Tag: morality

Rainbow 6 Leaked; Morality Plays Big (via The Lazy Geeks)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I am really impressed by this. It has been necessary for a long time. If the only way to keep score is to kill as many as possible, you kill as many as possible.

But the world is full of alternative actions. Morality and ethics are important, not only in the world of business but in war and peace.

I used to play a game called Fable in which your characters looks changed to match the moral quality of his actions. My character looked like a hero. No black hat for me.

This is a great development. Let’s give players more choices then choosing 5.45 over 5.56.

James Pilant

Rainbow 6 Leaked; Morality Plays Big Does anyone want to play a game that makes you have to deal with real life choices? Apparently, Ubisoft thinks you do. In a leak from Kotaku, it appears that the new Rainbow 6 game will have a “morality” engine. When you think about it, it is pretty bad ass. If this runs the way that Kotaku claims, it will be one of the most revolutionary games that has come out for First Person Shooters in a long time. I have detailed this game as more of a choo … Read More

via The Lazy Geeks

Diogo on The Myth of Morality (via Patrick Nathan)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

This is Diogo commenting on an earlier post. His comments are intelligent and most welcome. In fact, I like putting up comments as full fledged posts.

James Pilant

Here is the comment –

Hello!

I think it would be rather important that Mr. Wallace could read some of the works of Frans de Waal, or even Daniel Goleman. What’s interesting in Frans de Waal, a primatologist, is his experiences with bonobos, considered our greatest ancestors, along with the chimpazes. And while chimpazes are more, let’s say, self centered and violent, bonobos are much more social, being called by Frans de Waal the “make love, not war” primates. Another argument of paramount importance is the kind of conclusions that we can learn from neuroscience, where in some experiments showed that when we feel emphaty there’s an old area from our brain that makes a “click”. Another argument used by Daniel Goleman is that, and concerning the traffic example, when we deal with these kind of situations we are just centered on our goal: getting home. So it is usually a question of focus, rather than genetic.

What leads us to this: our empathy, moral, is a human thing, and that argument of self-centered and selfish individuals is just used to brainwash our society and, yes, is just used to “justify cruel and immoral policies and actions”. I totally agree on that. In fact, Margaret Tatcher and Ronald Reagan took great advantage of this misleading arguments to transform society in a jailed space where the more selfish you are, the strongest you’ll be.

The works of these 2 guys are really worth reading, beacuse they go straight to the point! To our past!

Long live to science!

“War on drugs” is a failure in many ways (via Eideard)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Generally speaking, I do not consider drugs, in this case an illegal activity, a business ethics problem. However the private prison system is a business ethics problem. I have come across on more than one occasion, situations in which the counties and congressional districts in which private prisons exist, have opposed liberalizing the drug laws away from imprisonment and toward other options for fear of losing jobs.

I would like to see a debate over what drug laws are proper that does not in some way spin around local employment at private prisons. That’s not how to make good decisions.

James Pilant

"War on drugs" is a failure in many ways In a step few politicians would take, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle…declared the nation’s decades-old war on drugs a failure… “Rather than invest in detaining people in the Cook County Jail at almost $150 a day . . . we need to invest in treatment, education and job-skills training. That’s the only way . . . we are going to reduce crime and stabilize our communities,” she said… “We all know that the war on drugs has failed to … Read More

via Eideard

“War on drugs” is a failure in many ways (via Eideard)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

Generally speaking, I do not consider drugs, in this case an illegal activity, a business ethics problem. However the private prison system is a business ethics problem. I have come across on more than one occasion, situations in which the counties and congressional districts in which private prisons exist, have opposed liberalizing the drug laws away from imprisonment and toward other options for fear of losing jobs.

I would like to see a debate over what drug laws are proper that does not in some way spin around local employment at private prisons. That’s not how to make good decisions.

