Environmental Ethics: Questions NOV 21

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Questions NOV 21

MacA Part IV-Assessing the End of the World. McK Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan

NOV 21

MacA Part IV-Assessing the End of the World - Katherine Welch
McK Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan - Jonathan Keith
...Chelsie Gordon

McK

What can't Barbara Kingsolver forget about the paper she writes on? 941
About what does Kingsolver agree with Annie Dillard 943
What's been our natural habitat since 1996? 945 What has our "exodus" taken from us? What does wildness do for us? 946-7
What does Michael Pollan's Second Nature say about wildness? 948
The modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) depends on a "sea" of what? 949 What "logic" supports this? 951
To what is the health of livestock inextricably linked? How much E-coli bacteria is fatal to ingest? 957
Why isn't corn as cheap as it seems? What does it do to a cow? 958-9

MacA

What was MacA's mentor Parfit's primary moral concern? What new area of moral philosophy did it inspire? What'ss Parfit's (and MacA's) central claim? 168-9
What is the intuition of neutrality? What observation does MacA say contradicts it? 171-2
What do sci-fi time travel scenarios like Back to the Future often suppose, and what do they rarely consider? What's an example of how we radically change the course of history? 174-5
What is the Repugnant Conclusion? The Dominance Addition? 180-1 The Sadistic Conclusion? 185
Why does MacA consider anti-natalism a mistake? 187f. What does he think we should hope about future civilization? 189
COMMENT?: Schopenhauer's and Benatar's statements? 192
Do you (would you) consider hypothetical supra-humans our descendants? 193
How much of their day do survey respondents say they would prefer to skip? How many said their lives contain more happiness than suffering? 198-9 How about you?
What US demographic has gotten less happy over time? 205 Why do you think that is?
Would you take the deathbed option? 212, 216
COMMENT?: "Although they are rare in the population as a whole, malevolent, sadistic, or psychopathic actors may be disproportionately likely to gain political power..." 219

More than 200 health professionals say Trump has ‘malignant narcissism’ in open letter

George Conway-led Pac questions Republican nominee’s mental fitness for office in full-page New York Times ad

An anti-Trump political group organized a letter signed by more than 200 mental health professionals, warning that Donald Trump is dangerous because of “his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder – malignant narcissism”, which makes him “grossly unfit for leadership”.

Less than two weeks before the presidential election, the group bought a full-page ad styled as an open letter in the New York Times on Thursday, arguing that the Republican nominee for the White House is “an existential threat to democracy” in the US... (continues)

4 comments:

Gray FogoNovember 21, 2024 at 4:09 PM
COMMENT?: "Although they are rare in the population as a whole, malevolent, sadistic, or psychopathic actors may be disproportionately likely to gain political power..." 219

I think this is a very true and very scary fact about our society. I think their lack of empathy allows them to justify the means and surpass more well intentioned individuals who might not have as low standards for morality.
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Katherine WelchNovember 21, 2024 at 4:09 PM
Do you (would you) consider hypothetical supra-humans our descendants? 193
I thought that this was a really interesting concept. When we think about the fact that our original ancestors are no longer around due to how we've evolved, it's not impossible to think that the human race could see another evolution that leaves ours behind.

How much of their day do survey respondents say they would prefer to skip? How many said their lives contain more happiness than suffering? 198-9 How about you?
Participants said that they would choose to skip 40% of their day. 40% said that their lives contained more happiness than suffering. It's hard to say how I feel because each day is a different experience. I would say that it is mostly 50/50, but there are days that I would choose to completely forget and days that I want to keep forever.
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Aidan HainesNovember 21, 2024 at 4:10 PM
I find it sort of humorous that medical professionals have said that Trump has a “malignant narcissism” almost as if it’s a disease in need of curing. I agree with their assessment, his narcissism could destroy him from the inside out and ruin his ability to be respected anywhere.
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Eli MillerNovember 21, 2024 at 5:30 PM
Its made out of dead trees. She doesn't feel like she looks out as much as nature looks in. being mostly urban, its taken away what trees consist of. The wilderness puts us in our place.
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PHIL 3340 scheduled to return to MTSU Fall 2026... DEC 6 Final blogpost (final draft) due. Post earlier for constructive feedback... Posting will close after Dec.6. If you are unable to post, send your report directly to me - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu - and include footnotes to all terms you intended to link... A NOTE ON OUR TEXTS. This is an ambitious reading schedule. Read what you can, prioritizing the texts in descending order: first-listed assignment for each class gets top priority, second gets 2d, and so on... Fall 2024: HONORS BUILDING 116, T/Th 4:20 pm

TEXTS Fall '24

First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
― John May, The Greenpeace Story

“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”
― Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

	Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) http://michaelpollan.com/
5/14/15, 10:57 AM All the lectures and talks from Edible Education 101 are now online. All told, a great introduction to food politics bit.ly/1Fausvx

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Questions NOV 21

4 comments:

Peripatetics