...Ruse and Wilson in �Moral Philosophy as Applied Science� give the example of brother-sister incest avoidance as being an ethical code motivated by an epigenetic rule that confers an adaptive advantage on those who avoid intercourse with their siblings. In this discussion, Ruse and Wilson argue that moral laws disallowing incest are redundant relics of mankind's evolutionary history that provide nothing to mankind but explanations of a hard-wired evolutionary trait (179). I reject this argument. While Ruse and Wilson are undoubtedly correct in believing that mankind's capacity for moral reasoning is a result of natural selection pressure and that most ancient moral laws have an evolutionary basis, I believe that describing the genesis of moral reasoning in this way provides no information about the content of our moral beliefs now. While our capacity for moral reasoning may have evolved for the purpose of informing our otherwise unjustifiable acts with a sense of objective certitude, it is not hard to imagine that this capacity, once evolved, would be capable of much more than simply rubber stamping mankind's collective genetic predisposition. In this paper, I will use the example of an evolutionary explanation against intentional killing for personal gain to argue for the existence of a disconnect between evolutionary biology and ethics. Ruse and Wilson might argue that human beings evolved with a genetic predisposition against murder for convenience. It is easy to see how...
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...that a person should always do good things and never bad things, right? But, what is considered right or wrong? What determines these outcomes? What are driving forces that tell people to act a specific way – if it is not religious or culturally driven? What is it? Before we begin, it should be noted that morality is subjective to the individual and circumstance – there is more than one answer and it is complex. So, why people feel the need to act morally can be discussed in numerous terms and perspectives, and has definitely been debated for years. However, for the sake of simplicity, let’s narrow it down to two categories: for yourself and for others. From here we will explore the perspectives of numerous philosophers such as, Aristotle, Kant, and more who have discussed this topic in order to draw some similarities and conclusions in hopes of potentially answering the broad question that is “why be moral?”. Let’s first take the perspective that one would be moral for your own sake. It can be argued that self-interest is a motivational factor that pushes moral behaviour (because of potential benefits) and regulates bad behaviour (especially if one believes in the possibility of facing negative consequences). From a psychological egoism perspective, it is believed that everything we, as humans, do in life is deeply rooted in self-interest and egoism, where egoism is a doctrine that individual self-interest is the actual motivation behind all conscious actions (moral or immoral)...
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...Joshua Westcott Kohlberg’s Moral Development April 30, 2012 As children’s cognitive abilities mature and expand, so does their ability to reason about moral issues. If we can begin to understand the ways children reason about moral issues, it might help parents and therapists better attune themselves to each child, so as to help each child develop in a positive direction. By attuning to children, the parent or therapist will be better equipped to reason with children at ‘their’ level of development; otherwise, what the adult is trying to communicate will get lost in translation. If we can learn to speak the child’s language, than we can help each child use his or her ‘logic/reasoning’ to effect change in his or her world. Who are the major theorists in the area of moral development? A few of the major theorists in the field of moral development are John Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Elliot Turiel, and Carol Gilligan. Gilligan is a brilliant feminist psychologist who is best known for her 1982 work, “In a Different Voice” (see http://www.amazon.com/In-Different-Voice-Psychological-Development/dp/0674445449/ref=lp_B000APQF3Q_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335926229&sr=1-1). Turiel is best known for developing his ‘domain theory’, which is discussed in his exceptional work, “The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention” (see http://www.amazon.com/The-Development-Social-Knowledge-Convention/dp/0521273056/ref=lp_B001HD1YF4_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335926449&sr=1-2)...
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...dumping raise any moral issues? What are they? What would an ethical relativist say about dumping? At times a company is unable to sell their products because it may cause harm to people or the environment. When a product has been determined by the government to be unsafe and illegal to sell, the manufacturer needs to find a way to dispose of it. This is when dumping occurs. Dumping is the exporting of goods at prices lower than the home market prices. It occurs when manufacturers export a product to another country at a price either below the price charged in its home market or below its cost of production. These overseas countries generally do not have qualified health safety standards. Since dumping involves substantial export volumes of a product, it financially affects the manufacturers of the importing country. This is the case with the Tris-impregnated pajamas. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found that the pajamas contained a flame-retardant chemical Tris, which had been found to cause kidney cancer in children. Because of its toxicity, the sleepwear couldn’t even be thrown away, let alone sold (Barry, Shaw 29). But the pajamas were exported to other countries at 10 to 30 percent of the normal wholesale price. This however is not the only case of dumping. There were also 450,000 baby pacifiers that were exported for sale overseas because they were found to cause deaths in choking babies in the United States. Dumping definitely raises moral issues. Under...
