who is having sex with whom?

The normative facts, or statutes, as distinct from superstitions, religious beliefs and myths, and crowd/group/mob psychology are very different from natural law which is no longer abided in any jurisdiction in the West.

As for problems like slavery or intolerance of others due to race, ethnicity or class, we do live in a capitalist society where socio-economic status and kinship terminology 'set' social relations on a stage with definite determining factors. Therefore, it is hard not to perceive that propaganda, govt policies, and rank hierarchy in the societies of the West give many people the sense of being an authority over others and positing many people as servants or inferior or persona non grata.

The gestalt switch between citizen and criminal, between honesty and liars, between the prejudiced-asocial and the social is a fine line that was apparently worse under natural law and religious orders and is today somewhat better under the positive laws of the judicial system, but is this any way to order a society with laws and punishments and the exceptions - the breaking of laws without punishments!

It helps in the calculation of consequences, in the prediction of behavior but there are so many variants - I think many people have a natural law heart and are astonished or resisting positive law normativity. There are laws, norms, judgments which transcend and contain impulses and beliefs.

As for monogamy, we live in societies and cultures where the belief in monogamy is countered by No Fault Divorce, remarriage, and so-called adultery - a euphemism for deviance. The effect of monogamy is not only jealousy and its behavioral-attitudinal nexus but its social restriction: stay at home, no friends, impersonal/depersonalization...

                                                       Teaching philosophy

 The pragmatic aspect of teaching philosophy is often contrasted between Inquiry and Direct Instruction. The objection to Inquiry approaches is the non-conformist or individualism of the approach which delimits the use of Direct Instruction which tends to put many students in a situation of incomprehension. The prior knowledge and skills of each particular class of students is a necessary factor to determine the trade-off between Inquiry and Direct Instruction, or how much guidance is appropriate

One of the significant consideration for understanding the learner, and thus deciding upon a particular teaching method at the moment under the social-political context of daily life in the classroom, is to define motivation. In past Motivation was considered an attribute of the learner. Now, motivation resides in the interaction between the learner and the subject matter, so the teacher focuses on what the relation may be between the student's dispositions and the particular subject matter the teacher wants learned. It is ultimately the learners who make choices about how to construct knowledge.

 Kuhn in her article (Is Direct Instruction an Answer to the Right Question) states that

we need to focus our attention on what sense students are making of things. The key to improving learners’ performance is examining what it is that they are undertaking to learn, what they think it means, how they construe the meaning of this material in relation to themselves, and whether they can see it as worth learning.

I value students’ centered approach in teaching. Being a lecturer I believe that The role of a professional educator, like any other professional, eliminates love, hatred, blind faith, submissive attitude, emotional, and personal elements from the classroom, especially today when casteism, capitalism, racism, sexism in its many forms, bullying, social class distinctions, etc., can be so disruptive to a particular cooperative setting.

Really our personal teaching philosophy only becomes important to the parts of a program for which we are responsible and they must fit in to the organisational needs, how we teach has to be pragmatic. If your teaching very large groups it very much limits your options but its a good idea to consider the assessment process as a part of the teaching, it focuses the student’s attention and always consider the learning outcomes these tell you what you want to achieve, good outcomes should be measurable so putting something in about evaluating sessions is a good idea.

This means before you start you know what you want to achieve and know how you’re going to check if you've achieved it. You’re going to have to match this to your particular needs

I'll try to give an example, one of the programs I lead was for people who already had a professional qualification and who worked in mental health. It was around developing skills in Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy. In the specification document in the teaching and learning section, I put;

As psychotherapy itself can be described as a process of social learning.  It is useful to utilize teaching and learning strategies that are congruent with the theoretical and philosophical ideas underpinning the chosen model. Therefore, to facilitate learning, a range of approaches, consistent with Cognitive and Behavioral theories and practice will be used to inform the methods of delivery.

Initially the strategies are designed to facilitate the development of the knowledge structures or cognitive schema's that will underpin future learning. To facilitate the learning of a wide range of ideas, early in the course much of the content will be delivered using didactic teaching techniques, with some individual supervision to link the content of the modules to their practice. Over the length of the course the students will need to elaborate on these knowledge structures in terms of depth or level of learning and breadth of knowledge. This will be facilitated by more student centered, practice related content used to focus discussions and review by the whole group. As students will be from varied backgrounds in relation to their profession, area of practice and previous learning experiences, the use of their past and current experiences will be an important part of this learning process. Skills development will require an increasing use of role play. The assessment process will reflect this increased emphasis on practice informed by theory

The techniques used will reflect the view that learning is a developmental process and that methods to facilitate learning should reflect the student’s particular needs at the different stages in this process.

