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?]

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?

Quiz You Once, Shame on Me...

UPDATE: We've moved the quiz back! The first quiz will be held at the beginning of class on Monday, February 16th Wednesday, February 18th. You will have about 25 minutes to take it. The quiz is worth 7.5% of your overall grade.

There will be two sections: the first section is on evaluating arguments, and will look just like the group work on evaluating arguments we did in class last week. There will also be a section of 4 short answer questions on the topic of moral relativism (Are moral claims merely opinions or are they factually based?) These questions will be based on our class discussions of the Herodotus, Ruth Benedict, and Thomas Nagel readings.

Feel free to insult me in the comments for putting you through the terrible ordeal of taking a quiz.

Defining Our Terms

1. Tool: Here's one Urban Dictionary definition of "tool," the one I had in mind when referring to Dane Cook:

someone who tries too hard. a poser. one of those chic's who holds the sign saying "Carson Daly is Hot." the asstard who goes to a rock show because they heard one of the songs on the radio or mtv. or someone who insists on wearing velour sweat suits. Avril Lavigne.

To find out more, I suggest watching Tool Academy to see our heroes in action:

2. Fugly: uh, rather ugly. Moe Szyslak has been called a few variations of this term.

3. Emo Kid: "Emo" has a ton of meanings. The wikipedia article on "emo" has a nice history of the term.

4. Lame: South Park usually nails this term.

Did I forget any terms? Let me know!