Henry C. Alphin Jr. | Discursive Philosophical Thought

Macintosh on Plato’s forms

2012-05-22T20:17:45Z

Plato says that true and reliable knowledge rests only with those who can comprehend the true reality behind the world of everyday experience. In order to perceive the world of the Forms, individuals must undergo a difficult education. This is also true of Plato’s philosopher-kings, who are required to perceive the Form of Good(ness) in order to be well-informed rulers. We must be taught to recall this knowledge of the Forms, since it is already present in a person’s mind, due to their soul apparently having been in the world of the Forms before they were born. Someone wanting to do architecture, for example, would be required to recall knowledge of the Forms of Building, House, Brick, Tension, etc. The fact that this person may have absolutely no idea about building design is irrelevant. On this basis, if you can’t recall the necessary knowledge then you’re obviously not suited to be an architect, or a king. Not everyone is suited to be king in the same way as not everyone is suited to mathematics. Conversely, a very high standard in a particular trade suggests knowledge of its Forms. The majority of people cannot be educated about the nature of the Forms because the Forms cannot be discovered through education, only recalled.

Philosophy Now article

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Skidelsky on China’s ascent

2012-05-21T23:05:50Z

China’s further “ascent” will depend on dismantling such classic communist policy icons as public-asset ownership, population control, and financial repression. The question remains how far these reforms will be allowed to go before they challenge the Communist Party’s political monopoly, guaranteed by the 1978 constitution.

Two important cultural values underpin China’s political system. The first is the hierarchical and familial character of Chinese political thought. Chinese philosophers acknowledge the value of spontaneity, but within a strictly ordered world in which people know their place. As the Analects of Confucius puts it: “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, a father a father, and a son a son.”

There is also very little belief in the sanctity of human life: Buddhism holds that there is no difference between humans and animals and plants. A pledge to protect human rights was written into the Chinese constitution in 2004; but, as the recent case of the blind dissident Chen Guangcheng illustrates, this is mostly a dead letter. Similarly, private property ranks below collective property.

Project Syndicate article

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Kagan on the badness of death

2012-05-14T20:41:40Z

Suppose that somebody’s got a nice long life. He lives 90 years. Now, imagine that, instead, he lives only 50 years. That’s clearly worse for him. And if we accept the modest existence requirement, we can indeed say that, because, after all, whether you live 50 years or 90 years, you did exist at some time or another. So the fact that you lost the 40 years you otherwise would have had is bad for you. But now imagine that instead of living 50 years, the person lives only 10 years. That’s worse still. Imagine he dies after one year. That’s worse still. An hour? Worse still. Finally, imagine I bring it about that he never exists at all. Oh, that’s fine.

Wait. How can that be fine? But that’s the implication of accepting the modest existence requirement. If I shorten the life someone would have had so completely that he never gets born at all (or, more precisely, never comes into existence at all), then he doesn’t satisfy the requirement of having existed at some time or another. So, although we were making things worse and worse as we shortened the life, when we finally snipped out that last little fraction of a second, it turns out we didn’t make things worse at all. Now we haven’t done anything objectionable. That, it seems, is what you’ve got to say if you accept the modest existence requirement.

Chronicle of Higher Education article

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Featured session at the Sloan-C 5th Annual International Symposium

2012-05-08T22:02:11Z

Student Perspective: Increasing Online Success for Students with Disabilities

July 26, 2012 – 1:30pm

Lead Presenter: Kristen Betts (Armstrong Atlantic State University, US)

Dan Allen (Drexel University, US)

Henry C. Alphin Jr. (Drexel University, US)

Alex Cohen (Drexel University, US)

Chanel Broadus (Drexel University, US)

Daniel Veit (Drexel University, US)

Track: Accessible Learning for All

Featured Session

Location: Marco Polo 806-807

Concurrent Session: 5

Session Duration: 50 Minutes

Virtual Session

Abstract:

Learn firsthand how to increase student engagement and retention for online students with disabilities

Areas of Special Interest:

Audience Level: All

Institutional Level: Multiple

Major Emphasis of Presentation: Applied Use (technology or pedagogy); Effective Practice

Sloan-C link

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Ron Paul and Paul Krugman on the economy

2012-05-01T18:44:50Z

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Sen on the importance of the history of economic thought

2012-04-27T16:31:03Z

You make a lot of references to old economic thinkers like Smith, Keynes and so on. However, if you look at the current economic research that is published in the journals and taught at universities, the history of economic thought does not play a big role anymore…

Yes, absolutely. The history of economic thought has been woefully neglected by the profession in the last decades. This has been one of the major mistakes of the profession. One of the earliest reminders that we are going in the wrong direction has come from Kenneth Arrow about 30 years ago when he said: These days, I get surprised when I find the students don’t seem to know any economics that was written 25 or 30 years ago.

Is there any hope that this trend can be reversed?

Yes, I’m quite optimistic in this regard. I get the impression that this seems to be getting corrected right now. I’m particularly delighted that the corrective has come to a great extent from student interest. I’m very struck by the fact that at the university where I teach – Harvard – the demand for more history of economic thought has mostly come from students. As a result there is a lot more attempt by the department of economics as well as history and government to look for the history of political economy. Last year, along with my wife Emma Rothschild, I offered a course on Adam Smith’s philosophy and political economy. It drew a lot of interest and we got some of the finest students at Harvard.