MORALITY AND CULTURE

Morality does not depend on culture. What is right and what culture designates as what one may say or think or do, or how to judge, may be different.

Culture changes individuals thru socialization, legal requirements and institutional forces; individuals change culture thru discussion, critique, insights and innovations, and rebellion.

Culture defines what is right in the legal sense, culture is at its base, the law. The law does change also.

The moral - legal difference is where cultural right or law and moral judgment conflict. If there is an ethical totality, then the legal and moral viewpoints have to equilibrate.

Another way of looking it this is to speculate on the degree of plurality in a culture. I don’t mean that the law or justice is different for different groups, but that difference in viewpoint, worldview, perspective, understanding, feelings and attitudes is accepted without too much violence. The opposite is despotism which is too common in work organizations, family arrangements and relationships.

Individual autonomy should be recognized as the goal of development in our life.

Generally speaking, most people are only concerned with rules, laws and regulations, not with right or wrong and why.

Moral development also demonstrates a gap between moral judgment and moral action. Persons who can state what is right or wrong do not necessarily act morally. This is most obvious in racism and sexism which Gordon Allport discusses in “Prejudice.” Specifically, he investigated cases where people act prejudicially but admit in interview that prejudice is immoral. I don’t think Allport got at the reasons for the covert prejudice, eg mating practices and legal marriage laws, cultural pride and family pride, but he does point to this problem.

Hegel critiqued Kant over Kant’s natural law theory of rights which established the antimony between duty and inclination. Hegel and Kant however both point to the problem of the lack of control over thinking - psychological havoc and the wish to harm being so common!

Without going into the bush, the problem is that the inclination to conform overrides the duty to be fair, in many cases.

Usually people are not giving reasons or justifying themselves. They are giving orders and taking advantage of any legal loopholes they can find; the only venue or context of justification - explanation and reasoning - is in a court of law, and even then perjury occurs.

For example, parents make up superficial reasons for children during their why-phase otherwise it’s discipline and psychological control. Organizations and kinship structures are bastions of coercion completely eclipsing any concept of autonomy, by any definition of the term.

If freedom means anything, we only experience its loss.

People see themselves as out for number one, themselves. The only way they accept being a subordinate is by contract - the rules and regulation way - this is not morally acceptable to them but merely a condition of the “natural social reality.” Incentives are used for their cooperation but strict disciplining also lurks begins their backs and over their heads.

“Good” is not a clear standard and rather immature at that - responsibility and honesty as well as practicality are the missing factors.

To believe that people think of themselves as good yet cannot explain conflict means that good is just an appearance!

Some conflicts are misunderstandings, most are mistreatments by one against another: superfluous domination.

The issue is whether an inequality is required for practical and technical reasons or whether the behavior and or psychological interaction is superfluous, unnecessary and/or based on false beliefs, habits or alienation, eg prejudice, status, pride, etc.

This bit about being good, a good boy or good man or good wife or whatever conceals the effects a person has, and the degrees of affect that a person has to others and experiences from others are needs, drives or feelings. The problem is their compulsiveness and rigidity. Some people never change, they want others to kow tow to them and they mistreat others, induce emotional blackmail, and of course never show any respect.

Respect was the basis of the moral law; that cannot be said today bc even if another shows behavioral candor and expresses apparent honesty, their psychological attitude of resentment is often just as transparent as their speech!

So, I don’t buy anyone's “good” self attributions - one must be lacking in certain experiences of learning what is right and wrong, or forgetting, to think they are good in a moral sense which is really nothing but an impression that you conform and without awareness of the laws and rules you unconsciously follow which you might question and even resist. It’s a long way to the boundary of conventions which can just as quickly bite you whether you follow them or not!

Without being naive about introspection, reflection, self-knowledge and moral awareness, there are multiple meanings of good, and none are very significant - people think of themselves as mediocre, blasé and stereotyped.

People in conflict think they are right but these are not moral judgments, reasons are not given, descriptions are not reflected upon, the desired outcomes and consequences are not moral outcomes. Each believes they represent the common good and thus are justified in exploiting and dominating the other. The feelings and affects are not moral feelings, often they are clearly immoral: sadistic and contemptuous! Force and the desire to harm lie behind any claims to care, or love. There is no self-sacrifice, no patience, and no real discussion. The rights of the other are trammeled by one’s own sense of “being right.” The degree of disrespect, of blatant immoral responses if any real responses are even proffered, is even considered normal and justified in their self-righteousness.

When we consider our impressions or what stimulates us,  consider epidemiology and sociological statistics, then the perception of human motives and feelings will turn.

