What College Philosophy Professors Teach

Excellent.  A few comments:

You say you don’t teach liberal political values, but in a way you do.  Not that there is anything wrong about this, but empathy and humility actually are liberal values.  The tenets of moral philosophy, like the universality of human rights, utilitarianism, our senses of duty and obligation, and the categorical imperative, again, are liberal values. What conservatives want to conserve, i.e., American exceptionalism and white dominance, run contrary to the ideals mentioned above.

You note: “Reality itself skews left,” more commonly stated as “Reality has a liberal bias,” a very interesting notion.  When you think about it, it was conservatives who posited things that were manifestly untrue: Obama was born in Kenya, climate change is a Chinese hoax, trickle down economics is a valid theory, Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizzeria (that had no basement), and dangerous or ineffective drugs, as well as cleaning products are viable ways of treating COVID-19.  In that sense, reality most certainly has a liberal bias.

Yet there is another sense in which this is true as well, and it’s derived but studying anthropology and animal biology more generally.  It is from these scientific disciplines that we learn that individuals in successful species are far more cooperative with one another than they are competitive, i.e., they find ways to build sustainable ecosystems.  Unsuccessful species fail to put plans in place such that future generations can thrive.  Sadly, it looks like that’s were Homo sapiens is headed.

 

 

Tagged with: , , , , , ,