“Private Eyes Are Watching You” – Part Two

18. May 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Philosophy, Teaching · Tags: ,

In the previous part, I set up some basic parameters to discussions of the right to privacy, particularly that I’m discussing the moral right to privacy that is independent legal concerns. (If you missed it, go back and read it.  Even if you read it, the music video posted makes another visit worthwhile.)

In this part, I’m giving the first part of a thought experiment.  (To the non-philosophers, thought experiments involve hypothetical situations that are intended to show us a problem or inconsistency with one’s stated view.) Taken together with the next part of the series, these situations are intended to make us evaluate what we mean by privacy and what we want when we say we want privacy.

In this first situation, someone has managed to put you under constant surveillance, such that everything you do is seen by this person, everything you say is heard by this person, and this person can see/hear all of your communication with others.  The good, the bad, the public, the intimate, this person sees and hears all.  This person has devoted his life to watching your every move.  This person is an extremely gifted spy and is never detected, nor does he do anything to raise even the slightest suspicion that he is watching you.  However, this person has no malicious intent in the constant surveillance; he just enjoys watching your life.  He never exposes anything discovered about you, nor does he use your identity for any purpose at all.  He doesn’t do anything to influence any of your actions; he just watches.  You never know that you’re being watched, from birth to death, and when you die, this person moves on to do something else with his life, never indicating that he’s spent the last however many years just watching your life.

It seems that this situation is an obvious abuse of one’s right to privacy, even though one never knows that one’s right is being abused.  I think we can all agree that one doesn’t have to know that one’s rights are being abused in order for them to be abused.  Remember, we’re talking about moral rights, not legal rights.  If legal rights cannot be enforced, there is reason to question if they actually exist.  However, with moral rights, a lack of recognition or enforcement does not mean they fail to exist.

Any other thoughts on why this is an abuse of rights is welcome.

In the next part, I’ll present the second situation of this thought experiment.


“Private Eyes Are Watching You” – Part One

09. May 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Philosophy, Teaching · Tags: ,

This past semester I taught a class on the ethics of human rights.  One of the more interesting discussions took place concerning the right to privacy.  Today I’m starting a series of  weekly(?) posts that will discuss what exactly is meant by the right to privacy, in part, by looking at a set of thought experiments, which will be discussed in following posts.

Yes, the title of this series comes from the classic Hall and Oates song, “Private Eyes”.  (Make sure you get the hand claps correct as you watch this classic from the 80s.)

A couple words to help clarify what I mean by human rights in these posts.  I am referring to moral human rights, that is, rights that are held by all people whether or not there is a legal recognition of these rights.  These rights should play some role in how we treat one another in interpersonal relationships, as individuals and groups of individuals. The focus is not on whether or not these rights can be put into legislation or what it would look like if they were put into legislation.  These rights are independent of any legal rights and do not require any kind of legal recognition in order for humans to have these rights.

While typically a good philosopher would define terms upfront, in these posts, I’m going to intentionally hold off on defining “privacy”, in part, because the forthcoming thought experiments will help us to be clear on what privacy does and does not entail.  (One may also infer that I am not defining the terms because I am not a good philosopher.  However, I will leave that up to the reader to decide.)

Lastly, these posts will be more interesting the more people comment on them, so please engage in the discussion.  These thought experiments have generated significant discussion with every group I’ve presented them to, and I hope they do the same with you guys.


Some Reflections on a Recently Defended Dissertation

07. March 2012 · 6 comments · Categories: Life, Philosophy · Tags: ,

Yesterday was a day I had anticipated for many years.  I successfully defended my dissertation, Toward a Richer Account of Human Rights in Christian Moral Theory: From Wolterstorff and Hauerwas to Wojtyla.

This process has led to some reflection on the path to here.  Jim Stump told me as a freshman that I wrote like a philosopher and should consider a philosophy major.  (Granted, he tells that to about 90% of his students, but that’s beside the point.)  That day I started down a long path, and yesterday was an important milestone on that path.

That path has led through Mishawaka, Indiana (Bethel College), Athens, Ohio (Ohio University), and Waco, Texas (Baylor University).  While I don’t know where the next step will be, I don’t regret being on this path, through the ups and downs.

