Late Utilitarian Moral Theory and Its Development: Sidgwick, Moore

Henry Sidgwick taught G.E. Moore as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. Moore found Sidgwick’s personality less than attractive and his lectures “rather dull”. Still, philosophically speaking, Moore absorbed a great deal from Sidgwick. In the Preface to the Trinity College Prize Fellowship dissertation that he submitted in 1898, just two years after graduation, he wrote “For my ethical views it will be obvious how much I owe to Prof. Sidgwick.” Later, in Principia Ethica, Moore credited Sidgwick with having “first clearly exposed the [naturalistic] fallacy” – a fallacy putatively committed when one defines naturalistically or super-naturalistically “good” – which was one of the book’s main ambitions (PE 39; also 17, 59). It is therefore unsurprising that Moore remarks in the intellectual autobiography he wrote years later that “From…[Sidgwick’s] published works…I have gained a good deal, and his clarity and his belief in Common Sense were very sympathetic to me.” This influence did not, however, prevent Moore from registering disagreements with Sidgwick, the sharpest of which concern the viability of egoism and the nature of the good. The disagreements between Sidgwick and Moore speak to many important moral theoretical issues arising both within and without the utilitarian tradition in ethical thinking. Because the two share much in common, a critical comparison of them on a range of moral philosophical questions proves instructive. It will tell us in particular something about the general direction of ethical thinking in the utilitarian tradition at the dawn of the twentieth century. This chapter has four parts. Part I compares the versions of utilitarianism to which Sidgwick and Moore subscribed. Part II examines the arguments each provides for the view. Part III discusses their conflicting theories of value. Part IV sums things up

Is time on the Chechen side? -- A military analysis of Russia's war in Chechnya (with appendix detailing Russian casualty figures)

This repository item contains a single issue of Behind the Breaking News, a briefing published from 1999 to 2009 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

Children and Well-being

Children are routinely treated paternalistically. There are good reasons for this. Children are quite vulnerable. They are ill-equipped to meet their most basic needs, due, in part, to deficiencies in practical and theoretical reasoning and in executing their wishes. Children’s motivations and perceptions are often not congruent with their best interests. Consequently, raising children involves facilitating their best interests synchronically and diachronically. In practice, this requires caregivers to (in some sense) manage a child’s daily life. If apposite, this management will focus partly on a child’s well-being. To be ably executed, an account of children’s well-being will need to be articulated. This chapter focuses on the nature of children’s well-being. It has five sections. The first section clarifies the focus. The second section examines some hurdles to articulating a view of children’s well-being. The third section evaluates some accounts of children’s well-being. The fourth section addresses the view that children possess features essential to them that make their lives on balance prudentially bad for them. The fifth section sums things up

Parent Beliefs about Technology: A Comparison of Homeschool and Formal Education Families

The purpose of this study was to gain information about how technology is used by parents to assist school learning as well as their opinions and beliefs about the role of technology in the learning process. Specifically, using homeschool and educational networks as well as social media for distribution of a digital questionnaire, this study sought to gauge parents’ experience with, as well as responses to, attitudes, and values towards the use of technology in homeschool and classroom education. Sixty-five parents of children who are studying at the elementary grade levels participated in this study. Twenty of these were parents of children enrolled in formal education settings, e.g., public/ private schools, and forty-five were parents of children being homeschooled. Demographic information was used to segment the data into homeschool and formal schooling groups. The study found that although homeschooled children do receive more exposure to technology than formal schooled children, homeschooled children are much less likely to be encouraged to use technology than formal schooled children

Gaining entry, gaining confidence: a study of the Glasgow access to Primary Education project

In spite of strenuous efforts to improve the take-up rate of higher education places by students from non-traditional backgrounds, some communities remain relatively isolated from the national trend to increased participation. Located in discourses of access and community, this paper describes a two year project run in partnership between Glasgow City Council Department of Education and the University of Glasgow, which concentrated not on changing entry tariffs, but on increasing the motivation of students, and upon working with them within their own communities and schools in order to enable them to achieve the entry standard demanded for courses of initial teacher education. The methodologies used are described, and the success of the project relative to its objectives is recorded. Further, the conceptualisation of the project within current debates is discussed

Response Curves and Preimage Sequences of Two-Dimensional Cellular Automata

We consider the problem of finding response curves for a class of binary two-dimensional cellular automata with $L$-shaped neighbourhood. We show that the dependence of the density of ones after an arbitrary number of iterations, on the initial density of ones, can be calculated for a fairly large number of rules by considering preimage sets. We provide several examples and a summary of all known results. We consider a special case of initial density equal to 0.5 for other rules and compute explicitly the density of ones after $n$ iterations of the rule. This analysis includes surjective rules, which in the case of $L$-shaped neighbourhood are all found to be permutive. We conclude with the observation that all rules for which preimage curves can be computed explicitly are either finite or asymptotic emulators of identity or shift.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Mandating Vaccination

A short piece exploring some arguments for mandating vaccination for Covid-19

Spotlight: Financial services: Banking within reach of more Mexicans

In 2008-09, Mexico was wracked by the global financial crisis, suffering its largest one-year economic contraction since at least the 1930s. But the banking sector withstood the shock and made important strides in one area--bringing previously unbanked households into the financial system. Boosting Mexico's economic development by helping small businesses fulfill their potential depends on improving access to finance and fully linking these engines of economic growth and opportunity to the formal economy.Banks and banking ; Finance, Personal ; Financial services industry ; Unbanked ; Mexico