The Debate final will have two parts:
- Personal Philosophy Paper
- Wilderness Philosophy Quiz (Thoreau, Leopold, Carson, Blackfish, Arguments Against Environmentalism)
From Oliver Burkeman:
Not surprisingly, we tend to hear the most about bigotry and prejudice when it surfaces explicitly: see Oprah Winfrey’s recent experience in a high-end Swiss boutique, for example, or the New York police department’s stop-and-frisk policies, ruled racially discriminatory by a judge this week. But the truth is that much prejudice – perhaps most of it – flourishes below the level of conscious thought. Which means, alarmingly, that it’s entirely possible to hold strong beliefs that point in one direction while demonstrating behaviour that points in the other. The classic (if controversial) demonstration of this is Harvard’s Project Implicit, made famous in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. You can take the test here: whatever your race, there’s a strong chance you’ll take a split second longer to associate positive concepts with black faces than white ones.
The Harvard test to measure your implicit biases (e-mail required) is available here.
From Charles Epp and Steven Maynard-Moody:
The key influence on who is stopped in traffic safety stops is how you drive; in investigatory stops it is who you are, and being black is the leading influence. In traffic safety stops, being black has no influence: African Americans are not significantly more likely than whites to be stopped for clear traffic safety law violations. But in investigatory stops, a black man age twenty-five or younger has a 28 percent chance of being stopped for an investigatory reason over the course of a year; a similar young white man has a 12.5 percent chance, and a similar young white woman has only a 7 percent chance.
We’ll debate three topics about wolves:
- the reintroduction of wolves is damaging to the economy of western states.
- the reintroduction of wolves is harmful to the environment and other animals.
- wolves should not receive protection from the federal government.
Your last persuasive essay of the semester is due Sunday at 1:00 p.m. You’ll have a choice of two topics, either the role of media in wartime or the nature of happiness and money.
This is a critically important essay. It should demonstrate the skills we have worked on all semester with our writing. If you continue to struggle with these assignments, please review the materials located here:
- Topic Sentence Cheat Sheet
- Persuasive Essay Notes
- Introductions
This assignment is worth 400 points.
Ralph Waldo Emerson opened his essay Nature by asking:
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
Your assignment is to develop your own philosophy of insight and not tradition, to write your own philosophy. The assignment and presentation will be do the day of the final.
The assignment sheet is located here.
This week, we’ll be debating the use of drones for targeted killing by the United States. The two questions we’ll discuss are:
- Is the use of drones and targeted killing moral and/or legal?
- Does the drone program increase American security and/or reduce terrorism?
