Welcome back and some free books

This is a repetition of some information I have already posted but it is very useful and hence worthy of the repetition. Books are really expensive and you might feel a little aggrieved when you’re asked only to concentrate on an extract, especially when you have bought it.  |However, many of the historical texts are available online for free in the form of etexts.  One should, of course, be very careful about both accuracy and also copyright.

Some good places to begin your search are:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/index.html

http://infomotions.com/alex2/

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/

http://www.gutenberg.org

Or, just try typing ‘free etext’ plus title of the work and author into a search engine and see what happens. You may also want to try certain ebook suppliers who I do not want to advertise, companies that rhyme with Damazon and Poogle Play. They also offer free versions of books. I have also shared a wish list on Amazon of some of the texts available for free:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/39QXP5XJJJY4W

 For example, stage 1 should really all get a copy of Plato’s Theaetetus which has a very good introduction.

Sarin, chemical weapons and utilitarianism

An interesting history of the development of Sarin and other chemical weapons in The Guardian yesterday which shows the relationships between technology, war and production quite starkly. You can read it here: http://gu.com/p/3tp3b/. It may be useful information for  any of you thinking about doing projects in this area. Continue reading "Sarin, chemical weapons and utilitarianism"

E-learning

This post is mostly for stage 1, but stages 2 and 3 may well find the reminder useful.. I shall be giving a quick talk about the computer resources and e-learning in the induction week for stage 1 and handing out a list of internet addresses. Since these are a pain to type into the browser’s omnibox/address bar. I’ve pasted the handout below so you can just click on the links (hopefully).

E-Learning

Email

Please begin to use the email address given to you by the university (john.smith@ncl.ac.uk). All communication from the University and us will be sent to this address. (Do not use your hotmail or gmail email accounts when writing to us, it is possible our Spam filters will cancel it!) The webmail service can be accessed anywhere by typing the following into your browser address bar:

owa.ncl.ac.uk

any problems, try typing: https://owa.ncl.ac.uk/ (and notice the “s” in “https”)

Homestore directory

Whenever you login at any University PC (staff office PCs, PCs in Cluster Rooms and the Remote Application Service (RAS)) your Home Folder is automatically connected as the H Drive. The Home Folder is also referred to as My Documents (Windows XP PCs) or Documents (Windows Vista/7 PCs), as well as the H: Drive.

Your documents are accessible from outside the University via RAS or as a webfolder (please see http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/filestore/remotefilestoreaccess/webfolders on how to setup these.)

However, your work and especially your assessments should always be backed up on a USB key drive. Alternatively, you may wish to use a cloud such as Google Drive, Ubuntu One, Microsoft’s Skydrive, Dropbox, iCloud and so on. Such services have the advantage of keeping your documents synched no matter where or on what you work and ensure you always work on the latest versions. (They also have integrated word [processors so you can work online.) Your home store via RAS should work like these as well, but it is still very slow.

Clouds

Google Drive                                        https://drive.google.com/

‎Microsoft Skydrive                             https://skydrive.live.com/

Ubuntu One                                          https://one.ubuntu.com/

Dropbox                                                www.dropbox.com

Apple iCloud                                        https://www.icloud.com/

These all offer about 5-8Gb of free storage. There are other alternatives.

Websites

University

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/

Philosophical Studies Homepage

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/philosophical/

Useful links page

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/philosophical/students/links.htm

 Research Sites

 When you write an essay, you will have to include references and engage in secondary research.  The best place to begin is the library itself and its catalogue (http://sparky.ncl.ac.uk/F), but the web now offers a host of information. However, much of it is unreliable! It is best to stick to academic sites.  The following offer very good introductory material, but are best accessed on campus or via RAS (otherwise you will have only restricted content):

http://www.rep.routledge.com/ (the username and password are available at this address: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/nclonly/rep.php)

http://www.iep.utm.edu/

http://plato.stanford.edu/

http://www.blackwellreference.com/

and more advanced articles and books are available via:

http://www.jstor.org/

http://scholar.google.co.uk/

Etexts

 Many of the historical texts are available online for free in the form of etexts.  However, one should be very careful about both accuracy and also copyright.  Some good places to begin your search are:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/index.html

http://infomotions.com/alex2/

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/

http://www.gutenberg.org

Or, just try typing ‘free etext’ plus title of the work and author into a search engine and see what happens. You may also want to try certain ebook suppliers who I do not want to advertise, companies that rhyme with Damazon and Poogle Play. They also offer free versions of books. I have also shared a wish list on Amazon of some of the texts available for free:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/39QXP5XJJJY4W

