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Starting Again
In the hurly-burly of an academic term, I have been neglecting this blog. It’s been so long, in fact, that coming back to it seems like starting over rather than picking up where I left off. The Spring term has just ended, and I have one week to prepare myself for Summer term: I’ll be… Continue reading
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Integrity Test
I take ‘integrity’ to mean a kind of wholeness or consistency of character: someone with integrity can be counted on to behave with the same kind of self-control or courage or respect or honesty or fairness in any circumstances, even if no one is looking. An old test of integrity is the Ring of Gyges,… Continue reading
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Systems Imagination in Environmental Ethics
My current approach to teaching environmental ethics puts a heavy emphasis on awareness of systems, as I’ve noted before, more than once. I’ll post something tomorrow about the scaffolding I’ve started to develop to help students in my current section of the course, but in the mean time I’d like to note one of the… Continue reading
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Thinking about Virtue: A Bit of Scaffolding
I have been reading back in some literature on problem-based learning (PBL), and related matters, in preparation for writing a paper on my ongoing course-design process. Along the way, I made a discovery – or a re-discovery – that was immediately and urgently useful in the classes I’m teaching this semester. One of the basic… Continue reading
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A Brief Pause
I took a break from the blog, last week, as I prepared for, traveled to and immersed myself in the International Conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. In the mean time, I wrote guest post that appeared over on Daily Nous on the current beleaguered state of philosophy as a profession. Continue reading
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Darwinian Humanism
In honor of Darwin Day 2015, I would like to revisit an odd paper I had published in Environmental Values in 2007, titled “Darwinian Humanism: A Proposal for Environmental Ethics“. I would here like to offer a few – I hope tantalizing – excerpts from my final typescript. In hindsight, it was an odd and… Continue reading
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Knowing By Heart
I’m just back from a regular practice session with the Atlanta Open Band, a community contra-dance band of which I am the chief instigator and organizer. We ran later than usual because, just about the time we’d usually wrap up, I fell into teaching the band a new tune by ear. After practice, one of… Continue reading
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Piaget on Cheating in School
I really have just a quotation and a few comments for today; I’ll have another brief entry, tomorrow, on a related matter. From Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), pp.286-7: Cheating is a defensive reaction which our educational system seems to have wantonly called… Continue reading
