Recently in Ethics Fellows Seminar Category

This summary was provided by Rock Ethics Graduate Student Fellow David Agler

Introduction Mayes began the workshop with a brief overview of his paper. Mayes claimed that the theoretical framework of "pre" is general notion used to capture preemptive, precautionary, and preventive principles that aim at predicting and pre-empting threats prior to their actualization. A key theme of his paper (drawing from Diprose, Francois Ewald, and others) is the shift from a perception of risk that is naturally occurring and calculable to one that is incalculable and the result of human agency, particularly with respect to how the latter can lead to catastrophe.

On October 24^th, the Rock Fellows Seminar took part in a workshop for Luvell Anderson, the Alain Locke Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Penn State. Luvell's paper, "Why So Serious? An Inquiry into Racist Jokes," considers the relationship between race and humor, offering a rubric for determining the appropriateness of a racial joke. Rejecting the simplistic view that a joke either is or is not racist, Luvell suggests a tripartite distinction whereby a given joke may be classified as "merely racial," "racially insensitive," or "racist." 

On September 26th, the Rock Fellows Seminar discussed the essay "What Food is "Good" for You?  Toward a Pragmatic Consideration of Multiple Values Domains" by Donald Thompson and Bryan McDonald. The goal of this paper, as articulated by its authors, is to lay out our food values without taking a normative stance, to map out the various ways (in three value domains) that we think about food and goodness to encourage self reflection and open areas for research and policy needs. The role of self-reflection, as a key means of spurring decisions about food, was a main point of discussion during the seminar.

The Rock Ethics Institute Fellows Seminar met earlier this week to discuss the issue of global responsibility. The readings that provided the basis for the discussion were Iris Marion Young's "Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model", Andrew Kuper's "Global Poverty Relief: More than Charity" and Peter Singer's "Poverty, Facts, and Political Philosophy". The following summary of the discussion was provided by Cori Wong: