’s at the Brighton Town Hall at 7pm and is sponsored by the Animal Rights Advocates of Upstate New York. I would note that, in general, something as passive as watching a film or lecture is not what I would usually consider “experiential.” However, it does provide an opportunity for a question-and-answer session and some social contact with people involved in these issues. I hope you’ll take advantage of these opportunities for interactive learning.
Two more local resources that you might find interesting are:
The Politics of Food, a group that is involved in sustainable agriculture and food security.
Climate Change Central, a community resource center. They have a movie showing planned for Friday, October 10 and a book discussion group on Tuesday, October 14.
Also, RIT is participating in the local Low Carbon Diet Challenge, which I announced earlier. Now there is a more convenient location: the CIMS building, Room 2230, on three Wednesday nights in October (Oct. 1, 6-9pm; Oct. 15; and Oct. 29).
Register to Vote
Voter registration materials are here (as a pdf). They include a form that you can type onto and then print out. You will need to put it in an envelope and include a copy of your identification. Full instructions are in the pdf, and please notice that they vary by state, just in case you plan to vote absentee from a different state. You are allowed to vote in New York if you wish, even if you live on campus and don’t consider this your permanent home. First class postage is 42 cents. In New York, it must be received 25 days before the election, which is to say in early October. If you aren’t registered, TODAY is a good day to do it.
I was unable to find out where the polling place is for the dorms. If anyone knows, could you please write it in the comment section?
If you are registered to vote in Monroe County, then this site, run by the Monroe County Board of Elections, can help you to find your polling place and answer other questions. Here is another good site for voting information.
Catastrophe and Sustainability
There were two important topics that we discussed in class today. First, I reviewed the two frameworks we’ve studied. The point of looking at different ethical frameworks is not so that, for any problem, you can pick the one that gives the answer that you want to hear. (It’s not like picking a meal off of a menu.) Actually, for many questions, different ethical frameworks will give fairly similar guidance, though perhaps for different reasons.
We looked at how different frameworks are useful for different purposes. A deontological framework, for instance, provides the type of justification that is needed to formulate professional codes of ethics, like these codes from IEEE and ACM. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is useful for highlighting the wide range of harms and benefits that are relevant to complex social decisions.
Then we discussed the problem of population growth and the types of conflicts that arise when we consider population control. In our research, many of us saw statements such as this one:
Despite being one of the largest drivers of climate change, the question of population growth is strangely absent from public debate.
As always, this post is available for additional comments on the class discussion.
Kantian Ethics
Some key ideas from the lecture:
- Kantian ethics responds to the need for moral truths to have an independent justification which depends on reason and not just on intuition or implicit agreement.
- Kant argues that if a law is to be morally valid, then it must follow with absolute necessity.
- He provides such an algorithm in the form of the Categorical Imperative.
- The Categorical Imperative is similar to–but more universal and less personal than–the Golden Rule.
- The core of morality is not what we do but why we do it.
- Principle-based ethical theories are called deontological.
If you have any questions, feel free to raise them in the comments section. On Wednesday I’d like to hear your ideas about whether you foresee any problems with applying this ethical theory to specific moral problems.
Just for fun, here’s a political attack ad:
