Are Organic Foodies Judgemental?

The Atlantic recently ran a provocative -- and in certain ways tellingly misguided piece -- Does Organic Food Make You a Judgmental Jerk? Maybe by one of their health topic bloggers, Brian Fung.  Lest I be categorized too quickly for being "judgmental," however, I have to point out that Fung is just uncritically passing on the results, or rather speculative interpretations, of Kendal Eskine's recent study Wholesome Foods and Wholesome Morals? Organic Foods Reduce Prosocial Behavior and Harshen Moral Judgments. The bulk of the evaluations -- whether on-target or off-base,  carefully considered or great imaginative leaps -- stem directly from the study itself.

You can see this pretty clearly by comparing other pieces summarizing (and admittedly spinning a bit further) the same study results.  A decently representative sample of this new (anti?-)moralizing story spans the gamut of news and opinion sources: Psychology Today,  Time, Scientific American,  The Inquisitor, Jezebel, and even The Times of India. Gluten Free Spinner, who initially evinced a bit of healthy skepticism, quickly bought into the classification and characterization of jerkiness.  Reason.com went so far as to even speak of such people as being "anti-social" -- but then, after yucking it up with now seemingly obligatory references to the Portlandia granola hipster stereotype, at least brought in some dissenting voices.  The question I'd like to ask though is:  Are the critics actually pointing out the real flawed assumptions here?

Cultivating Virtues: Snapshots of Students

One of the shorter assignments my students tackled this semester required them to carry out some reflection on virtues and vices in their own lives and characters, aided by study of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (as well as many other discussions of virtue, vice, and dispositions earlier in the semester), building on some of our in-class lectures and discussions (for example, this one, this one, and this one).  I asked them to consider three questions:

• Which of the virtues which Aristotle discusses do you think you most fully possess?  Explain why Aristotle would say you do possess that virtue.  
• Which of the virtues Aristotle discusses do you think you most need to work on at the present time?  Why?
• Do you fit the descriptions of any of the vices?  Which ones? 

As I read through the responses of 41 students, I started to see some interesting patterns developing, and I was struck by the self-disclosure, reflective insight, and honest appraisals many of the students put down on paper.

Are "Vices" Good For Us?

I use Twitter fairly extensively, for a variety of different purposes, one of which is to keep my ear to the ground, so to speak, or if you like a different analogy, to see what might come across my virtual desk. Spam or self-promotion aside, most of it is pretty good stuff.  At times, the articles linked to might be rather idiosyncratically, even misleadingly headlined, but in general, they provide a decent picture about what knowledgeable people in a variety of fields, professions, and communities are talking about. Given my own predilection for matters of morality, discussions of virtues and vices, it's no surprise that an article caught my attention: 10 'Vices' That Are Actually Good For You.  I suppose I ought to have known or at least suspected as soon as I saw the MSN Health logo coming up that it would be fairly ill-conceived, poorly-informed, disappointing the hopes the intriguing title raised -- despite what people tend to think, its tough to write well and competently on moral matters without a strong intellectual background and some practical experience in the field of Ethics.