New Jersey's Own

An article we're reading toward the end of the semester was written by by well-known philosopher, utilitarian, vegetarian, and New Jersey resident Peter Singer. He's particularly known for arguing in support of better treatment of animals. Here are some interviews with him:

• Peter Singer on Michael Vick & Dog Fighting
  
• Audio Interview with Peter Singer
  
• Animal Research (Peter Singer's Sometimes OK with It!)

Midterm Exam

Just a reminder: the midterm exam is Friday, November 9th. It's worth 15% of your overall grade, and will cover everything we've done in class so far:

• Doing Philosophy
• Understanding and Evaluating Arguments
• Moral Skepticism vs. Moral Realism
• Divine Command Theory
• Natural Law Theory
• Utilitarianism
• Kant's Ethics
• Virtue Ethics
• Ethics of Care and Feminist Criticisms of Traditional Theories

You should be capable of briefly explaining each theory in your own words and briefly explaining the one or two criticisms of each theory that we discussed in class.  You also should be able to explain how to use each theory in ethical decision making--that is, explain what each theory would say we should do in some specific ethical dilemma outlined on the test.

The test is a mix of short-answer questions, argument evaluations, and essays. You'll have all 50 minutes of class to take it.

The Psychology of Happiness

Since utilitarianism focuses so much on happiness, I thought I'd share some links on the cool new psychological research on happiness popping up lately.

• Here's a great overview of the psychology of happiness. And here is another, and another.
• 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, and others think the research is wrong.
• There's an insightful, accessible book by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert called Stumbling on Happiness. One of his big points is that we often don't know what makes us happy. Here's Gilbert's appearance on The Colbert Report:
  
• And here's Gilbert giving an awesome TED talk on his research:
  
  

Utilitarios

Here are some links on the theory of utilitarianism:

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill.
• An advanced encyclopedia article from my favorite free online philosophy encyclopedia on utilitarianism and other theories that focus on consequences of an action.
• (Yes, there is more than one free online philosophy encyclopedia. Here's another encyclopedia's entry on the same topic.)
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating utilitarianism. A short video intro on it is below. Also, there's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.