When people in certain groups characterize their self-understanding, as good and yet engage in terrorism, or sadism, or despisement and contempt, certain terms like macho, chivalry and patriarchal authoritarianism come to mind. For example, ISIS is a cult that practices sharia law - stoning, chopping off of limbs and heads, sadistic murder, and has been fighting a war against its own people and several nations! So, it looks like they think they are very very "badass." But, whatever vocabulary characterizes their self-understanding, and it is not "good!"
If they reflect and they hold any moral standards, they would immediately recognize their self as bad!

So either they are deceiving or they have a false conscience.

STRAIGHT UP AND QUEER

The problem is that queer politics does not occur only in upper middle class settings, it is that so-called heterosexuals engage in homosexual behaviors and do not then align their identity with their behavior, and vice versa, especially among the working classes.  Heterosexuals label others identities as homosexuals, gay, lgbtq, whatever, regardless of the lack of any homosexual behaviors, and even under conditions where the person being labeled is conforming to heteronormative lifestyles: successful transition from loser virgin to married cuck!  Identity becomes a linguistic object distinct from any behavior and the labeling process of the other as gay-queer is a substitute for racism (in both directions: by the majority character against the minority character, and by the minority character against the majority character - racism is not simply a one-way process), classism and ageism.

The issue is not the number of lgbtqs in the population. The problem is that all sexual expressions are restricted. People are socialized in a sex repressive manner and then there are the legal issues related to sexual behavior, e.g. harassment, abuse, rape, assault, etc.  Heteronormativity is not merely the restriction of sexual expressions to the minimal sexual behaviors needed to form a family and the family roles of husband, wife, father, mother where all other family roles are prohibited from sexual activity or expressions, and then the legal framework of the State which orders the marital regulations in a doubly binding Family x State dualism.

Heteronormativity also involves the perverted form of heterosexual identity as engaging in abusive homosexual behaviors, including labeling of others as homosexual in order to dominate, but not changing their identity to align with their behaviors. So, many straight people engage in homosexual behaviors, especially homosocial behaviors, while maintaining a heterosexual identity. The problem is that identity and behavior are differentiated for some people who have the social capital to reject the naming of their behavior as implicating their identity while at the same time forcing others to embody an identity which is not established by their behaviors or sticking some of the people with labels that align with their behaviors. Some people are seeking surgery for sexual reassignment because they are completely unable to reconcile the social power that has labeled their identity with their gender!

RACE

The real issue is that race is the representative sign for mate selection. In anthropology it is called exogamy and there is a demarcation line, called race. The practice is endogamy or marry-in your own race. There is some miscegenation but this is usually mediated by class. The ""NORM"" is anti-miscegenation. Since all of the so-called races, even ethnicities practice these marriage rules, interbreeding or cross-cultural relationships or interfaith marriages become controversial.  Race is not realized at the genetic level since all humans can interbreed, but race is realized at the cultural and political levels. Today, we are experiencing increasing integration of the "races," that is, organizations are wiling to hire individuals of varied racial backgrounds if their social capital, e.g. education, is appropriate. But, we are not experiencing an increase in "assimilation" or intermarriage. Some groups intermarry more than others, but the White-Black intermarriage rate is low, whereas, the Asian-any other group is the highest.

Great  Philosophers Never Marry because they develop Libido towards ideas.  They are spiosexual. 

Once Nietzsche’s remark that true philosophers never marry and that Socrates did so only ironically.  The number of philosophers who never married is startling: Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, John Locke, Benedict Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein are some of the other prominent names that could be added to the list. 

FALSIFICATION VS VERIFICATION OR WHY POPPER BEAT AYER?

The difference between verification and falsification is that verification looks merely for the evidence stated in the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is 'all swans are white,' and the scientist looks out and observes only white swans then he takes this evidence as verifying the hypothesis. Falsification however is the event where the hypothesis is refuted by evidence of a black swan. Now, the scientists know that the hypothesis is false. In effect, Popper is saying that we cannot know by induction whether an hypothesis is truth, but we can know if it false and therefore we should set up falsification experiments or sincerity and severity tests.

The definition of corroboration is messy: an observation statement supports an hypothesis when it follows from, agrees with, or is an instance of the hyp. However, for Popper this is not a severe test which attempts to refute the hypothesis and searches for counter instances.  Also, Popper stated that the term, 'degree of confirmation or corroboration' seems to reduce induction to probability which he thought was wrong because 'a degree of' does not lead to practical results.

Where Carnap posited a degree of confirmation, Popper claimed that degree of corroboration meant in terms of 'logical content' and not 'amount of evidence.' Also, he claimed that corroboration of an hyp. could increase if rival theories were falsified or refuted and where evidence emerged which was completely unexpected given the original conditions and background knowledge of the hyp. and test statements. Popper was trying to differentiate inductive logic from probability logic.