Economics Intelligence interview

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On designing virtual currency

2012-04-16T17:46:12Z

Abstract: Many games today feature virtual money of some sort, whether a “hard currency” sold for real money or a “soft currency” earned through play. The question that this lecture answers is, how do you design money? Not how do players obtain money, nor how do they spend it – but how do you design the money itself. Economists have identified around a dozen attributes of a good money – the kind of money that makes an economy efficient. These attributes make a great guideline for designing serious digital currencies. But in game design, we don’t always want things to be efficient – we might want them to be challenging and fun instead. In this lecture, we therefore turn the economists’ advice on its head and come up with a guideline for designing “bad money”! Both historical and virtual examples are included.

VERN article and slideshow

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Warwick MBA team wins retailing challenge

2012-04-16T14:53:42Z

Team Earthonomics

A team from the the Warwick MBA won the Marks & Spencer Sustainable Retailing Challenge 2012. Demonstrating their commitment to responsible leadership, the Warwick MBA team is unique in being a team of distance learners.

Winning videos

The sustainability of roses
First round submission

The sustainability of cotton
Second round submission

All four team members live and work thousands of miles apart from each other. They demonstrate a shared vision and an innovative approach to collaborative work. John McGinty, Lyn Clinton, Agnes Mwagiru, and Craig Green joined us for a chat about their success.

WBS article

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Eduventures e-Learning accessibility roundtables

2012-04-07T00:37:17Z

Accessibility & Online Higher Education

About the Webinars

Online higher education is always associated with access, but what happens when online delivery itself is a barrier? In May 2011, the U.S. Department of Education released additional guidance on the applicability of a prior “Dear Colleague” letter concerning accessibility and new technology in K-12 and postsecondary education. The “Dear Colleague” responded to successful complaints, brought by the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and others, against a number of universities and other education organizations relating to either inaccessibility of specific devices, such as e-readers, or inaccessibility across a host of technologies. The May 2011 guidance emphasized that online courses and programs, and associated online services, must be accessible to students, faculty and staff with disabilities, consistent with the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990). This also applies to pilot programs used to evaluate a new tool or technology, and to schools and programs that currently do not enroll any disabled students.

This guidance appeared amid a host of other federal regulation pertaining to online delivery, such as state authorization, the credit hour rule and Gainful Employment under the “Program Integrity” banner. Many schools were taken up with these developments, and may have missed the full implications of the accessibility guidance. A late 2010 survey from WCET found that at many schools online learning is decentralized to the point that the average institution may be vulnerable to legal challenge around accessibility.

As the online higher education market grows more competitive, and various vendors and technologies tout alleged pedagogical and experiential enhancements, schools are looking for ways to stand out and improve educational value. As schools seek to make online delivery more interactive and media-rich, accessibility may be the unwitting victim. It is not clear that schools are adequately taking into account accessibility requirements, nor that in such a fast-moving space “good practice” is straightforward or stable.

Our Panelists:

Part I: Understanding the Law – Online Higher Education and Accessibility

Tuesday, April 10, 2-3:30 pm ET

Alex Cohen – PhD candidate at the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University, Graduate of the online Master of Science in Hospitality Management Program at Drexel University

Daniel F. Goldstein – Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP

Kelly Hermann – Director, Office of College-wide Disability Services, Empire State College, SUNY

Mark A. Riccobono – Executive Director, Jernigan Institute, National Federation of the Blind

Howard A. Rosenblum – CEO, National Association of the Deaf

To register for this Roundtable, please click here

Part II: Working Towards Good Practice- Integrating Accessibility into Mainstream and Next Generation Online Higher Education

Wednesday, April 18, 2-3:30 pm ET

William Welsh – Director, Office for Disability Services, The Pennsylvania State University

Cheryl Pruitt – Director, Accessible Technology Initiative, California State University Chancellor’s Office

Gaeir Dietrich – Director, High Tech Center Training Unit, California Community Colleges

Kristen Betts - Director, Online & Blended Learning, Armstrong Atlantic State University

Daniel Veit – Student in the online Master of Science in Higher Education Program at Drexel University, Transition Specialist for the Texas School for the Deaf

To register for this Roundtable, please click here

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On split-brain reasoning

2012-04-04T18:15:26Z

Miller and Gazzaniga have also started to study the right hemisphere’s role in moral reasoning. It is the kind of higher-level function for which the left hemisphere was assumed to be king. But in the past few years, imaging studies have shown that the right hemisphere is heavily involved in the processing of others’ emotions, intentions and beliefs — what many scientists have come to understand as the ‘theory of mind’⁶. To Miller, the field of enquiry perfectly illustrates the value of split-brain studies because answers can’t be found by way of imaging tools alone.

In work that began in 2009, the researchers presented two split-brain patients with a series of stories, each of which involved either accidental or intentional harm. The aim was to find out whether the patients felt that someone who intends to poison his boss but fails because he mistakes sugar for rat poison, is on equal moral ground with someone who accidentally kills his boss by mistaking rat poison for sugar⁷. (Most people conclude that the former is more morally reprehensible.) The researchers read the stories aloud, which meant that the input was directed to the left hemisphere, and asked for verbal responses, so that the left hemisphere, guided by the interpreter mechanism, would also create and deliver the response. So could the split-brain patients make a conventional moral judgement using just that side of the brain?

No. The patients reasoned that both scenarios were morally equal. The results suggest that both sides of the cortex are necessary for this type of reasoning task.

But this finding presents an additional puzzle, because relatives and friends of split-brain patients do not notice unusual reasoning or theory-of-mind deficits. Miller’s team speculates that, in everyday life, other reasoning mechanisms may compensate for disconnection effects that are exposed in the lab. It’s an idea that he plans to test in the future.

Nature article

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