“Batman versus Kant” plus 2 more

Batman versus Kant
Notre Dame seeks next-best men in secondary
Facebook Adopts Single-Page Approach To Displaying Photos

Posted: 12 Aug 2010 02:49 AM PDT

12 August 2010 Last updated at 02:24 ET By Katie Connolly BBC News, Washington

For years, fans of the Batman comics have puzzled over a mystery at the heart of the series: why doesn't Batman just kill his arch-nemesis, the murderous Joker?

The two have engaged in a prolonged game of cat-and-mouse. The Joker commits a crime, Batman catches him, the Joker is locked up, and then invariably escapes.

Wouldn't all this be much simpler if Batman just killed the Joker? What's stopping him?

Enter philosopher Immanuel Kant and the deontological theory of ethics.

At least, that's how the discussion progresses in a growing number of philosophy classes in the US.

Cultural and media studies have paved the way for universities to incorporate pop culture into their curriculum. These days it is not uncommon to find a television studies class alongside 17th-Century literature in the course listings of an English department.

Now, philosophy professors are finding superheroes and comic books to be exceptionally useful tools in helping students think about the complex moral and ethical debates that have occupied philosophers for centuries.

Moreover, superheroes are attracting students to a discipline often perceived as overrun by musty books, suede elbow patches and bow ties.

Socratic tradition

William Irwin, a philosophy professor at King's College in Pennsylvania, edits the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, which includes titles such as Batman and Philosophy, and X-Men and Philosophy.

He says there's nothing unusual about using popular references to illustrate complex theories.

"This is what philosophy has tried to do from the very beginning," he says. "Philosophy starts with Socrates in the streets of Athens taking his message to the people and speaking in their language - agricultural analogies and common mythology."

Through the centuries, though, philosophers retreated into academia, creating a convoluted vocabulary that can appear inaccessible to the average first-year university student - those "deontological" ethics for example.

Christopher Bartel, an assistant professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University, asks students to read the graphic novel Watchmen in order to explore questions about metaphysics and epistemology.

In one class, he uses the character of Dr Manhattan, who claims that everything - including people's psychology - is predetermined through all the causal laws of physics.

Mr Bartel uses this to teach theories of determinism and free will, and the moral responsibilities entailed in those world views.

Mr Bartel says his course - Philosophy, Literature, Film and Comics - is a "fantastic recruiting tool", and that more of its students go on to specialise in philosophy than students in any of his other courses.

"I usually have students read Plato, Aristotle and Hume in introduction to philosophy courses. They often find it interesting, but get scared away by just how hard it is to read the stuff," Mr Bartel told the BBC.

"Comic books can provide really good illustrations of these philosophical ideas without scaring them off."

He says there are always students who think the course will just be an easy A grade, but they soon realise that despite the fun nature of the material, the work is deeply serious.

Great power, great responsibility?

For Christopher Robichaud, who teaches ethics and political philosophy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Tufts University, superhero-based thought experiments can help people grapple with ethical dilemmas in an unsentimental fashion.

Imagine for example, that you are Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) and you have just discovered that you have superpowers. Do you have a moral obligation to use your new-found powers to help others?

In one published essay, Mr Robichaud uses that question to explore consequentialism, an approach to morality which, as the name suggests, judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based solely on its outcomes.

A consequentialist would be likely to argue that Peter Parker has a moral responsibility to be Spider-Man because that decision would bring about the greatest good.

But Peter Parker was also a talented scientist, so a non-consequentialist could argue that fulfilling his scientific vocation could be an equally valid choice for him. Perhaps being Spider-Man is above and beyond the call of duty - the answer is murky.

The conversation does not end with superheroes, of course. Mr Robichaud encourages students to take the framework they have learned and apply it to decisions in their own personal and professional lives.

But he says it is a neutral way to start talking about ethical issues that people often find provocative or confronting.

"Ethics is one of those hard things to teach because for a lot of people the answers are very personal," Mr Robichaud told the BBC. "If you make it about artificial examples at first, then it allows people to think a little bit more safely and clearly about ethical issues."

Sniggers

The incorporation of superheroes into a philosophy curriculum is not without critics.