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...101 December 7, 2015 A Moral Realism Believer Ayer claims that any talk about right and wrong, good and bad, is just a matter of “emoting” or expressing one’s feelings while a moral realist would think the total opposite. A moral realist believes that all moral questions are real questions and every answer to those questions can be either true or false. Ayer is labeled as an anti-moral realist due to his fervent claims to his belief. Regardless of anyone’s feelings or emotions, I believe that there is always a reason why the answer should be true and a reason for why the answer should be false. Ayer’s view on moral claim is incorrect because a moral claim is one that attempts to define what is right or wrong. Anti-moral realists believe that emotivism is more influential and moral realists believe that there should be a legit reason behind every answer. The debate between moral realists and anti-realists assumes a variety of claims can be recognized as moral claims. In my opinion, moral realists have common sense. With that advantage, there are a number of powerful arguments on why moral realism is the right way to go which include: the knowledge of a moral realist, the realism/antirealism debate, moral cognitivism and descriptivism, and the truth in moral judgements. “A moral realist believes that there is at least one moral fact, and moral facts are not reducible to non-moral facts. Moral statements are true or false, and at least one moral statement is true. An anti-realist...
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...Why Corporations Should Set Strict Moral Standards More often than not, there are stories about the immorality of corporations and their decisions that impact not only their employees but the people in surrounding communities and the environment. Most corporations have more than one person in charge of making moral decisions. These selected few should set strict moral and ethical standards when conducting business for the benefit of the company, their employees and the rest of the world. In philosophy, there are several subsections that teach the various kinds of moral and ethics. Some of these subsections can be applied to the morality of a corporation while others, when applied, can cause controversy and harm. The following paper will discuss why corporations should be morally just and the benefits that can be derived from this. It will also discuss three different types of philosophical morals and ethics processes that may or may not compliment the benefits. A corporation with good morals have more important priorities that one that does not. One of the most important reasons why a corporation should be moral is because of the people, i.e. the people that work for the corporation, the people that want and use their services or products and the people that built the corporation. Employees might not always see the boss or the CEO every day at work but they should know and experience that their well-being is important to the CEO. Good morals for the employees mean that they...
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...Animals are continually being given unfair moral rights as seen throughout these horribly conditioned factory farms. Mark Rowlands see this and tries to explain his ideals that animals should be given same moral statuses as human beings. He reveals this kind of moral caste system where humans are on the top of the list whereas other species are on the lower rungs of this system. He gives immature reasoning to tell us that it is unfair that there is this sort of caste system as fundamentally we would want things all fair among us. I object his ideas as I feel as though he isn’t looking at it in the perspective of rational agents who happen to be human as they are the ones who decide this caste system through relationships formed either verbally or non-verbally based on biological and primal needs. Rowlands explains throughout his novel, Animals Like Us, that all animals should have similar moral rights as humans do. He describes this visual picture where animals are within a lower class, a lower caste in a huge system that humans had created where humans have the highest moral grounds. Under his moral club theory, he tries to paint us all as hypocrites where if you do not follow his ideals then it would mean you are a hypocrite. To further explain this, he explains that everyone is born, and everything born will be different, whether that be hair color, gender, race, or even species. Thus since no one has control of what someone or something becomes, that must mean that there...
