When deciding if you should take a philosophy class (or major in philosophy), you might want to ask yourself what kind of an answer you want: (more…)
December 31, 2010
December 27, 2010
December 12, 2010
Honor Killings, Moral Education, Justified Punishment, Justified War, and Dehumanization
An examination of honor killings will reveal the importance of philosophical, logical, and moral education; the inappropriate treatment of criminals; the inappropriate dehumanization of our enemies; and the use of poor reasoning to justify war. (more…)
December 6, 2010
Two Political Goals: Let’s Limit Military Spending & Demand Accountability
There are many admirable political goals, such as protecting human rights, helping the poor, protecting animals, protecting the environment, preventing wars, and so on. However, the government is notoriously bad at doing anything for the better of the common good because politicians have a lot of favors to return mainly to corporations and lobbyists who care little about the common good. Nonetheless, there are non-partisan goals and we should pressure the government to do the right thing when it is blatantly obvious to everyone what needs to be done. In particular, consider these two non-partisan goals for those of us in the USA: (more…)
December 1, 2010
An Analysis of the GRE Analytical Writing Test (Analyze an Argument Task)
The general GRE exam requires us to “analyze an argument” but I find the demands of this “test” to be highly mysterious to downright deceptive. In particular we are asked to do (or not do) the following: (more…)