While many things are the same as they were at the beginning of the dissertation process, many have changed.  When I started the project, I was a clean shaven man with passable eyesight.  At the completion, I am a bearded man with glasses.  However, many philosophers I respect have facial hair and glasses, so I think I’m in good company.  When I started the project, my wife was employed at Baylor.  At the completion, she’s completed a master’s degree in speech language pathology and is within weeks of being licensed.

I feel like I’m in the midst of some kind of grieving with this project finally coming to its completion.  The past three years have been ordered around the dissertation (and all the various redirections that have taken place).  While I am rejoicing in the completion of the project, there is a sense of uncertainty, as I will be relearning what it is like to live without a dissertation.  It is something I’m looking forward to relearning.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be presenting at a couple conferences and plan to return to the blog with some of the ideas in the dissertation, the ideas discussed in those conference papers, moments in teaching, and some initial thoughts I have on the application of some themes within my dissertation.

However, those posts will not start today.  Today is a day of celebration, of celebrating the completion of significant accomplishments and future possibilities!

 


Discussions in the Classroom: Thomson and Rights

11. October 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Life, Philosophy, Teaching · Tags: , , ,

Today in my critical thinking class (subtitled “Logic and the Law”), we had a great discussion on Judith Jarvis Thomson’s distinction between infringement of rights and violation of rights and the corresponding thought experiments she offers.  I’ve given them the opportunity to post on the question(s) at the end of this post, and I’m curious as to what your thoughts are as well.

Thomson claims that you infringe on someone’s right when you bring about a situation that one has the right to not be the case. You violate someone’s right when you bring about the situation and you act wrongly in doing so.

She gives the following thought experiment:

There is a child who will die if he is not given some drug in the near future.  The only bit of drug which can be obtained for him in the near future is yours.  You are out of town, and hence cannot be asked for consent within the available time.  You keep your supply of the drug in a locked box on your back porch.

In this situation, if we break in and steal the drug, we have infringed on your rights, but we have not violated your rights, for we have not acted wrongly in saving the life of the child.  You should be compensated for what happened, as your rights were infringed upon, but your rights were not violated.

Thomson intentionally muddies the water a bit more by revisiting her thought experiment, but this time, we were able to call you, and you refused to give your consent.  Since we know hat you do not approve, are we acting wrongly in breaking in and stealing the drug?

After much discussion, Thomson comes to the conclusion that the rightness or wrongness of breaking in and stealing the drug comes down to how much you value the box not being broken and the drug not being taken away from you.  So if you value this property more than the life of this child for “no morally suspect reason,” then we must withdraw and not take the drug.

Let me explain the “no morally suspect reason” part of the qualification.  If the box was a family heirloom that is of great value to you for which it would be impossible to compensate you for if it were broken because of the sentimental value of it (assuming that it is the only physical connection you have with your family or something like that), such that it is not for morally suspect reasons that you place such a high value on the thing, then if you valued that more than you valued a child you never met, it may not be morally splendid (according to Thomson), but we would not say it is morally suspect.

Given that we are talking about legal rights and that society must respect those rights (at least in that thought experiment), there are situations where the authorities must walk away and not get the drug that would save the child.

The class was quite uncomfortable with the idea that we can accurately judge intent behind consent or lack thereof, thinking that the legal rights would be not just infringed upon, but also violated if you denied consent and we still got the drug.

So I posed the question, what if the child about to die was your own child?  Even if this person with the drug had good reasons for not wanting the box broken and the drug taken, would you break in and take the drug for your child?  Would you be violating the box-owner’s rights in so doing?  If so, how would you justify your actions?  Should you be absolved from punishment for your actions?

So what do you think?  What would you do in that situation?  Please leave comments!  I’m keeping my personal thoughts out of the discussion for now because I don’t want the students to parrot back my answer if they’re reading the blog, and this may be part of an essay prompt for them in the near future.  But please, contribute to the discussion!

