Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians

abstract   Duties of beneficence are not well understood. Peter Singer has argued that the scope of beneficence should not be restricted to those who are, in some sense, near us. According to Singer, refusing to contribute to humanitarian relief efforts is just as wrong as refusing to rescue a child drowning before you. Most people do not seem convinced by Singer's arguments, yet no one has offered a plausible justification for restricting the scope of beneficence that doesn't produce counterintuitive results elsewhere. I offer a defence of this restricted scope by introducing the notion of unique dependence, a notion that is both intuitively attractive and theoretically grounded. It explains why your reason to rescue the drowning child is more stringent than your reason to contribute to humanitarian relief, while blocking the conclusion that we have no reason at all to aid distant sufferers.     

Marginally Good

Abstract

This article describes the early pioneering work of an online librarian in one of the first religiously-oriented, Internet-based colleges. Despite their lack of accreditation and neglect of information infrastructure, these degree programs are often quite popular with the general public. The author takes a critical look at library services and accreditation issues for these types of degree-granting college programs.     

Good Advice

Advice is interesting because it is a relationship that is built upon two asymmetries. Advice concerns what the advisee ought to do. For that reason, considerations of autonomy suggest that the advisee has a greater claim on what matters in deliberation. However, the advisor is wiser than the advisee. That suggests that the advisor has a greater insight into what matters in deliberation. These are the asymmetry of autonomy and the asymmetry of wisdom. To account for both, I argue for informed subjectivism. Informed subjectivism is the view that the quality of advice is determined by the likelihood that the advisee would consistently prefer acting on the advice to not acting the advice. The theory captures the asymmetry of autonomy by making the quality of advice based on the advisee’s judgment. It captures the asymmetry of wisdom by making the relevant judgments of the advisee be ones that are informed by experience.     

Good Work

Work is on one side a central arena of self‐making, self‐understanding, and self‐development, and on the other a deep threat to our flourishing. My question is: what kind of work is good for human beings, and what kind bad? I first characterise work as necessary productive activity. My answer to my question then develops a perfectionist account of the human good: (1) the good is the full development and expression of human potentials and capacities; (2) this development and expression happens over a lifetime through appropriate practice. Work is thus a problem of human development, and I address that problem by considering three central human capacities: that we are passionate choosers, skilled makers, and social negotiators. For each, I ask: what does this capacity need from our work if it is to develop towards full and flourishing expression? Answering that question leads to a three‐part account of good work as requiring: (1) a distinctive kind of pleasure, involving both unselfconscious flow and supervisory self‐attention; (2) skill, which I describe via the ideal of craft; and (3) democracy, which I define as a form of life in which each is able to develop and use both expressive and receptive capacities.     

Metaphor for Teaching: Good Teaching is Like Good Sex

Based on a real teaching experience in the classroom, the author reflects on the dynamics of gender, race/ethnicity, power, and privilege in the context of an undergraduate course in Christian sexual ethics. Through this analysis of pedagogical style and process initiated by a challenging moment at the midpoint of the semester, the author develops ten guiding principles for good teaching, using the metaphor that “good teaching is like good sex,” which emphasize the necessary elements and outcomes of a positive learning environment: intimacy, flexibility, creativity, satisfaction, care and attentiveness, vulnerability, fun and playfulness, reciprocity, full engagement, and risk‐taking. This experience provided the foundation for planning and assessment for the author's courses since.