James Pilant

"War on drugs" is a failure in many ways In a step few politicians would take, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle…declared the nation’s decades-old war on drugs a failure… “Rather than invest in detaining people in the Cook County Jail at almost $150 a day . . . we need to invest in treatment, education and job-skills training. That’s the only way . . . we are going to reduce crime and stabilize our communities,” she said… “We all know that the war on drugs has failed to … Read More

via Eideard

Socrates on Staying Smart (via Moralities and the Moral Republic)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Live a life of constant learning and physical fitness. That is the way toward real life satisfaction. JP

“It is a matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to poor mental fitness. And because the mind is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression and discontent often attack the it so violently as to drive out whatever knowledge it contains”

Socrates on Staying Smart In Plato's dialogue Laws he mentions the three most important things a person must do. The first is to abide by the laws of your God. The second is to always be improving your mind. The third, to keep yourself in top physical shape. The April 2011 post addressed why staying in shape is important. We now take liberties with that blog post and change it to what Socrates might have said about improving your mind. So here it goes. One day Socrates no … Read More

via Moralities and the Moral Republic

Socrates on Staying Smart (via Moralities and the Moral Republic)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Live a life of constant learning and physical fitness. That is the way toward real life satisfaction.

Sometimes, you can forget how sharp the Greeks were and how wise about so many things.

From the article –

“It is a matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to poor mental fitness. And because the mind is in a bad condition, loss of memory, depression and discontent often attack the it so violently as to drive out whatever knowledge it contains”

Socrates on Staying Smart In Plato’s dialogue Laws he mentions the three most important things a person must do. The first is to abide by the laws of your God. The second is to always be improving your mind. The third, to keep yourself in top physical shape. The April 2011 post addressed why staying in shape is important. We now take liberties with that blog post and change it to what Socrates might have said about improving your mind. So here it goes. One day Socrates no … Read More

via Moralities and the Moral Republic

Plato’s View on the Importance of Mind, Body and Wealth (via Moralities and the Moral Republic)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Plato's View on the Importance of Mind, Body and Wealth This comes from his 8th letter. It’s a view that can help maximize your happiness. Unfortunately society has it reversed which causes most of our problems. Plato argues: “Accept public laws and beliefs that you think will not arouse your desires and turn your thoughts toward money making and wealth. Of the three goods – soul/mind, body and wealth – your laws and public beliefs must give the highest honor to the excellence of the soul/mind, the se … Read More

via Moralities and the Moral Republic

This comes closer to summing up what my blog site is about more than anything I have written myself.

James Pilant

The Science of Evil (via Blame the Amygdala)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

This sounds like a really interesting book. I’ve heard empathy discussed as a factor in psychopathology but never as an explanation for evil. Perhaps there is an implication that those doing evil are also psychopaths but in a limited or lessor way.

This is interesting stuff and if the author’s ideas are subject to test, we may have new ways of thinking about crime and even the proper role of government.

James Pilant

Special Thanks to Blame the Amygdala.

I am about half way through Simon Baron-Cohen’s “The Science of Evil” or “Zero Degrees of Empathy” in the UK, and it is really very good; he manages to explain pretty complex neuroscience terminology in a very palatable way. I am now convinced that understanding empathy is the only way we can really understand the spectrum of human behavior, from the evil to the insanely benevolent. Baron-Cohen talks about the three types of zero-negative persona … Read More

via Blame the Amygdala

The Myth of Morality (via Patrick Nathan)

On By southwerkIn business ethics3 Comments

I found this an interesting review with many references to morality. Take this quote below –

Everyone agrees that The Pale King enshrines boredom. What has been glossed over, however, is how fiercely and unrepentantly American these pages are. Yes, the book expounds upon the marvels of boredom and the “heroic” nature of doing a quiet but necessary task without audience or recognition, but juxtaposed are endless descriptions of bureaucracies, American culture at its most dysfunctional, and even extended Platonian dialogues about the decline of American society, complete with terms that never fail to surface in today’s news: “liberal individualism,” “corporations,” “conservatives,” “founding fathers,” “consumer capitalism,” etc. “Americans are crazy,” one character remarks to another: “We infantilize ourselves. We don’t think of ourselves as citizens—parts of something larger to which we have profound responsibilities. We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights but not our responsibilities.” The selfishness described here again harkens back to Wallace’s speech, in which he revealed that our “natural, hardwired default setting” is to be “deeply and literally self-centered.”