"Start Quote

We are not saying that the canon of Superman comic books is equivalent to Homer and Dante and you can study them for their own sake... The goal is always to get people interested in philosophy by speaking first in terms that people are familiar with"

End Quote Professor William Irwin Editor, Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

When academics struggle to fill seats in their medieval poetry classes while their colleagues are turning students away from packed courses on the mythic rhetoric of the superheroes, sniping in common rooms is to be expected.

Professor Mark White of the City University of New York says he is sure his work on Batman and philosophy "arouses some chuckles in the corridors", but he is careful to point out that he is not teaching the philosophy of comic books, he is using comic books to teach philosophy.

Mr Irwin agrees, drawing a distinction between his work and that of cultural theorists.

"Cultural studies coming out of the UK took popular culture very seriously as an object of study," Mr Irwin told the BBC.

"We are not saying that the canon of Superman comic books is equivalent to Homer and Dante and you can study them for their own sake. We're not suggesting that comic books replace Plato and Descartes - not at all. The goal is always to get people interested in philosophy by speaking first in terms that people are familiar with."

Mr Robichaud has little patience for critics who say that this work cheapens the traditional study of philosophy.

"The sort of philosophy I do - analytical philosophy - uses thought experiments all the time," he says. "If the examples we are drawing from are fictional examples from popular culture, as long as that's in the service of good philosophy, who cares? Who cares if the example is from Middlemarch or Watchmen?"

Shaun Treat, who teaches at the University of North Texas, is not bothered by "highbrow" critics either. For him, the proof is in the pudding: the students lap it up.

After years of teaching traditional debates like Hobbes versus Locke, he says, "it's amazing how much more the students are interested and engaged when you them put in cape and tights and have them slug it out".

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Notre Dame seeks next-best men in secondary

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 12:45 PM PDT

By Brian Hamilton

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The whole "Next Man In" philosophy espoused by Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly is proven and sound.

The problems start when there aren't any men left to go in next -- an issue now presenting itself in the secondary with the uncertain status of sophomore cornerback E.J. Banks.

"There aren't that many 'next men,'" Irish secondary coach Chuck Martin said with a smile after practice Wednesday. "So they're all in."

Banks, who as reported Tuesday is off the team pending a ruling on his status by week's end, was not at practice Wednesday. The Irish began to compensate by moving little-used receiver Barry Gallup, Jr., to the defensive side of the ball for a tryout at cornerback.

Banks was listed as the No. 4 cornerback on the initial preseason depth chart, but he already had slid behind freshman Lo Wood, who was running with the second-team defense and did so again in today's workout.

But as Kelly indicated earlier this week, cornerback is essentially three veterans -- Gary Gray, Darrin Walls and Robert Blanton -- and a whole slew of questions. The potential loss of Banks merely shrinks the margin for error of the top three some more.

"We know there's not a lot of depth," Walls said. "We just practice hard and push each other every day. our biggest thing is getting through and pushing through to get to that next level."

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Facebook Adopts Single-Page Approach To Displaying Photos

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 01:19 PM PDT

People who adhere to the philosophy of "more is better" when it comes to photographs are almost sure to appreciate a change Facebook's announced. This afternoon, the company altered the way it displays photo albums so that many, many pictures can be seen on a single page.

This is perhaps not the most original idea in the world, considering that both Bing and Google have adopted similar approaches to displaying image search results. There's also a downside in that it may become easy for people to get lost in a sea of photos, unable to find one or two good ones they noticed earlier.

Still, as you can probably tell from the screenshot below, the concept is in most ways an upgrade compared to the previous setup.

A post on the Facebook Blog explained to the uninitiated, "[A] photo album will automatically display additional photos as you scroll down a single page. You no longer need to click 'Next' or try to guess which page number will reveal the best photos."

The post then continued, "The thumbnails displayed are also larger, so now you can see more before deciding whether to click to a full-sized image." And the whole arrangement isn't even supposed to slow down the browser.

This should help Facebook stay ahead of Flickr, and potentially whatever social network Google's supposed to be working on, as well.

About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Philosophy

Thursday, August 12, 2010