Student Election Group Episode 2
Date
2020-09-04
Authors
Salem Center
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Department
Description
September 4, 2020
Student
Election
Group
Episode
2
Friday's 4:30-5:30
General
As our mission statement says, “The Salem Center for Policy is dedicated to helping students and business leaders better understand the costs, benefits and consequences of policy decisions.” The weeks before a presidential election are when many Americans think most about policy, and discussions of the upcoming election often throw off more heat than light, so our mission requires us to try to help make sense of the choice facing America. Towards that end, we’ve put together a group of students and faculty to articulate and evaluate the beliefs and values behind our votes.
Our discussion will take place every Friday at 4:30 PM CT leading up to the election.
Join the seminar via Zoom.
Thank you to all of our students who participated in the second discussion. Please continue to follow this page, our YouTube Channel, and our other social media accounts to view the next sessions.
It takes work for human beings to know reality and to form and achieve values within it. Understanding this work enables us to take greater control of our minds and our lives.
Human beings—many of us, at least—aspire to be objective in our thinking and our decision-making. We aspire to conform our thinking to the facts, rather than allowing our opinions to be determined accidental features of our psychologies and environments. We aspire to achieve things that are genuinely valuable, rather than things that merely seem appealing to some person or group. In our professional lives we aspire to profit by providing our customers (or clients or employers) with goods or services that are genuinely valuable to them. In our civic lives, we seek to preserve or create the sort of government that protects and makes possible all of the activities described above.
The Objectivity Program seeks to help us realize these aspirations by illuminating their philosophical foundations, and the ways in which different perspectives on these fundamental issues lead to different approaches to life, business, and governmental policy.