Fellow Pellissippi State Community College philosophy professor Court Lewis and I had a great time talking about Ethics Bowl’s potential for promoting domestic and international peace at the annual conference of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace over the weekend. Hosted by Texas State University in San Marcos and attended by scholars from all over the world including Poland, Albania, Australia, Canada, and India, with two speakers Zooming in live from Ecuador and Mali (Africa), roughly a third of the audience was already involved with Ethics Bowl (no surprise, right?), and the rest were inspired by Ethics Bowl’s focus on collaboration, mutual respect, principled solutions, and proactive engagement with a reasonable critic.
As we know, while traditional debate artificially divides participants into hostile factions, orders them to think and argue a particular close-minded way, and forbids them from agreeing, Ethic Bowl empowers teams to take ownership of their views, to cooperatively balance their moral intuitions against the best ethical arguments, to remain open to the possibility that they might have more to learn, and to view the other team as equals and thought partners rather than enemies. Ethics Bowl’s reasonable, elevated, conciliatory style paired with accelerating growth around the world, makes it a natural and powerful ally of anyone seeking principled peace.
Many thanks to CPP leadership and conference organizers for welcoming the discussion. And be on the lookout for a longer post at the Blog of the American Philosophical Association soon.