By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ulises Ali Mejias[Edit][Delete]: Is Morality an Emergent Behavior?, Ideant [Edit][Delete] January 27, 2006

I didn't mean for this week's newsletters to have morality as a theme, but a post today from Ulises points back to this link, making it three days in a row for me to touch on the topic. Perhaps that's just as well. In this item, he advances the proposition that morality is not based on reason (in fact, reason actually impedes it), but rather, "morality is actually an emergent behavior - in other words, a behavior exhibited by organisms acting according to very simple rules requiring little reasoning." If this is the case (and I believe something like it is) then it would seem to me that we sense, rather than infer, the morality (or immorality) of our actions. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Lamb[Edit][Delete]: The Network Delivers the Goods, Abject learning [Edit][Delete]Abject Learning [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

Brian Lamb is still sorting through the results he received from the community after asking for help for an unusually important presentation tomorrow night (which means, yes, you can still flood him with your responses) on blogs and wikis. Naturally, he offers links to it all, including a trackback from Germany, a "groovy wiki-based presentation" and a "Sessums-like tour de force post." Why is this relevant to anything. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mark Hemphill[Edit][Delete]: Network Bias, markhemphill.com [Edit][Delete] January 25, 2006

Audio recording of a talk that sounds interesting. It is a "look at the way broadcasting holds critical sway in the virtual world (in spite of the amazing opportunities of internetworking)." There is a summary in PDF. It's dense reading, but the author draws us through a definition of broadcasting and distinguishes it from what may be called mesh networking. He then examines what he calls 'social conditioning' in these two types of communications of network. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paul Graham[Edit][Delete]: How To Do What You Love, January 25, 2006

[link: 2 Hits] John Stuart Mill talked about this a little more than a century ago - "pursuing our own good in our own way." It is a philosophy that has become one of two great pillars of my own morality ever since (the other: each person is an end in themselves, and hence has inherent value). I still remember exactly where and when I first read On Liberty: in the Devonian Gardens in downtown Calgary in 1983. But, what is our own good? How do we define it, and pursue it in such a way as to not deprive others of the ability to pursue their own good. Harder questions, and in the end I think it comes down to a passion, a sensation or strong emotional feeling, or as this item describes, doing what you love. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Thill[Edit][Delete]: An Idea Too Dangerous to Ignore, Inside Higher Ed [Edit][Delete] January 23, 2006

I would like to invite the same organization to put up $100 to each of my readers who spots and sends in some instance of bias or political affiliation on this site. And to my readers, I pledge to offer a steady supply, to keep you all in cash. Or we could all recognize that having a point of view or perspective is fundamental to the very idea of being an academic, that such points of view are sometimes, and necessarily, out of the mainstream, and that the very principle of freedom of expression rails against the idea of punishing people - whatever their positions - for their political views. More...