Aristotle for Thursday, March 6
For Thursday, please read the one-page handout of quotes from Aristotle’s Politics. Also, read in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, chapters 5 (on pages 4 and 5 of Irwin’s edition) and 7 (on pages 7 -10 of Irwin’s edition). There is a helpful account of what is going on in these passages in the article on Aristotle’s ethics in the Stanford Encyclopedia, in the section: “Human Good and the Function Argument.” Here is the web address of that section:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/#HumGooFunArg
There is another helpful account of this material in the article on virtue, section two, “Virtue, Practical Wisdom, and Eudaimonia.” Here is the address:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/#2 ()
Be sure to read the first of these for Thursday.
Also please note: there will be a voluntary colloquium on ethics Wednesday night, and I will give extra credit for anyone from the class who attends. Here is the information:
Announcing the Green Colloquium Series
“Move Electrons, Not Mammals”
On Wednesday, March 5, at 7 pm, in Old Main 06, a group will gather to watch a talk by cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who received the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. The title of the talk: “Explorations of the Mind: Well Being.” Kahneman has demonstrated that there are important differences between people’s reports about the quality of an experience as it is happening and their reports looking back. (He also thinks about the unreliability of people’s views about what will be satisfying or unsatisfying.)
Ethics and political philosophy take human consequences seriously, asking “How will it affect people, if I do this action, if we change this rule, if we construct this new institution?” Kahneman shows that different plausible ways of measuring human happiness give radically different answers to such questions.
There will be cookies – and a doorprize.
(To preview the talk, search Google Video: well being, psychology.)