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The reading was from Thomson’s article “Some Ruminations on Rights” originally published in Arizona Law Review, vol. 19(1977), pp.45ff


Back to the blog…

06. September 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Life · Tags: ,

This summer was a much busier summer than I anticipated, but with the school year back in full swing, I figured it was time to get back to the blog.  Among the many busy events this summer:

  • Diligent work on the dissertation, such that I’m now about a month away from having a decent draft of the entire thing.
  • Learning how to work with CMS on the Baylor ATL homepage and blog hosting site.
  • Celebrated my wife’s completion of her master’s degree (and drove her to and from her internship in our one car)
  • Celebrated her great, new job (that she starts next Monday… she says I brag too much on her about it, so I’ll leave it at that on here… but really, it is a great job)
  • Made a two week trip to Indiana and Michigan to see family and friends (and to buy a second car)
  • Designed a syllabus for the class I am teaching this semester, Critical Thinking: Logic and the Law (and started a couple other syllabi, as my teaching load was switched a couple times this summer as the department had some unexpected needs)
  • Read a few books for fun on my Kindle, including, but not limited to The Hunger Games trilogy, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

Now that the semester is back in full force, I plan on getting back to the blog.  I have accumulated some links I want to comment on, there will be interesting discussions in my class worth blogging on, as well as some final things to work through on my dissertation.  All of these will show up at one point or another on here.

For now, welcome back, and I’ll hope to have some more worthwhile things to say soon.


Just like my dad…

19. June 2011 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized
Joel and Dad

Last month my parents were in town for the weekend of Mother’s Day, meaning I got to see my mom on Mother’s Day for the first time in a few years.  While they were in town, my wife and mom got to talking about how much I’m becoming like my dad.  This got me thinking about the many ways I’m becoming like my dad.

  • We both have receding hairlines: I like to think that mine is not as bad as his was at my age, but I’m not so sure.
  • We both wear glasses: My dad had glasses much earlier in life than I did (as I’ve been wearing glasses for about a month now), but it is a way I am becoming like him.
  • We both laugh the same way: If you have been around either my dad or myself, you know that both of us have laughs that are more visible than audible.
  • We both fall asleep in chairs:  If my dad is sitting upright, he may very well be asleep.  I’ve started doing the same thing.
  • When it comes to going out to eat, we both stick with what works:  My dad knows what he likes when it comes to food, and he sticks to that.  For example, when you go to a Mexican restaurant with my dad, he’s going to get the two soft taco plate, guaranteed.  I don’t have genre specific tastes (yet?), but once I find something at a restaurant I like, you can count on me sticking to that.
  • We both make corny jokes:  I don’t think this one needs explanation, but it is clearly not a recent occurrence.
  • We both have a level of congenital mirror movements:  You may wonder what congenital mirror movements are.  Basically, if one hand does something, the other likes to do it too.  My dad has a much more subtle form of it, but it is supposedly an inherited thing, so I know where I got it from.
  • We both are stubborn when it comes to medical care:  I don’t enjoy going to the doctor.  Neither does my dad.  However, recently my dad’s stubbornness (in part) led to him getting pneumonia.  Then again, I think my wife and my mom would say that we’re both just plain stubborn sometimes.
  • We share other subtle mannerisms: The list could go on, but every now and then when we’re with my family, my dad will do something and Jess will realize that I got that mannerism from my dad.  It gets sorta scary sometimes.

There are some times where it scares me that I’m becoming like my dad.  However, I look at him and realize there are so many things about my dad that I hope that I’m becoming.

  • My dad is an incredibly great handyman:  He taught me a lot in the summers when I worked construction with him, but I realize there’s so much I don’t know, nor could I do.  I still call my dad whenever I’m going to undertake any kind of project.
  • My dad is a patient and gentle man: My dad doesn’t yell out of anger.  I can’t ever remember my dad yelling at us out of anger.
  • My dad is a wise man:  He has a way of going about life that when it comes to important decisions, you know that any advice he gives will be good advice.  And if he doesn’t have any advice, he won’t make some up to try to appease you.
  • My dad loves God: My dad gets up before 5 every morning, and spends time praying and reading his Bible before work.  My dad taught a bunch of 4th-6th grade boys Sunday School for years.  He didn’t entertain them, but taught them Scripture and helped them learn the value of Scripture and they loved him for it.  You have no doubt that my dad has a deep love for God that comes out in the way he lives his life.  Nearly all of these other traits I hope I’m becoming are almost certainly connected to this one.
  • My dad is a loving husband: My parents celebrated their 34th anniversary last week.  Every year for Christmas, we always know that my dad is going to get something nice for my mom, that will go far beyond what they had agreed to, even when they “agree” not to get anything for each other.  He loves my mom and there’s no question about it.  He even took dance lessons with her for my wedding.
  • My dad is a loving father: He’s not the most expressive man in the world, but I have never questioned his love for us kids.  I know that I can call him anytime I need to talk, and he’ll be there with a listening ear.  If I ever need help in any way, I know that I can turn to my dad and he will help in whatever way he can.