If the reference is to our ethical and moral responsibility, I quite agree. However, the “hard wired” setting to be deeply and literally self centered, is ridiculous, we are just as hard wired to be cooperative and self sacrificing. That being deeply and literally self centered is an American doctrine used to justify cruel and immoral policies and actions. If humans are self centered monsters salivating after every last moment of pleasure and every conceivable possession, than we can justify every kind of lie and cruelty in the name of social control.

Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed the review and I would like you to read it.

James Pilant

My thanks to Patrick Nathan

The Myth of Morality In 2005, novelist David Foster Wallace was invited to give a commencement speech to the graduates of Kenyon College. Captivating, inquisitive, and in no way didactic, Wallace unveiled to them the oncoming drudgery of adult life and all its routines—certainly nothing an ambitious twenty-two year old wants to hear. But Wallace offered an alternative to mental and emotional atrophy. The liberal arts degree, he said, not only teaches us how to think … Read More

via Patrick Nathan

Ethics and Education: the beginning (via Just a Word)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is a good article and I always enjoy essays where the author struggles with difficult moral conundrums.

I teach college classes and I lean heavily on opinion writing because it’s difficult for students to speak in anything but their own voice. I have observed a great deal of teaching and while it varies in quality, I doubt if the principal blame lies there.

I believe the problem is the bleed of toxic philosophy from Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. Isn’t buying a term paper an economic choice (Friedman) that maximizes shareholder worth while following the “rules of the game?” If productivity is the only measure of morality(Rand), shouldn’t our modern John Gaults enhance their productivity? Aren’t the unproductive sheep, the dead weight of society, the helpless proles, the creators of these rules designed to limit the productivity of the great minds, the only real producers of value in our society?

If rules are designed to create a level field and you don’t believe in a level playing field, you are not going to play by the rules. I am sure that many of these students are unaware of the origins of their philosophy about rules and choices but that does not make the connection any less real. Obviously there have always been rule-breakers. But have we ever lived in a time where the public ethos is so accepting of this kind of behavior?

I tell you it is always a weird experience to meet the prototypical John Gault, an individual who has discovered their own specialness and that humanity, kindness, compassion and brotherhood are limits placed on their success by the common herd. Or the weirdness of the Friedman follower who believes if only we gave people free choice about seat belts, air bags, food, drugs and inoculations, our lives would be enhanced.

You see, in their world, it is perfectly obvious that brotherhood is the enemy, common rules a bacteria weakening the human specie, and compassion, a tragedy, binding people to their own lack of success.

What is the rule on buying term papers but an annoyance to the superman, the new man?

Well, I await patiently for the John Gaults to ascend the mountain and leave the rest of begging, pleading our our knees, crawling on our insignificant bellies, that if only these paragons of production, the new successful breed of humanity, would only return to make society work and, in return, we would swear to no longer limit them by taxes and rules from their proper and obvious role in society. (Read Atlas Shrugged.)

I’m sure it fills the longing in my students to be special, kings and queens under the flesh. Humanity is hard. Being productive and resilient is difficult. Sharing and caring is a burden. But those are the things that make us significant, not a Nietzschean philosophy of destiny and specialness.

There are other philosophies in our nation: virtue ethics, several hundred variations of Christianity, citizenship, and the doctrines of honor, responsibility and chivalry.

When these are in place, we will solve many of our problems with obeying the rules.

James Pilant

Ethics and Education: the beginning I call this “the beginning” because I have a feeling that this will prompt several posts on the subject, but I am not promising that yet. This actually coincides well with my post on Friday regarding a University’s attempt to eliminate cheating by allowing collaboration and internet use on exams. This post however, follows a slightly different vein. I was reading an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning called The Shadow Sch … Read More

via Just a Word