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...convincing? Why or why not? I do find Epstein’s claims that the position of both employers and employees are essentially even with regard to EAW convincing. Epstein talks about the recent trends in the expansion of the legal remedies for wrongful discharges to include approval by judicial, academic and popular circles. Which is one of the reasons I do agree with his claim, there are a lot of laws and regulations that are in place in order to protect both employers and employees employed in EAW companies. EAW offers both parties in my opinion a great deal of flexibility and can improve productivity for both employers and employees. Not having the cushion of a contract can be good for companies. It makes all employees strive to achieve excellence in order to add job security and can also lead to further raises based on performance and at the same time it will increase a company’s performance level because of the added increased productivity within a company. There is a passage that Epstein includes from Payne v. Western & Atlantic Railroad in out text that reads; “[M]en must be left, without interference to buy and sell where they please, and to discharge or retain employees at will for good cause without thereby being guilty of an unlawful act per se. It is a right which an employee may exercise in the same way, to the same extent, for the same cause or want of cause as the employer.” This is so true and is in my opinion the way the EAW works for the most part. For instance I used...
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...A list of sample questions in philosophy Metaphysics: questions concerning the nature of reality, being, or existence Ontology 0 Why is there something rather than nothing? 1 Is it possible that there was a time before now when absolutely NOTHING existed? 2 What is ultimately (or REALLY) real? [Appearance -v- Reality] 3 Is reality fundamentally one or many? [Monism -v- Pluralism] 4 What, if anything, endures through change? 5 Is reality primarily material or spiritual (or mental)? [“Materialism” -v- “Idealism”] 6 Is the “external world” objectively real, or is its existence mind-dependent? If the latter, what mind is it dependent on? My mind? Your mind? The divine mind? 7 Is there a “supernatural” reality, or is nature “all there really is”? [Naturalism -v- Supernaturalism] 8 What is the difference between necessary and contingent being? Is there a necessary being? Is there only one necessary being? Philosophical cosmology 9 What is the cosmos made of? How is it structured? 10 Did the cosmos come into being? If so, how? 11 Will the cosmos cease to be in the future? If so, what does that mean for us? 12 What are the philosophical implications of scientific answers to cosmological questions? Philosophical theology (and the philosophy of religion) 13 Does God exist? [Theism; Atheism; Agnosticism] 14 What is the nature of God? 15 What about the existence of evil (pain, suffering, and disorder)...
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...1. a. whether or not dumping should be permitted is a moral question. b. “Are dangerous products of any use in the third world?” is a nonmoral (scientific) question. c. “Is it proper for the U.S. government to sponsor the export of dangerous products oversea?” is a moral question. d. Whether or not the notification system works as its supporters claim works it nonmoral (factual) question. e. “Is it legal to dump this product overseas?” is a nonmoral (legal) question. 2. Explain what dumping is, giving some examples. Does dumping raise any moral issues? What are they? What would an ethical relativist say about dumping? Dumping is that manufacturers export their products with a cheaper market price to overseas countries which have not qualified the health safety standard. In this case, manufacturers sold young children pajamas which contained dangerous chemical Tris that could harmful children’s health. The second example which is the manufacturers sold 450,000 baby pacifiers that can cause death with choking and selling U.S banned pesticides and drugs. Dumping has raised a moral issue which those manufacturers want to avoid the profit loss. Even though they knows that those products can harm people’s health and safety, they still sold to overseas and claimed that people should be free to make own choice of their benefit. 3. Speculate on why dumpers dump. Do you think they believe that what they are doing is morally permissible? How would you look...
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...CJ Business environment has a big impact on people’s lives and not just theirs but their families as well. Nobody really knows what is going on in the other person live, so I believe that we have to have morals and it really don’t matter what you do for a living. The business environment can be so stressful and can cause a lot of damage with immoral acts. The company as a whole has to make sure that everything and everyone are using morals in the environment. In a business environment, why should people be moral individuals? When we are talking about morals I believe that the business in question should be responsible in making sure that the people that they hire have morals and live by them. The business should also put out what morals they have and want to be followed. When the businesses don’t have morals it can cause lot damage to the company and the people that work for them as well. No morals can destroy lives. Let’s, say for example, In today’s time the people really don’t have a choice on if they health insurance or not. The government is making us have it and if you don’t have health insurance then you have to pay a fine. Some people say " If I can’t afford the insurance then I can’t afford the fine, so the hell with it". But what most people don’t realize is when you file income tax you are paying that fine. To this is immoral because everyone can’t afford health insurance and they live pay check to pay check. It is immoral to make someone...