So on this Father’s Day weekend, I want to say to my dad, “Happy Father’s Day, and I hope I continue becoming just like my dad!”


Reflections on Teaching: Final Projects

16. June 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Teaching · Tags: ,

This is the fifth (and final?) post in a continuing series of posts on reflections from the Spring 2011 semester of teaching.

Given that the goal of the class was to get the students to understand the material, rather than being able to regurgitate it, I wanted to do something for the final that would give the students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding gained beyond regurgitation.  I also wanted to give the students an opportunity to do philosophy in ways beyond writing a paper.  These desires led me to design this final project assignment.

The students were expected to do and present a final project that demonstrated philosophical understanding, but could be done in ways that are atypical for a philosophy class.  I gave them some general ideas, but I wanted the students to be the source of how they wanted to do this project.  I made it clear that a paper was just as acceptable as any other project, but that they could engage these philosophical ideas in creative and artistic ways as well.

In order to give each student the leeway they needed, I met with each student over coffee or lunch in groups of 2 or 3 students.  (Given that I had less than 25 students between the two sections, this was feasible.  If I had more students and/or more sections, the groups would have to be larger in order for this to be at all feasible.)  These meetings took place at least two and a half weeks before they would be presented in class.  I had each student present what they were thinking for their project and then have their classmates give them feedback and direction, before I said too much.  After seeing where they were going, I tried to verbalize to them what I understood their project to be, and then mapped out the things I would be looking for in grading the assignment.  There had to be significant philosophical content and the vast majority of their grade would be based on that content and how well they expressed that.

I was amazed at the ideas that the students had for their final projects.  A couple students wanted to write short stories, one wanted to write a fairy tale, a few wanted to do art projects, a couple wanted to do videos of some sort, and there were a handful that wanted to do papers.  However, even the students who were doing papers often wanted to do something integrating philosophy with something in their majors.

The students then had at least two weeks to prepare something for a presentation in class the final week of classes, with the final presentation being due at the time of the final a week later.  The in-class presentation was designed to give the students an opportunity to get feedback from me and their classmates on their project to help them better prepare for the final submission at the end of the following week.  Given the amount of time to present., some students could not play their entire videos or read their entire short story, so for those students, it was really a presentation for which they had to make some editorial decisions.  Some students had solid drafts of their projects that they were able to present, while others were conceptually still near where they were at when I met with them a couple weeks earlier.  Much like with the portfolio projects, the more one had done at this point, the more feedback they received, and the better the final submission ended up being.

I received some amazing projects from the students that demonstrated to me they were thinking about these things on a deep level.  As we spent the last month of the class talking about philosophy of mind, many projects related to issues in that area of philosophy.  I have shared (with permission) a couple of the projects with colleagues who were incredibly impressed with the work done.

On the whole, the final project assignment was an excellent way to tie the class together for both me and the students.  When coupled with the portfolio project, the students were able to see all the material they had learned, but also find that they had learned how to integrate the material with life at a deeper level.  The feedback I received from students on the final project was similar to the feedback I received for the class.  The students felt like it was a good amount of work, but the work was worthwhile as they felt they had learned a lot from the process.  This assignment, along with others in the class, made the students take responsibility for their own learning, but I was also willing and available to help them clear the high bar I set for them.  This required a high time investment on my part.  Without a dissertation to work on, it is possible that I could make that investment with more students, but I would need to figure out ways to be more efficient in order to do these assignments if I had a significantly  larger number of students.

