Monday, April 23, 2007

Links Worthy of a Swine

Here are some links that are very loosely related to the stuff on Utilitarianism that we are studying. Most of these deal with psychology. There's a lot of psychological research on happiness popping up lately. The first link is an overview of the psychology of happiness:


The second is a slightly optimistic take on our ability to change our baseline level of happiness. This is important to know for an ethical theory that values maximizing happiness:


The next link deals with a famous moral thought experiment, the trolley problem. This gets brought up a lot when evaluating Utilitarianism:


The last link is an advanced overview of "consequentialist" ethical theories. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory:


Finally, here's a video of Steven Singer, a modern-day utilitarian, on The Colbert Report:



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