Marc | July 13, 2010
In the previous part of this series, I really concentrated on the environment of role expectations and especially, on the boundaries of these. As I was reading the CBC.ca news this morning, I found a story that just illustrated many of the points I made in the last post, especially the points about communications and [...]
Marc | July 11, 2010
In the part 1, I tried to establish certain guidelines for how I am looking at ethics, morality and, to a much lessor degree, group dynamics surrounding these issues. The overarching model I use for this is taken fairly directly from Wm. Calvin’s work on Darwinian bootstrapping (op.cit.) which I have found to be both [...]
Marc | July 10, 2010
This set of posts is a first cut at integrating some ideas I have been working on in one form or another for several years now. While I am really interested in the general case of the evolution of moral and ethical systems within groups, for this specific set of posts, I will only be [...]
Marc | February 10, 2009
Tom Ricks has a series of posts on the Battle of Wanat last summer over at Foreign Policy that is well worth reading for a number of reasons. First of all, Tom has done some excellent research and, unlike many, offers questions rather than answers (although he has a few of those). Second, his research, [...]
Marc | November 18, 2008
For over a month, now I have been wresting with ideas about education, training and ethics. Last night, I received an email from a student asking me if we could have an extra class added into my course in applied epistemology so that everyone who is presenting could have more time for their presentations. In [...]
Marc | October 1, 2008
Note: This is a very difficult post for me to write. The difficulty doesn’t lie with the subject area but, rather, in what language I will have to use in order to try and communicate my thoughts on the topic. One of the axiomatic assumptions that professions, as a group, seem to hold is a [...]
Marc | September 30, 2008
One of the nice things about being a pessimistic romantic is that one can still have a sense of wonder about everyday things. That sense of wonder kicked in again today upon reading a very nice, plain English exposition by Cobalt on why Anthropologists working with the US military can be unethical (actual, “a dick”; [...]
Marc | September 23, 2008
Canadian universities are suffering from an ethical failure of nerve. Many of us have become diffident about our roles as professors, administrators, staff and students. We seldom engage in genuine debate about the university’s role in society. We seldom discuss the good and bad uses to which our research might be put. We seldom ask [...]
Marc | September 2, 2008
One of the more interesting ethical problems in the Anthropologists cannon is the question of when you are required to lie. For me, it is not only three particular question of when you must lie but, in reality, the perceptual assumptions that structure that “ethical” injunction. This wasn’t much of a problem for me in [...]
Marc | August 3, 2008
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. “The Scottish Play”, Act 5, Scene 5 To pleasant songs my work was erstwhile given, and bright [...]
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