If you have any questions about any of these assignments, leave a comment or send me an e-mail (joel_schwartz [at] baylor [dot] edu) and I’d be happy to share my handouts with you and/or discuss some of the successes and failures of these assignments in more detail.


Reflections on Teaching: Portfolio Project

09. June 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Teaching · Tags: ,

This is the fourth post  in a continuing series of my reflections about the Spring 2011 semester of teaching.

The idea for doing a portfolio project is something I shamelessly stole from Jim Stump (who I believe shamelessly stole it from someone else).  The basic idea was to have the students submit essays (up to one a week), I give them a bunch of comments (with no grade) and return the essays to the students.  Then, at a point later in the semester, the students will resubmit a certain number of essays to be graded, having already been given comments on those essays.

When I set up the course schedule, we had six readings, and so it made sense to require six essays in the portfolio in order to be eligible an A on the project (the honors section had to do seven), and each author had to be written on at least once.  I allowed for a couple comparison essays that would count toward the different authors.  For each essay less than the required number for an A, the eligibility would drop a letter grade.  They had twelve opportunities to submit essays for comments (not counting the first week).  They were to write 3-5 page essays (final draft length; the initial draft could be shorter) where they make an argument that goes beyond (or develops or disagrees or synthesizes in an interesting way) with what we talked about in class.  The initial draft could be rough, and I would use comments to help guide them, giving them questions to think about that would help them write a better essay.

I gave them a handout with some guidelines for the essays, wrote a sample essay, and set them loose, asking them to submit their essays for the week to me by midnight on Sunday night for that week.

As students could only submit one essay a week, they had to use some foresight in order to be eligible for an A on the assignment.  I would remind them at least weekly how many more opportunities they had to turn in essays in hopes that the final five or six weeks would not include lots of grading for me.  However, that was not the case.  Each of the final five weeks I had at least 75-80% of the students submitting essays, meaning I spent a lot of time commenting on essays each of those weeks.  Since about the second or third of those five of weeks, I’ve been debating about how to keep that from happening, encouraging a relatively even distribution over the twelve weeks without becoming overly complicated, yet still not penalizing a student for having a couple crazy weeks in a row.  I would appreciate any insight that anyone has on this.

In my naive idealism, I had hoped that at least some students would write seven or eight essays and choose their six best for the portfolio.  This did not happen.  I realize that was my overachieving-undergraduate-self speaking in that idealism. In something that should not have been a matter of idealism, I realized how many students do not know how to write a thesis statement, or at least do not know how to use them in an essay.

One thing that I’m wrestling with is how to give comments to students without them looking at the comments and trying to “fix” the problems by changing a word or two, or a sentence, when the comment offers a devastating critique.  A handful of students would make the necessary changes, but other students didn’t seem to understand that the comment should make them rethink their essay.  I’ve read some professors who primarily give general comments for the class, putting the bulk of the responsibility on the students.  However, I recognize that students are usually unprepared when they enter an intro to philosophy class to be able to responsibly make those corrections.  I would like to think that general comments would encourage students to come to office hours to ask questions, forcing interaction on the concerns if they want to do well.  It seems like that move would work better if they were resubmitting them for a grade before the end, so they would have an opportunity to realize they need to come talk to me.  Again, any insights that anyone has on this would be appreciated.

On the whole I received good feedback on the project and would unquestioningly do it again.  Many students appreciated that they were required to turn them in beforehand and found the comments largely helpful.  Some students admitted that without the required initial submission, they likely would have waited to start writing the essays a day or two before they were due.  Some students wrote excellent essays that were of incredibly high quality that were a delight to read.  While it did require a good amount of work on my side of things, the results on the whole accomplished the goal of getting the students to think carefully about each of the readings and engage the readings in ways that went beyond what we talked about in class.


Reflections on Teaching: Facebook Groups/Blog Posts

06. June 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Teaching · Tags: , ,

This is the third post in a continuing series of my reflections on teaching this past semester, Spring 2011.

One of the biggest surprises of the semester for me was that Facebook could serve a constructive purpose in teaching.

