Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Taking the Honors
department. Last year, under the
mentorship of professor of philosophy
Hugo Englehardt, he began his inquiry
into “Property Rights and the Post-
Modern Dilemma.” In his readings and
meetings with Englehardt, he
discovered that “you can’t use reason
to justify moral beliefs” and that moral
beliefs are instead tied to the “ethical
communities” that one is associated
with—religions, for example. So, “how
do you justify ownership?” Lega asks.
“Ownership is a moral question. How
do we structure a society in which
people own things?” He adds, “In
which cases should property rights be
limited? You can’t rationally justify
limitations.”
Brad Lega
In preparing for his presentation, Lega
found his Cain coaching to be very
helpful. “They point out the little things,” he says. “‘If you’re going to
stand at the podium for this amount of time, make yourself comfortable.’”
He laughs a little when he remembers that “some people got very conscious
of certain things, like making eye contact.”
Some of the presentations were too technical for him, but everybody,
scientist or humanist, has an opinion on rationality, morality, and property
rights. “They tried to argue with me,” Lega recalls, sounding bemused.
“They tried to say that moral beliefs were rational.”
But far from being intimidated, Lega enjoyed both the intellectual give-andtake
and the challenge of communicating his ideas with nonphilosophers
who brought a fresh perspective to the debate.
“A philosophy student would place me in the field of philosophy,” Lega
says. “It was interesting to see how people outside the field approached it.”
He had never spoken at such length about philosophy before, and the
challenge taught him a great deal. “You couldn’t gloss over anything. You
had to admit where you were unsure.”
After the students come back for the spring semester, they attend more
classes on life in the academy and get their first real taste of postgraduate
life. That is, they do real research.
“For any student to participate in an honest-to-goodness research project is
a transforming experience,” Kinsey says. “No lab course can give the
experience of actually doing research. If you’re in a class, you’re doing the
same experiment as everybody else. Somebody will work the experiment
out. But finding the answer in your own research is completely on you—
and you may fail.”
Before the spring semester is over, all the students will have made second
presentations, this time giving the results of their research. Not every
experiment will have turned out well. But failed experiments are part of
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