KIE Faculty Ruth Grant discussed her theories on incentives featured in her most recent book as part of the University of Houston Honors College “What’s Fair? A Lecture Series on Justice and Desert in America.” Read more about the event at the universities student news site, The Daily Cougar.
In October, KIE Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong gave a lecture on the ethics of killing at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Ethics Grand Rounds lecture series. A video of the talk has been published.
KIE Graduate Instructor in Ethics Dimitri Putilin will be offering a one-time only course for undergraduates during the spring semester:
Religion, Ethics, Psychology {Ethics 290S.06/Psych 290S.01/ICS 290S.11}
Tuesday/Thursday 1:25 – 2:40pm
The course will consider two distinct perspectives on ethics: religious and psychological. Religions provide the oldest, immensely influential accounts of what it means to be moral; with its empirical approach and innovative methods, moral psychology is able to shed new light on how moral ideals shape people’s thoughts and behavior in the modern world. We explore and contrast the ideals of moral perfection described in Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and complement this with the understanding of morality which is emerging from empirical research in moral psychology, covering both established knowledge and current controversies. No prior knowledge of religion or psychology is required.
Over 100,000 students have enrolled in KIE Faculty member Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Coursera course, co-taught by UNC-Chapel Hill professor Ram Neta. The course, “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue,” is the third course to appear under the Duke banner, does not confer university credit but is free of charge. It is offered through Coursera, a California company that offers free content in collaboration with several international universities.
Sinnott-Armstrong discusses the opportunities and challenges of this new venture in a profile by Duke Today.
In conjunction with a talk at the University of Texas Southwestern’s Ethics Ground Rounds program, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong was interviewed on public radio station KERA’s “Think” program regarding an expansion of the designations for states of living, particularly in regards to the ethics of organ procurement for donation.
The London Financial Times has picked up an interview with KIE Senior Fellow Ruth Grant discussing the reception of her recent book Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives and the ways in which her arguments on the use of incentives have been adapted by professionals in various fields. The original interview can be read in its entirety on the CFA Institute website.
Walter Sinnott Armstrong’s free online class on reason and logic, offered through Coursera, a California-based company that’s partnered with a dozen universities worldwide to offer higher education to the masses, is Duke’s most popular course. “Think Again: How to Reason and Argue,” co-taught by UNC-Chapel Hill philosophy professor Ram Neta, reaches farther than Sinnott-Armstrong thought possible. “I never imagined that I would have so many students in my entire career,” he said. “It would take hundreds of years to reach that number of students in a normal classroom.”
Read more on Duke Today.
Update 10/19/2012: Enrollment for Sinnott-Armstrong’s Coursera course now over 100,000
MADlab, a new vertically-integrated research community, opens this fall on the first floor of the West Duke Building. Anchored by the work of Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Institute Senior Fellow Philip Costanzo, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Institute Senior Fellow Stephen Vaisey, the space will house classes as well as meeting spaces and workstations for students. The new area, nicknamed the MADLab, is being renovated now and will be ready at the end of September.
Integrity in Undergraduate Life at Duke University: A Report on the 2011 Survey follows up on surveys conducted in 1995, 2000 and 2005 and includes new questions on nonacademic subjects. Duke Student Government held its first ever faculty-student town hall meeting on April 4th to discuss its findings, covered by the Duke Chronicle. The Duke Chronicle also ran an article and editorial on the report, and Duke Today ran a piece on the report.
KIE senior fellow Ruth Grant discusses how incentives affect good behavior and whether rewarding someone for being good devalues acts of goodness, the topic of her latest book, Strings Attached: The Ethics of Incentives, on WUNC’s The State of Things on 3/28. Listen or download audio from WUNC.