Journals With Student Rates

Just in case anyone is interested, here's a list of a few journals with student rates:

Journal of the History of Philosophy: $28
Analysis: $24
Journal of Philosophy: $20
Philosophical Review: $20
Journal of Political Philosophy: $40
The Philosophical Quarterly: $27
Philosophy and Public Affairs: $23
Australasian Journal of Philosophy: $24

First Person Plural

[From alyosha, alyosha@bostoncoop.net]
Here's something only somewhat related to liberalism, which i offer
mostly because i'm really into it -- and it's bristling with
philosophical implications. It also allows me to keep grinding my
naturalization ax, incl to point out that naturalization primarily
means philosophizing based on up-to-date info about the world (vs all
too much of academic philosophy), and doesn't necessarily mean
(radical) reductionism.

First Person Plural
An evolving approach to the science of pleasure suggests that each of
us contains multiple selves—all with different desires, and all
fighting for control. If this is right, the pursuit of happiness
becomes even trickier. Can one self bind” another self if the two want
different things? Are you always better off when a Good Self wins? And
should outsiders, such as employers and policy makers, get into the
fray?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities

12/2 Meeting: Liberalism

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) article on Liberalism - a good overview of the various issues and probably the best place to start.

Wikipedia articles on Liberalism and Classical Liberalism

Google Books of Rawls' Political Liberalism - the first lecture sets out his idea of a political conception of liberalism as opposed to a comprehensive conception; and Rawls' Justice as Fairness - the first section sets out some of the basics of his position.

Other SEP Articles: Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy, Distributive Justice, Positive and Negative Liberty, Rights, Limits of Law, Identity Politics, Coercion

More On Trolley Problems: Neuroethics

Here are some more links about Trolley Problems, especially concerning neuroethics, courtesy of Alyosha (alyosha@bostoncoop.net):

Here are annotated links to start you out on the neuroethics of the
trolley problems (plus a humor piece to reward you for reading to the
end!). I'm on a roll so there are several, not because i'm geeking out,
but.....to suit the taste of different readers; yeh, that's it! If you
get hooked and want even more, i've got em.

A teensy intro the to most-discussed research is here:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/
The gist is that Greene et al find separate brain modules relating to
deontological and consequentialist approaches to ethics, and use fMRI
scans to watch them during trolley problems.

Right off the bat here are a couple of critiques:
http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2007/11/trolley-problem.html
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2008/01/cognitive_load_and_moral_judgm.php

But before i go too far with that, the other thing i wanted to bring up
is evidence from people with damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex
("VM patients"). These folks have been found to be lacking in the
deontological modules, and so act like pure(r) consequentialists.
Unfortunately, the best short treatments i found are in googlebooks. So
go to these:
http://books.google.com/books?id=m7USFu5Z0lQC
http://books.google.com/books?id=EHlPFgatpYoC\
, and search for "vm", and it'll take you there, right before the
trolley stuff. Nice short treatments.

And i can't resist this not-so-trolleyish but very trolley-applicable
famous theory of five moral modules, which have been assimilated to the
neuroethics / evoultionary psycholocgy frameworks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt

But you might want to back up. Here are two pieces on neuroethics more
generally. This one from Greene doesn't deal with trolleys but is a
nice intro:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-NRN-Is-Ought-03.pdf
; while this much longer one from pinker does bring up trolley
problems, along with tons of other stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html

Moving back to our focus, here's a nice accessible overview of the
Greene scene along with some others:
http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2004.php?subaction=showfull&id=1177190275&archive=&start_from=&ucat=7&
And this one brings in virtue ethics:
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v4/n10/full/nrn1223.html

And finally, here's a philosophical spoof of the trolley problems that
i find really funny:
http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/Tissues.htm
(If you don't get it (all), there's a link to annotations at the bottom.)

Past Philosophy Club Meetings

November 18th
We will be discussing Trolley Problems. Recommended materials:
Philosophy Bites podcast on the Trolley Problem here
Wikipedia Entry
Variations and Quiz
The Trolley Problem by Judith Jarvis Thomson
SEP Entries: Deontological Ethics, Doing Vs. Allowing Harm, Double Effect

October 28th:
Professor Ariew will be joining us for a discussion of professionalization(what grad school is like, expert performance (how to get ahead in philosophy)). He recommends reading "A Star is Made" before the meeting and consulting The Philosophy Gourmet Report, which ranks philosophy departments.

