Midterm Reminder

Just a reminder: The midterm is this Friday (March 27th). It's worth 15% of your overall grade, and will cover everything we've done in class so far:

• Evaluating Arguments
  
• Relativism (Herodotus, Benedict, & Nagel readings)
  
• God Ethics (Mortimer & Arthur readings)
• Happy Ethics (Mill & Williams readings)
  
• Kant's Ethics (Kant & Taylor readings)
  

We'll be reviewing for the midterm in class on Wednesday, so I'll be giving you more details about the test then.

BE THERE.

Kant's a Tool

I thought it might help us all if I opened up a post dedicated solely to complaining about how tough the Immanuel Kant reading was. Leave your best Kant insults in the comments of this post.

[can't get enough Kant?]
[smitten by Deontological Ethics?]
[want tips on reading these articles?]

Paper & Midterm Rescheduled

We decided in class to move the due date of the first paper back until Wednesday, March 25th.

Also, we're pushing the midterm back to Friday, March 27th.

Also, here are some tips (one and two) on writing philosophy papers.)

Cookie Party!

The 11:00 a.m. class is having a cookie party! Bake or buy cookies, cupcakes, pies, cakes, krimpets, or whatever you want. Then bring your baked goods to class on Friday, March 13th. There's a Facebook Event invitation -- go join the event!

Sorry, 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. class, but this isn't for you. We can schedule a cookie party for our class some time in the future.

Check the Source

-via GraphJam

Another Snow Day!

Class is canceled today, Monday, March 2nd, because of the snow. In fact, all day and night classes at Camden County College are canceled.

Please go sledding! Take pictures!! SHOW THEM TO ME!!!

Links Worthy of a Swine

Here are some links that are loosely related to the stuff on happy ethics (utilitarianism) that we are studying.

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill
• An advanced encyclopedia article on happy ethics and other theories that focus on consequences of an action
• Another dinosaur comic! This one's on utilitarianism!!
  
• There's a lot of psychological research on happiness popping up lately. Here's one overview of the psychology of happiness. And here's a second one.
• There's a great book on the psychology of happiness called Stumbling on Happiness
  
• Recent studies suggest that our baseline level of happiness doesn't change much throughout our life. So, even if we won the lottery, we wouldn't wind up that much happier. This is potentially very depressing news, although some say there's room for some optimism.
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating happy ethics. There's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.

So what makes you happy? WaWa? Ping pong? Cookies? Pancake Krimpets?