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The
contents of this website, the links contained therein directly and
indirectly, and the contents of the said links, are provided exclusively for
non-profit educational use by the student currently enrolled in this
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Homework
My
records show that as of Nov. 22, the following students did not submit their
presentation proposals or that the proposals they submitted were
returned without approval.
Please,
submit your proposal ASAP. In the case you miss your presentation you
may lose from 20 to 40 percent of the total credit in this course.
7 Chavarria,Hector
8 Duran,Enrique
15 Kharti,Hatim
23 Morando,Hector
27 Phin,Bunnath
Click
here to go to most recent assignment.
Assignment 1:
Credit 10 points.
1. Hand copy the highlighted portion of the Dean's Letter regarding classroom decorum
http://csc.csudh.edu/suchenek/CSC301/Classroom_Decorum-Dealing_with_Disruptive_Students.doc
2. Hand copy the CSUDH plagiarism policy (three indented paragraphs) outlined in the Presidential Memorandum http://www.csudh.edu/pms/PMs/85-10.shtml
Typed or printed homeworks will not earn credits.
Expected form: 2 - 3 pages
of double-spaced, neatly handwritten text. Typed or printed homeworks will not earn credits.
Past due Due September 1, 2010
Assignment 2:
Credit 10 points.
Requires studying of section "Constitutional matters" of Lecture Notes.
1. Review all sections of Amendments to the Constitution quoted in the Lecture Notes.
2. For each quoted section, specify its domain of Constitutional
aplicability (e.g., all humans, the accused, members of national
community, citizens, etc.).
3. For each quoted section, give one specific and
meaningful example of a person that falls into its domain of
Constitutional applicability and one specific and meaningful example of
a person that does not.
Expected form: 2 - 3 pages
of double-spaced, typed text.
Past due Due September 13, 2010
An example answer to 2.2: Amendments
I, II, IV, IX: members of national community; Amendment V: all humans
except those who pose an unlawful and imminent threat to similar rights
of others; Amendment V: the accused in criminal prosecution; Amendment
X: members of national community and state governments; Amendment XIV
Section 1, the citizenship clause: the born in the
U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. at their birth, plus
the naturalized in the U.S. (which naturalization requires a
renouncement of any allegiance to a foreign nation - an act that makes
the naturalized person a subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.); the
privileges or
immunities clause: the citizens; the due process clause: same as
Amendment V; the equal protection clause: all humans within their
respective
rights who fall under jurisdiction of a state.
An example partial answer to 2.3: Soldiers
of an invading army are not members of the national community and,
therefore, are obvious examples of the individuals who are excluded
from the domains of mentioned above Amendments, except that they fall
into the domain of Amendment VI if actually accused in a criminal
prosecution. A person indicated as plantiff in a civil case does not
fall into the domain of Amendment VI, and so does not one accused by,
say, a news reporter. A home invader who poses a grave threat of loss
of life or
bodily injury to the inhabitants is an unlawful and imminent threat to
their right to life, liberty, and property, and, therefore, is an
example of individuals who are excluded from the domain of Amendment V.
Children born to parents who are present in the U.S. on
non-immigrant visas are not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.
and, therefore, are examples of individuals who are excluded from the
domain of the citizenship clause of Amendment XIV. Permanent residents
(a.k.a. the green-card holders) are not citizens and, therefore, are
examples of the individuals
excluded from the domain of the privileges and immunities clause of
Amendment XIV. Law abiding citizens never accused in a criminal
prosecution are examples of individuals excluded from the domain of
Amendment V.
Assignment 3:
Credit 20 points.
Requires study of Lecture Notes posted September 22, 2011.
Explain:
a. how does utilitarianism transform negative rights onto positive rights, and
b. how this transformation makes utilitarianism unsustainable.
Illustrate your explanation with a specific example. Fill free to use
in your paper any specific instance of utilitarianism, for example,
socialism, or a naive version of utilitarinism that attempts to
maximize total happiness.
This is an open-ended assignment so be as thorough as possible.
Expected form: 3 to 5 pages
of double-spaced, typed text.
Past due Due September 29, 2010
An example answer to 3.a:
Because utilitarianism makes it imperative to contribute to the
happiness of others, the others may have a claim against an individual
who refuses to provide. This turns a negative right to happiness onto a
positive one.
Specific example: In a non-utilitarian society like ours, a person has a negative right
to life. This right alone does not give the person any claim rights
against, say, someone else's body organs. A utilitarian society may
deem it permissible to deprive one person of his life in order to save
lives of nine people. Such a permission would turn the negative right
to life of these nine onto a positive right to life. Now, they have a
claim right against one person's body organs. Once they exercise their
claim right, the organs of that person will be redistributed among the
nine people, thus saving their lives at the expense of the life of the
captive donor. Hence the transformation.