Each semester I try to leave one component of the final grade up to the students to determine how that component will be fulfilled, and I give them one rule: I must be able to responsibly defend whatever is decided to an academic colleague.  This semester, I let the students decide the part of their final grade that would measure their reading comprehension.  After short discussions in groups, the students presented their ideas and then voted on an idea, and whatever idea got a majority would win.  This semester, one class voted to do a Facebook group and the other voted to do blogs. (The class had requested that the Facebook group be made private, so posting the link would not help you.)

I had never used blogs or Facebook in class, and as Baylor has a policy that discourages instructors from being Facebook friends with students, I was initially unsure how Facebook would work in class.  However, I found that Facebook groups were easy to set up and did not require that the members of the group be friends with each other.  I set up a Facebook group and the class members joined the group, with the agreement that they had to do an average of one post on a reading before we discussed it in class each week along with one comment (something with some substance beyond “I really liked what you said.”) each week on another student’s post.  Each post was to give a brief summary of the reading or focus in on one particular argument in the reading.  Then the students were to give reflection or criticism on something in their summary.

I was honestly surprised at how well this worked.  When the students would comment on each other’s posts, the conversation about the material would start before class on the Facebook group or blog.  I would then pick up the conversation in class, clarifying misconceptions and answering questions raised, and try to leave some questions, which would sometimes be picked back up by the students in the comments.  I don’t think they realized it, but I was extending class beyond that 50 minutes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, allowing for us to take time for things like the Friday Fun Fact in class, which created more familiarity with one another.  This familiarity encouraged students to interact with one another more genuinely through the comments.  While some professors might consider the Friday Fun Fact to be a waste of time, I found that it enhanced the discussions we had during class and in the blogs and Facebook group.

As far as grading was concerned, I ended up giving them full credit for completion.  On the whole, the quality of the posts were not influenced by this, although with some students, the quality of posts diminished throughout the semester.  I don’t think that grading each post would have allowed for the discussion that grading on completion allowed.  Students were more willing to ask questions as opposed to trying to act like they knew more than they did, which promoted better posts and better discussions.

The points were set up that you didn’t have to fulfill the one post and one comment each week.  However, you received fewer points for your additional posts and comments each week, encouraging them to do their work each week, as I didn’t want them not to comment on an entire reading.  Some students were diligent on posting each week, even getting ahead.  Others tried to put it off as long as they could, and found that they couldn’t make up the points.

On the whole, I received very positive feedback on this part of the class.  The class was torn on the use of Facebook, as on one hand, they could check on the class in the midst of their fun on Facebook, but they also could hop on to do a post and end up spending an hour on Facebook that they had not intended.  (This latter circumstance may or may not have been experienced by the professor.)  I found I actually really liked the Facebook interface for this assignment, but given my reluctant enjoyment of Facebook, I’m wondering if there’s a better way to do it.  The students that did the blogs had a more difficult time tracking comments as there were fewer students, but the discussions were not clearly connected to each other as each student had his/her own blog.

I would do this assignment again in a heartbeat.  I think there are positives and negatives of using Facebook or blogs, and until I find something that has the strengths of both with fewer negativevs, I’ll probably give both as an option for future students when determining this portion of their grade.

If you’ve never done a Facebook group or a blog, it is much easier than I thought it’d be.  I did a post on setting up the blog page for one of the classes if you’re interested in more information.


Maybe I’ve been wrong about the UN…

04. June 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Fun · Tags: ,

After a few posts addressing the absurdity of the way the UN handles human rights, I’m starting to think that I was wrong about the UN after hearing their most recent announcement.

A recent UN report has declared that internet access is a human right.*  While my immediate reaction was one of shock and dismay, I realized that I may be looking at it incorrectly.  If internet access is a human right, and human rights must be granted to every human, then everyone has the right to read this website and all of my ideas that are posted on this website.  So instead of the UN trying to undermine me, they’re actually trying to help my ideas get out to the rest of the world, although the cost of transmitting my ideas appears to be the correctness and defensibility of my dissertation.

So, dear readers, should I be thanking the UN for their help in the long term, or criticize them for their attempts to undermine my dissertation in the process?

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*I am capable of carefully reading the article and noticing that they were claiming that you have the right to not have your internet disconnected by the government rather than being given internet access.  However, that more careful reading would not have allowed the full force of my sarcasm.


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