Musings on a Summer Day

Summers in New England, especially in late June, have a strange feeling attached to them. Take today for instance. The morning began with light rain and cool breezes; by late morning the clouds had moved out, the sun was out, and it was getting increasingly warmer; now, in the afternoon, it's cloudy, warm, and muggy with a heavy sense of foreboding in the air, as if at any moment the sky will open up in a great downpour.

I find that especially on days like this, peoples moods are heavily dependent on the changes in weather. For this reason, as well as many others, I find it so very difficult to see how people can view themselves as completely independent from the environment around them. This connection, while rather more tenuous than many others I could think of, serves to demonstrate that no person is entirely cut off from their surroundings. 

Long Time Between Posts...and New Review

Well, it has been a rather long time since my last post here. Sorry to anyone who has been waiting.

My latest book review of Jeff Nicholas' fantastic new book, Reason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyre's Tradition-Constituted Reason and Frankfurt School Critical Theory, is published over at the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books.

Writing and the Beginning of Another Semester

I'm not sure why, but I find that I write more in terms of quantity and quality during the semester than I do between semesters, so here I am again with my first post in a month. With a number of abstracts coming due soon, I probably will not be writing too much on here for the next few weeks, but I do find that I miss putting down my thoughts here. Perhaps I will attempt to write at least one post a week. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, I am finishing up preparing for the start of the new semester (one week from tomorrow), and am very excited since I get to teach in a different building than I am used to, and this is my first attempt at teaching a second year seminar. The seminar, like the freshmen version from last Fall, will be on the concept of God in philosophy, but this time it is a writing intensive seminar. My students are required to not only do the assigned readings and participate in classroom discussions, they are also going to be keeping a reflection journal where they will write a few paragraphs on every piece we read during the semester. I am pleased that the seminar classroom will have real tables (rather than one-armed bandits) where we can have discussions in an atmosphere more conducive to having a discussion.

An Introduction to Phenomenology

I have been meaning for some time to present a brief introduction to the phenomenological method developed by Husserl and his followers. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting excerpts from my presentation as I continue to work on it.

End of the Semester

Here we are at the end of the Fall semester and I realize that I have not posted anything new since before the election. As this semester comes to a close, I find myself reflecting back over what I have taught, what my students (hopefully) have learned, and what I should take away from my experiences. Overall, while I enjoy teaching foundations of logical reasoning, most of the enjoyment I get from teaching came from my seminar on the existence of God. Teaching the seminar for the first time allowed me to see what works for teaching freshmen philosophy, and what does not. I am very happy to say that most of the students did extremely well, both in their papers and in the disussions we had in class. The days when I saw the "lightbulb" go off when a student grasped a difficult concept, or when a student would take an example or image I used and tweak it to make it work even better, were some of the happiest times of my young teaching career. I wish to thank all my students, especially those in the seminar, who showed their interest in the topics we discussed and who give me hope that they will go on to do great things.

Abortion, Elections, and Logic

Many people, especially Catholics and other traditional Christians, often struggle with questions about voting, the common good, and social issues such as abortion during election season. In this piece, I want to highlight a common claim about abortion in such a way as to show what the claim entails, and what it does not.

Claim (p): It is immoral to vote for a candidate who favors abortion.

            Now, take this example to better understand what the claim entails. Candidate A favors allowing abortions, but is against the death penalty, torture, unjust wars, and assisted suicide. The candidate supports programs for the poor and disabled, and actively promotes the preservation of the environment. Candidate B is against abortion, but favors the death penalty, allowing torture, and war under any circumstances. This candidate does not believe that the poor or disabled ever need any government assistance, and is ambivalent about environmental concerns at best.

            If (p) is true, then it is an immoral act to vote for candidate A. 

           However, even if this were the case, the truth of (p) would NOT entail that voting for candidate B is a MORAL act. (P) can only be used when talking about candidate A, since A fits the criteria laid out in (p). Candidate B’s opposition to abortion does not directly pertain to (p), since (p) only deals with those candidates who favor abortion.

There are still a number of other questions that should be brought up, so the later posts will focus on some of the following issues: what if there is no candidate who opposes abortion in all cases? What if there is no candidate who opposes abortion at all? What if a candidate opposes abortion yet supports many other morally reprehensible policies? I will discuss these questions and more in the following posts. 

Book Review

My latest book review has been published over at the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books site. Check it out here.