October 21st:
We will be discussing aesthetics, specifically the Washington Post article "Pearls Before Breakfast" and Morris Weitz's article "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," which can be found on Jstor.
Other resources you might want to look at:
Audio of Joshua Bell's Performance
Stanford Encyclopedia articles on Definition of Art, Aesthetic Judgment, Conceptual Art, Philosophy of Music

Film screening, radio show episode of note

Sorry for not getting this info up earlier, but Astra Taylor's Examined Life documentary is playing this afternoon at Stephens College's Citizen Jane Film Festival. According to the site, Taylor will be at the screening, which starts at 3 at Windsor Auditorium. Astra's last film was Zizek! about Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian cultural theorist, who is featured in Examined Life with Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Cornell West and Kwame Anthony Appiah, among other modern day philosophers, theorists and critics. Tickets are $5 for students and available at Ragtag.

Also worth checking out is Act One of last week's This American Life episode, number 366, "A Better Mousetrap 2008." It might be interesting to listen to with what Dr. Markie's recent talk in mind. You can currently download the episode for free either from the show's site or from iTunes until, most likely, tomorrow, when this weekend's episode becomes available; however, you can always stream any episode of the show, in full, for free from the TAL site. Here's the description of the story:

Act One. Mother of Invention.

Karen Sosnoski's one-year-old son, Anton, was born with what's known as Mosaic Down Syndrome, a rare condition where some of his cells have the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome and other cells don't. So as he grows, he could end up having all the health risks and challenges of Downs syndrome...or just a few of them. Through a website, Karen found a kid with the same diagnosis, named Tim Colvin, who was doing really well...perhaps because his mother, Kristy, invented a surprising and unusual way to raise her son. When some people hear about what Kristy did, they're shocked. Karen went to talk to Kristy and Tim about how Tim was raised. (13 minutes)

Don't want to miss timely updates? Add this blog to your Google Reader and you won't have to worry about forgetting to check the blog, or wasting time checking it in hopes of a new post, since there aren't that many, that often. Though I doubt the latter is very prevalent! Anyway, enjoy.

Upcoming talks on campus

Some of our budding classicists and, well, other nerd-types might be wise to take note of a few talks on campus next week sponsored by our History department. For the 2008 Fordyce Mitchel Lecture Series, they're bringing in Dr. Christopher Pelling from Oxford (faculty page here and a slightly more substantive Wikipedia entry here). The general theme is "How Greek Historians Explained History" and information on each is as follows:

• "Cleopatra" (7 PM, Monday, October 6, Stewart Hall 100)
  
• "Herodotus: Gods and Men - and Women Too" (4 PM, Tuesday, October 7, Agriculture Building 2-16)
• "Thucydides: The Limits of 'Realistic' Thinking" (4 PM, Wednesday, October 8, Tate Hall 104)
• "Polybius: What Made Roman History Different" (7 PM, Thursday, October 9, Agriculture Building 2-16)
  

And the following week from MU Peace Studies, a talk on nonviolence delivered by Dr. Barry Gan, director of the Center for Nonviolence and Professor of Philosophy at St. Bonaventure University in New York. Here's the info:

People who abhor war and domestic violence struggle with the question of how harm to the innocent can be prevented and social justice promoted by non-violent means. You are invited to hear Dr. Barry Gan present a lecture "Out of the Ashes of Violence: Violent Myths and Nonviolent Realities," that addresses these issues at 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 13, in 114 Strickland Hall on the MU Campus. The talk will be free and open to the public. It will deal with misconceptions that lead people to resort to violence when problems can be resolved nonviolently.

A Philosopher on the American Election

Before too much time passes, I thought I'd post a somewhat recent interview on PRI's The World with French philosopher, journalist and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy about his thoughts on the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Lévy was apparently a student of Derrida and Althusser, two of the leading French structuralists, and one of his more recent books was American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, which I haven't read but remember for being savaged by Garrison Keillor (though Lévy was interviewed on The Daily Show around the same time - not universally panned).

Seen any other philosophers muse or opine about the election? Just by glancing at Brian Leiter's blog, one can see he's had a lot on the election; one post that caught my eye a while back was this one, which simply linked to two op-ed type pieces on Obama's campaign strategy at this point. Although at least in this post, Leiter didn't put his own two cents in, I found it interesting that the guy nevertheless found some credibility in the pieces, neither of which really discussed the elephant in the room - race - nor possessed the common sense that anything Obama (or Biden) says about McCain or Palin will be scrutinized (in the sense of misconstrued and belabored).

Anyway. The Club's next discussion will be on Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-prize winning feature in The Washington Post Magazine, "Pearls Before Breakfast," with a reading on aesthetics for good measure.