Home from Indiana

So here is a picture of the Bartlett Reflection Center where I reflected during my weekend at the Undergraduate Ethics Symposium sponsored by the Prindle Ethics Institute at DePauw University. In my forty-eight hours there, I heard a talk by David Sloan Wilson of SUNY Binghampton on "Evolving the City: Using Evolutionary Theory to Understand and Improve the Human Condition," heard a discussion of a book on ethics in war, espionage, and covert action by David L. Perry, saw a play called Blue Lias (a one-woman show about Mary Anning, a 19th century paleontologist), led a seminar of student creative work on ethical themes (which included poetry, a short story, a brief play, and student memoirs ranging on topics from faith to food), and gave a talk of my own titled "Divine Love and Moral Arbitrariness," in which I displayed my much-worn childhood bear Panda, as a concrete example of how we - and God - can bestow value on something simply by loving it.

There wasn't actually much time to sit in the Reflection Center and reflect. But there was time for visiting with dear former graduate students and admiring the Supreme Cuteness of their newly toddling toddler, and for conversing for hours with my friend Keith, who was in graduate school with me a million years ago at Princeton, and who is the best person in the world for talking about books, movies, art, philosophy - anything to do with the life of the mind.

My own mind is a bit tired now. But it is also very, very happy.