 Blackboard

Blackboard is a Virtual Learning Environment. Each module will be run slightly differently, depending on the lecturer, but the idea is that information and documents relating to a module will be available. Type the following into a browser bar and begin exploring:

bb.ncl.ac.uk  (or again its full address: https://blackboard.ncl.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp)

RAS

Ras (Remote Application Server) allows you to access all your University documents and the University software from home.  It is also useful for accessing restricted sites such as JSTOR or Google Scholar because it is as if you were on campus and covered by the library licence. Type the following into a browser bar

ras.ncl.ac.uk (or https://ras.ncl.ac.uk/Citrix/XenAppCAG2/auth/login.aspx)

 

(For more information installing RAS on your computer, please refer to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/software/ras/installingras/)

Office alternative (free):

http://www.libreoffice.org/

More information about the University’s computer resources:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/itservice/core-services/

 

 

 

Welcome and an event!

Welcome to the new stage 1 students and welcome back to stages 2 and 3. This is the first real post of 2013 on this blog for your use. Comments can be made and I should respond quickly.

Anyway, something is happening in Newcastle outside of the University that might be of interest to you. The BBC/Radio 3 run a series of discussions called Free Thinking and this year’s takes place on the 19th of September (if any of you are around). Information is available here: bbc.co.uk/freethinking.

See you all soon.

Free books

I’ll re-post this early next year, but I am still trying a few things out to make access to classics easier. I’ve done a long search of Amazon’s Kindle store to see what is available for free and have compiled a wish list. The list is available at this link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/39QXP5XJJJY4W

This is not an endorsement of the Kindle or Amazon, it is just an easy way to do things. I have chosen only those books which are free, or were free when I listed them. Etexts are available elsewhere (best idea is to search fro Project Gutenberg).

War

We were going to do the tutorial on war and we will probably do it next week.  There is a distinction between the moral requirements that govern whether one can wage war or not (jus ad bellum) and those that govern conduct in war (jus in bello).  So, a war can be seen as legitimate yet the actions of soldiers illegitimate. This is standard fare for applied ethical thinking on such a subject and if you look at the readings it will become clear what is at stake and how these are regulated. 

 

Personally, I think war is interesting for a different reason.  When we looked at euthanasia and abortion, the question was whether killing could be PERMISSIBLE, that is allowed.  This means that there are situations where the moral laws can be put to one side. With war, what a lot of thinkers don’t seem prepared to say, is that one’s duty to one’s role in the army actually means that killing is REQUIRED (a duty!). The doctrine of proportionality may be used to dispute this, but I think that would be disingenuous.

 

Ps., if you have trouble replying to these posts (which you all seem to do), try clicking on the log in button on the right, use your usual campus login and see if that helps.

 

Euthanasia and abortion

 

It might seem strange to group these two together, but I do so for a variety of reasons. 1, the tutorials have already been done; 2, both positions have as their central foundation the validity of the principle of the intrinsic value of human life; and 3. both problems are best approached through a deontological/rights based approach as opposed to a utilitarian one.

 

We did not have time to truly discuss Hegel’s approach, but that is because we are early on in his thought.  There are two axes to be applied: what would the public judgement be concerning such problems; and what are the foundations of these judgements.  The rationality of one’s moral assertions are then twofold: in accordance with the public will and then whether the public will itself is rational.

 

Moral problems such as euthanasia and abortion question traditional principles such as the sanctity of life because new technology lays bare the foundations of our public reasoning about these subjects.

Famine

The first tutorial this term will be next week on the problems of famine.  I assume we all agree that famine is a bad thing, but why?  Famine also cannot be divorced from poverty. Poverty itself is a problem, but do you hgave an obligation to help somone who has less than you (if that is how we measure poverty).

You will need to read Singer and O’Neill who put forward a utilitarian and a Kantian persepctive respectively (both available on Blackboiard).  Also, before the dicusssion you need to consider Hardin’s analogy with the lifeboat (an extract is ion the tutorial booklet).