Notes for 4/24/2026

 4/24/2026
[Philosophy Club every Monday, 4-5 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")]
[Bioethics Club: Mondays from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Leigh Hall 408]

I am sure that I would never ___.
 
Week 14 response

Ask me any philosophical question



 
A possible answer to “What, exactly, is art?”

Art is a form of play in which something that is created or constructed is presented for the primary purpose of appealing to an audience’s interest.

The disadvantage of this is that many will think it too broad (it will allow works of fiction, movies, tv shows, games, etc. to count as art forms). 
But this could also be considered an advantage.

The emphases on “primary purpose” and “audience interest” rules out a lot of commercial art, sports, club dancing (though if oneself can be the audience this might be different).

Another interesting question about art is whether qualitative judgments can ever be true or false.

The sayings: 
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and
“There is no accounting for tastes” seemingly imply a negative answer.

But most people accept that there are good and bad artists: chefs, painters, photographers, dancers, etc.
How could this be unless there are some non-arbitrary criteria that serve as the basis of judgment?

 
Last week I included a summary of my own ethical framework: ACED which is an acronym for Affirm Consider Evaluate Design.

The concepts within ACED are not novel. What is different about ACED is that it includes not only elements from traditional applied ethics, but also from social and I/O psychology, and behavioral economics.

Affirming the other



Why Considering is harder than it seems



Multi-perspective Evaluation

Designing for failure in order to succeed

“Choices are vectors”

Milgram shock obedience study