An example answer to 3.b:
Transformation of negative rights onto positive rights creates
disincentive to provide for self (in paricular, to provide for one's own happiness) because an exercise of claim rights may
provide the claimant with the necessities at the expense of others. This lifestyle is often times referred to as social parasitism and the individuals that profess it are refered to as free riders.
Once a
large enough portion of the society choses exercising of claim rights
as their main means of subsistence, those who are supposed to provide
what
others claim may simply refuse doing so and
turn into exercising their claim rights, instead, like everybody else
does. With virtually no one
working, and - therefore - not enough left to parasitize upon, such a
society becomes unable to sustain its population and will
collapse, eventually. Moreover, the Utilitarian government is destined
to become oppressive as some individuals will likely refuse to give up
their negative right to the fruits of their work which the Utilitarian
government is not going to tollerate. Hence the necessity of
oppression, which typically accelertes the unsustainability.
Note.
Many of my students indicated another intrinsic weakness of
utilitarianism: an attempt to "measure" ethical values with one
standard "utility" (e.g., total happines). Although this is a well
known argument, it does not prove that utilitarianism is unsustainable.
Assignment 4:
Credit 20 points.
Requires study of Lecture Notes posted October 13, 2011 and on.
Describe in detail the concept of censorship, its purpose, means of imposition, and impact on a technologically-based free society. Include in your answer such notions as:
a. limiting the access to means of communication and the media bias,
b. "chilling effect",
c. "political correctness",
d. prevention,
e. codes of speech on campus,
f. self-censorship,
g. the role of free speech in institutions of higher education.
Illustrate your description with specific examples.
This is an open-ended assignment so be as thorough as possible.
Expected form: 3 to 5 pages
of double-spaced, typed text.
Past due Due November 8, 2010
Comment 1.
One of you, my students, touched a very interesting topic: faculty bias
in the context of "political correctness". Here are my comments on the
subject.
First, let's recall
that "political correctness" is a means of coercion to submit oneself
to self-imposed censorship in order to prevent him from expressing
ideas that are considered "politically incorrect". In light of such a
definition, any exercise of such coercion by the majority of faculty
who subscribe to "politically correct" views usually goes against the
stated purpose of an educational institution, and - I propose -
unlawfully so.
Here is an (intentionally neutral) example.
Suppose you
established a private school in order to provide the pupils with the
best education that is there. You hired 50 teachers to teach the
curriculum as thoroughly and truthfully as possible. Now, suppose that,
incidentally, 45 of them share the same political conviction (say, are
vegetarians for the reason of objecting to animal slaughtering) and
five are not. And they inject their vegeterianism to everything they
teach, including math and English.
What would be a good reason to allow them to turn your school into a
bastion of vegetarianism where non-vegetarian opinions are not to be
tolerated, and to prevent - by means of "political correctness"
pressure - the "dissenting" five from expressing their non-vegetarian
views? (Answer: No good reason at all.)
Surely, academic
freedom gives faculty a lot of leeway in deciding what to talk about in
classroom. (However, it does not constitute a license to knowingly
distort the truth, to otherwise deceive the students, or discourage
them from pursuit of truth.) But imposing the majority faculty view on
all others (faculty and students alike) by any involuntary means (like
social pressure, intimidation, ostracism, etc.) has absolutely no legal
or ethical justification. In particular, no state in the U.S.
sanctifies any political bias of its educational institutions that, as
a matter of fact, are supposed to remain bias-free.
In your school from
the above example, your teachers were not elected by those whose
children they were about to teach. These teachers were hired by you to
do some specific job. If they exhibit any political bias, they have no
right to impose that bias on the entire school. If they do so then they
de facto preempt the ownership of your business from you. If it takes place then it is a clear case of usurpation.
Ironically, when some
parents object to exposing their children to biased instruction (some
call it "indoctrination"), the school administration oftentimes
exercises whatever authority it has to prevent parents from shielding
their children from such undesired exposure. In my opinion it clearly
falls into category of wrong, never mind violating parent's Nine Amendment rights. (Do you still remember what these rights are? Look it up.)
Comment 2. It has
been stipulated by one of you that the media bias comes from the
owners. (Whatever you think, in the US the government has very limited,
if any, means to censor.) While to large extent it may be so, in many
cases these are the people who work there (anchors, reporters,
commentators, etc.) and not the owners who prevail, eventually, in
imposition of their political orientation on the entire medium. If one
takes into account that the existing employees often have a major say
on whom to hire, and they typically object to hiring their future
opponents, the bias, once imposed, exhibits a stubborn tendency to
survive for a long time. Not unlike in the example of Comment 1. Did anyone say "hijacking"?
This was the most
recent assignment.
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