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...sometimes) erode the idea of personal integrity? Is there any way to be a utilitarian and still respect the integrity of individuals? Integrity is the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. Integrity regards internal consistency as a virtue. One may judge that others “have integrity” to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs and principles they clam to hold. As Williams explains, the principal of utility undermines personal integrity. Utilitarianism focuses primarily on describing morally correct action, not necessarily virtue and character. Williams criticizes how utilitarianism specifies more than what it is for an action to be morally correct by specifying how an individual should think about moral decision. For example, individuals should think about which of the actions available would maximize general well-being and decide to act accordingly. Williams explains that utilitarianism recognizes no personal commitments, causes, or any other such related activities and any individual who tried to live as an utilitarian would not be able to live with integrity (Williams 1973). A utilitarian might argue that his identity-conferring commitments, which Williams argues would undermine his personal integrity, would have compliance with utilitarian principals. So, there would be no conflict between his integrity and utilitarianism because the latter would include the former. Ashford believes that a virtue of utilitarianism is that it highlights the threats...
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...when dealing with issues in our lives: consequential reasoning and non-consequential reasoning. Through an evaluation of my collected works, I will attempt to show an improvement in the areas of analytical skill building, knowledge acquisition, and practical application that are the key objectives of this class. The objective of these three skill areas was to help us better understand how to think ethically and to understand why others think the way they do and how to come to a better understanding of a difference of opinions on various subjects. Analytical Skills Analytical skill building helps to improve your critical reading, writing and thinking skills. In unit 2 Case Study B, I evaluated a situation where an employee was upset with his employer’s treatment of its employees. In analyzing the situation, I was able to come to an understanding of how best the company should respect Mr. Lopez’s rights and moral dignity as an employee by using consequential reasoning: A company should take whatever steps necessary to respect the rights and moral dignity of its employees. As a business organization, a company should consider that their employees are the foundation of their enterprise and the way they are respected and treated within the organization will have a direct reflection in productivity. Expectations and guidelines should be clearly stated within the corporate code of conduct and ethics policy...
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...CJ Business environment has a big impact on people’s lives and not just theirs but their families as well. Nobody really knows what is going on in the other person live, so I believe that we have to have morals and it really don’t matter what you do for a living. The business environment can be so stressful and can cause a lot of damage with immoral acts. The company as a whole has to make sure that everything and everyone are using morals in the environment. In a business environment, why should people be moral individuals? When we are talking about morals I believe that the business in question should be responsible in making sure that the people that they hire have morals and live by them. The business should also put out what morals they have and want to be followed. When the businesses don’t have morals it can cause lot damage to the company and the people that work for them as well. No morals can destroy lives. Let’s, say for example, In today’s time the people really don’t have a choice on if they health insurance or not. The government is making us have it and if you don’t have health insurance then you have to pay a fine. Some people say " If I can’t afford the insurance then I can’t afford the fine, so the hell with it". But what most people don’t realize is when you file income tax you are paying that fine. To this is immoral because everyone can’t afford health insurance and they live pay check to pay check. It is immoral to make someone...
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...explain all we see in the universe. The process of evolution which began with the big bang started the universe and all that is within it. Theists see the world full of design and order and believe it came about through an intelligent creator. Atheists do not believe in God because they have not seen clear proof that he exists (McCloskey, 1968). In his article “On Being an Atheist”, H. J. Mccloskey explains why he believes that God does not exist. The theist believes that an intelligent creator is the best explanation for all that we experience in the universe. Personal experience leads many to begin to think about God. Some wonder about the purpose of their life; while others might be struggling reasons for pain and suffering. It helps to believe that our pain and suffering are for some ultimate purpose and that eventually some good can come from it. Faith in God can be arrived at intelligently through reason. We may not be able to prove that God exists but there is convincing evidence to believe he does. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions about what we believe and why we believe it. Our answers will help to strengthen our own faith and give others something to think about. If something is worth believing, it is worth defending. The cosmological argument concludes that everything in the universe depends on something else for its existence. McCloskey in “On Being an Atheist” concedes that there is a power behind the universe. He however, does not see this power as a necessary...
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