Professor Christopher P. Long (Penn State), recently posted this to his blog. It is right on the topic of our conversations. I had the honor of discussing these issues with Prof. Long at the Advancing Publicly Engaged Philosophy Conference in Washington, DC.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/44896245#37742996

Watch this clip (or others) from Chris Matthew’s documentary entitled “Rise of The New Right”. Thinking in terms of Rousseau’s politics, describe how America expresses a General Will (if any) and what is it? Is there any separation between Private Will and Public Will in our country and is an equal human condition taken into consideration by the government and citizens?

(“jazzterminology” posted this, but I’ve no idea who that is, so if you want credit for posting please let Victoria in on your secret identity).

“In one of the Stanford studies…researchers asked 80 freshmen to report whether they or their peers had recently experienced various negative and positive emotional events. Time and again, the subjects underestimated how many negative experiences (“had a distressing fight,” “felt sad because they missed people”) their peers were having. They also overestimated how much fun (“going out with friends,” “attending parties”) these same peers were having. In another study, the researchers found a sample of 140 Stanford students unable to accurately gauge others’ happiness even when they were evaluating the moods of people they were close to—friends, roommates and people they were dating. And in a third  study, the researchers found that the more students underestimated others’ negative emotions, the more they tended to report feeling lonely and brooding over their own miseries.”

In my last post I mentioned my participation in the Public Philosophy Network Conference, in Washington D.C. It was fantastic hearing from other professors and practitioners about their thoughts on what the “digital public” could mean and its ideal and dystopian potential. It was productive to exchange pedagogical and research ideas, resources, and tales of experiences with philosophy professors venturing into the world of social media ethics. Check out this podcast, which I participate in, recorded by the author of the digital dialogue blog on some of the themes of the two sessions: http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/digitaldialogue/2011/10/digital-dialogue-51-digital-public.html

I attended the Public Philosophy Network conference in Washington, D.C., this weekend. I attended sessions on social media ethics and the digital public. At the second session I learned of a graduate student in philosophy’s use of social media to engage in philosophy with a wider public. Her name is Cory Wong and she maintains a youTube channel called “My Phillifesophy.” Check her work out! It is one example of the way philosophy can participate in the social media and engage the public sphere, or what the conference participants call the “digital public.”