Rivalry weekend got me thinking a bit about college football. A lot of people complain about the NCAA, but nobody complains about the fans. Rooting for one's team, it would seem, must be based on thinking that the team is a part of your (academic) community, but at most major programs, college football players are only nominally part of the (academic) community. Supporting this seems wrong. (I'm looking at you, Keys).

I haven't posted much recently because I've been preoccupied with philosophy, and there's not much I want to share on that front. If I did share, it would look something like this: I've just breezed through David Velleman's "Love as Moral Emotion". Velleman argues for a position that I'm drawn to, viz that rather than love being incompatible with morality (as is commonly thought, because love is partial, morality impartial, so love may drive one, e.g., to save one's spouse rather than a stranger despite morality dictating that they are equally worthy of being saved) love is essentially a moral emotion. But while he argues plausible that there is a moral dimension to love, i.e. it enables one to fully appreciate the intrinsic value of the beloved, it seems that Velleman fails to establish the moral significance of love. That is, I'm not sure that on his picture it's doing anything that more morally valuable than the Kantian feeling of respect. So while Velleman makes love morally respectable (maybe), he hasn't persuaded me that it's a moral emotion. But I haven't read the article all too carefully.

  ¶ 1:36 AM