System Justification Theory

NYU psychologist John Jost does a lot of work on something he calls system justification theory. This is our tendency to unconsciously rationalize the status quo, especially unjust social institutions. Scarily, his research suggests that those of us oppressed by such institutions have a stronger tendency to justify their existence.

Jost has a new book on this stuff. Here's a video dialogue about his research:

Moopheus

A related issue to the ethics of animal research is the ethics of eating animals. Here are some links on that:

• Vegetarians Still Love the Smell of Bacon
• David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster
• How to Cut Back on Meat Slowly
• What Is The Meatrix? (see video below)
  
• What If We Could Make Pain-Free Animals?
  
• Audio Interview: Jeff McMahan on Vegetarianism
  
• Huge List of Resources on the Moral Status of Animals

New Jersey's Own

We're reading an article by well-known philosopher, utilitarian, vegetarian, and New Jersey resident Peter Singer on animal ethics for class. Here's some interviews with him:

• Peter Singer on Michael Vick & Dog Fighting
  
• Audio Interview with Peter Singer
  
• Animal Research (Peter Singer's Sometimes OK with It!)

Youth in Asia

Ali G's Take on Euthanasia
[More on euthanasia]

Lesbian Parenting

Since donor insemination first became popular in the U.S. in the 1980's, there was a bit of a baby boom among lesbian parents at that time. As a result, there are some long-term studies that have been wrapping up lately on the effects of being raised by parents who are lesbians. For instance, it seems that child abuse is much less likely to occur in a lesbian household. Other studies can be found here and here.

Also, one of my favorite movies of last year, The Kids Are All Right, is a comedy about a lesbian couple with two children who seek out their sperm-donating biological father. Here's the trailer:

The Wisdom of Kass

The Leon Kass reading on cloning that we studied in class was part of a longer article that is available in its entirety here.

Many critics take issue with Kass's claim that there is a wisdom to repugnance.  Here is a typical objection to Kass's view:

"Anyone who as ever taken an introductory anthropology course, or read Herodotus -- or gone to a different part of town -- will have learned that different groups feel disgust at different things. The affect seems to be hard-wired into us, but the occasions provoking it are varied.
...
"In short, disgust is not quite so unambiguous and inarguable an expression of timeless values as [Kass] has advertised. Given a choice between 'deep wisdom' and 'reason’s power fully to articulate,' we might do best to leave the ineffable to Oprah."

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that one big difference between politically conservative and liberal people is the willingness to consider disgust as a morally relevant factor.  Here's his TED talk on this:

What do you think?  Feel free to let us know in the comments of this post.

Moral Psych Out

Here are some links loosely related to moral psychology:

• Here's a decent explanation of Lawrence Kohlberg's psychological theory of moral development that we mentioned in class.
  
• Psychological research on our moral judgments is a lot wackier today. For instance, clean smells make us behave better, while smelling farts makes us judge more harshly.
  
• There's some great new research on moral development in children, too. Here's Rebecca Saxe's TED Talk:
  
  
• One large strand of psychological research is on the impact of emotions on our moral reasoning. Here's Jonathan Haidt's TED Talk on the emotional difference between conservatives and liberals:
  

Ethics of Care

Here's some stuff related to the ethics of care:

• Here's an excerpt from a video of Carol Gilligan explaining her work (the entire video is available here):
  
  
• For stuff on feminism in general, I highly recommend one of my favorite blogs: Feminist Philosophers.
• There's also a great new blog called What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy? It's devoted to short accounts from women of their experiences while pursuing a career in philosophy.
  
• The cartoon Rose Is Rose offers a funny-ish critique of reason-centered approaches to ethics:

Kantian Links

Here are some links related to Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics:

• An intermediate overview of Kant's theory of ethics.
• An advanced overview of Kant's ethics.
  
• Kant's theory is deontological (which is a fancy word that basically means morality is about more than just the consequences of an action). Here's an advanced overview of deontological ethics.
• Some harsh criticisms of Kant's ethical judgments. My favorite excerpt: "Kant's philosophical moral reasoning appears mainly to have confirmed his prejudices and the ideas inherited from his culture. Therefore, we should be nervous about expecting more from the philosophical moral reasoning of people less philosophically capable than Kant."
• A 3-minute video on Kant's ethics is below:
  

The Psychology of Happiness

Since utilitarianism focuses so much on happiness, I thought I'd share some links on the cool new psychological research on happiness popping up lately.

• Here's one overview of the psychology of happiness. And here's a second one.
• Recent studies suggest that our baseline level of happiness doesn't change much throughout our life. So, even if we won the lottery, we wouldn't wind up that much happier. This is potentially very depressing news, although some say there's room for some optimism, and others think the research is wrong.
• There's an insightful, accessible book by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert called Stumbling on Happiness. One of his big points is that we often don't know what makes us happy. Here's Gilbert's appearance on The Colbert Report:
  
• And here's Gilbert giving an awesome TED talk on his research:
  

Utilitarios!

Here are some links on the theory of utilitarianism:

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill
• An advanced encyclopedia article on utilitarianism and other theories that focus on consequences of an action.
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating utilitarianism. A short video intro on it is below. Also, there's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.

That Beyoncé Video WAS Great...

Why doesn't Kanye give a toast to the tools?

Howard Sure Is a Duck

Howard the Duck is my favorite synecdoche for the 80's:

Philosophy: The Annoying 3-Year-Old

Here's comedian Louis CK's take on the broad, fundamental questions kids ask.

Louis CK - Why?