Upcoming Test

Hi all........... I was just wandering if anyone would like to get together on Tuesday to go over materials for our upcoming test? I am going out to the college to work on many things and should be there most of the day after 12:00 pm. Anyone interested, reply through the blog or e-mail me at itsjoepat@aol.com I will also be out there on Wed. afternoon from 2:00 pm until class at 6:00. I don't know about you guys but I am having a rough time with Deontology. And the sad part is, I don't know what the trouble is. I will be studying in the LRC building. Talk soon................Pat

Death Penalty Paper

Hi

I am doing my paper on the Death Penalty and would like to post the following on the blog for feed back inregards to this issue. I want to use the answers given by the class in to support the part of paper that relates to the area that there is a lack of understanding knowledge about the death penalty.
I wanted to make sure it was okay first. I downloaded this from deathpenaltyinfo.org

1	True	False	The death penalty saves taxpayers money because it is cheaper to execute someone than to keep them in prison for the rest of their life.
2	True	False	Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, more black people have been executed than white people.
3	True	False	After the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976, the first person to be executed was Gary Gilmore in Utah by a firing squad.
4	True	False	Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., very few people have been released from death row because they were innocent.
5	True	False	In most states with the death penalty, you can be executed even if you suffer from mental illness.
6	True	False	There are some states in the U.S. where you cannot receive the death penalty for any crime.
7	True	False	Hanging has not been used as a method of execution in the United States for over 30 years.
8	True	False	When the police chiefs of the U.S. were polled on their views about ways to lower the crime rate, only 1% named the death penalty as their top priority in reducing violent crime.
9	True	False	No woman has been executed in the U.S. for over 25 years.
10	True	False	Those who commit a crime when they are under 18 years of age are ineligible for the death penalty in the U.S.

Pamela

Utilitarianism reading

Class, check the online class calendar for the latest updates to our syllabus. I know last week there was some confusion, so this should take care of it.

When we get back from break, we are going to study Utilitarianism, so read the corresponding two chapters on the book, and click here for the original paper by John Stuart Mill, entitled Utilitarianism. You are responsible for chapters 1-4; don't worry about chapter 5.

If you get confused, feel free to post questions on the blog. Enjoy your break in the meantime.

Kant reading

This is the Kant reading for next week. Kant is rather abstract and difficult, so make sure you give yourself enough time to go over it, because you might need to read him two or three times to really understand him.

Whenever you find something confusing, post questions to this blog to get some help. This is most likely going to be the case for Kant, so post away. Don't keep your confusion to yourself.

Islam Vs. Christianity

I found this today, and thought you might find it funny as well.

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Aristotle and Mirror Neurons

Here is an audio clip summarizing certain key excerpts from Aristotle's views on ethics.

And the following is a video clip on state-of-the-art research on mirror neurons. Aristotle, you will remember, contended that the habitual performance of acts of a certain kind would eventually produce a corresponding state of mind, or character, in the moral agent. This is precisely why he thinks moral education, through role models who teach by example, is extremely important.

New scientific research, as shown in this video, provides empirical support for Aristotle's claim that

1. we are social creatures,
2. we learn through imitation, and
3. the physical performance of certain actions produces certain cognitive responses.

This stuff is extremely interesting, and I'd love to see some discussion related to this.