What Isn't for Sale? (post for comment)

A  great article by philosopher Michael Sandel.

I'd like to present a debate between Sandel and two of his readers. Edward Stevenson takes a different position:

Argument completely without foundation. The author confuses market/price transparency with market existence. much of what is referenced is not an expansion of a market, but either 1) increased awareness of the prices due to better communication of obscure transactions (cost of immigration), 2) or increased liquidity of existing transactions (we used to give kids candy for reading a book, then fake bucks, now they get dollars). There is not need for a public debate. if a market exists it means that two people somewhere agree that a market should exist and thus it does. to limit the existence of markets is to limit the existence of human interaction plane and simple. two people sitting in a coffee shop exchanging ideas is a market transaction both agree that the ideas being expressed and listened to are worth the value of their time, cumulative costs (the parking meter, and the coffee etc), and the opportunity cost. Thus even me reading and commenting on this article is a form of a market transaction, one that I am glad can exist without the gaze of scrutiny but those involved in a public debate of the proneness and morality of my discretion of time and worthiness of my comments.

 A Sue Bond has it in a different way:

 I disagree that there is such a stark dichotomy: markets or government. And I disagree that the markets are more about freedom than money. A poor woman 'choosing' to sell her ova or rent out her uterus so her family can have somewhere to live or her children get an education is not a 'choice'. Rich women don't make these 'choices', because they don't have to. Poor people may feel compelled to sell their kidneys to give their families things that we take for granted. This is not freedom, this is making excuses for not doing anything about social inequality and for not caring about others.

So, here you have it, pro and con, what's your view? Do you agree with Sandel that, 

Some say the moral failing at the heart of market triumphalism was greed, which led to irresponsible risk-taking. The solution, according to this view, is to rein in greed, insist on greater integrity and responsibility among bankers and Wall Street executives, and enact sensible regulations to prevent a similar crisis from happening again.This is, at best, a partial diagnosis. While it is certainly true that greed played a role in the financial crisis, something bigger was and is at stake. The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the reach of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms. To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against greed; we need to have a public debate about where markets belong—and where they don’t.

 Go ahead!

I am closing this post this Sunday at 11pm. 

What is personal identity?

Check these videos with  Professor Shelly Kagan, at Yale University:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Q-memory helps the idea of a memory, in the strong sense, as too interconnected with the notion of selfhood to be of any constitutional value in terms of personal identity. If we can theoretically strip memory of this reliance on a specific self then we would avoid the inherently circular relationship between memory and personal identity. If this can be achieved then there is the possibility that we could get away with using this weaker version of memory as the sole criterion for personal identity. In order to do this Shoemaker tries to make a distinction between two different types of memory

Quasi-Memory, would seem to be void of any reference to a specific self. The reason why this is so is because by weakening the previous awareness condition Shoemaker strips memory of its ability to be immune from error through mis-identification in relation to the first person. Because of the fact that the memory can only belong to someone or other it cannot be said with certainty that the person who has the quasi-memory was aware of the event contained in the quasi-memory at the time of it’s occurrence, and thus we may well be mistaken in saying that the holder of the quasi-memory is the person who had the original quasi-memory in the first instance.

T,R 9:50am

T, 5:40pm

T,R 8:25am

Young. black, male

The New York Times submits the following topic to discussion:

The news for young black men is not good: they are disproportionately singled out for discipline in school, they are more likely to be stopped and frisked by New York City police officers, and according to Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point in their lives.

Would pulling back on draconian drug laws or legalizing marijuana be enough to fix this imbalance? What else needs to be done.

Read the 9 different opinions (5 of which are by young black men). What do you think? Is this a a problem of education, discrimination, family, drug prohibition, wrong societal perceptions? Is it a single problem, or a mix of issues? Go ahead.

This post for comment will be closed next Monday @ 11pm.  

The fabric of the cosmos

I'd like you to take a look at this very interesting videos by NOVA featuring physicist Brian Greene, professor of Columbia University. They examine important topics of physics:

Quantum mechanics, with renowned professors from MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc.

The Illusion of Time, a most see.

What is space?

Universe or multiverse? Which begins with a discussion of inflation. 
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 Keep in mind that our observable universe is very large, having a diameter of roughly 40 billion light years, and encompassing hundreds of billions of galaxies, each of which may contain billions of stars.

The day may not be too far off when patients can control a prosthetic hand or leg just by thinking about it

In our last post for comment we discussed trans humanism. I found this in Science Daily:

The chip UF researchers are seeking to develop would be implanted directly into the brain tissue, where it could gather data from signals, decode them and stimulate the brain in a self-contained package without wires. In the interim, UF researchers are studying implantable devices in rats and are evaluating an intermediate form of the technology - placing electrodes on the surface of the brain - in people.

Phi 2010 Students Assistants

T,R 8:25:
Diego Pinzon
Dayron Miranda
Rebecca Soza

T,R 9:50
Fritz Charles
Elvis Hatcher
Veroniza Quigg
Kathia Sylvain