Doubt Again

The reread did give me some different inclinations toward some of the characters. The main difference I noticed during the reading was with Sister Aloysius. The second time through, she did not seem nearly as convinced with her own argument as it seemed the first time. Instead, I could feel that she doubted herself, but continued to try to convey certainty. I think that is why she feels so cold to the readers the first time through. It is the lack of confidence in her voice that leads you to believe she does not care. I had more sympathy for Mrs. Muller this time. She was just trying to do what she thought was best for her son, but I think she should have asked more questions. Father Flynn did not really change in my mind. I think his character is pretty well portrayed by the author. I feel that Sister James is easily persuaded, or at least makes others believe that to be so. Maybe she isn't easily persuaded but wants the acceptance of those around her.

Doubt: A Parable

This play is frustrating because it gives no concrete conclusion at the end. We are left to decide what happened for ourselves. This is frustrating to me because it makes the message more disguised. Maybe the point of the play is not to praise one subject and condemn another, but then I don't what the point is. I would say that I sympathized with Flynn for the most part of the book, as Sister Aloysius did not seem justified in her pursuit of Flynn. I felt as though Flynn was accused wrongly and was the subject of some other motive of Aloysius. This changed somewhat at the end of the story and would have changed completely had the truth been explicitly explained. I think that an important passage is the one where Aloysius states that she lied to Flynn in order to make him do something he wouldn't have normally done. I think this is important as it brings up the question of what makes a moral decision become immoral. Does the fact that the consequences may be moral make the action moral? I guess doubt was a good title for this play as that is the emotion it brought out the most from reading it. It was hard to believe any of the characters even though they were all people of the church. I did not like how sure Aloysius was the entire time. It made her seem pretentious. I liked the character of Flynn, but that would change if I were told that the suspicions were proven true. I liked the passion of James and I believe she had a good moral compass, but she is too easy to persuade. She needs to listen to both sides and decide what she believes. The character I liked least was Mrs. Muller. I understand that she does not want to be told how to raise her children, but it is absurd to look past the wellbeing of your child for other reasons.

Abortion: only opinions

First and foremost, I do not believe that frivolous abortions should be performed. I think this act shows callousness of soul and smallness of character. I understand that there are many cases where abortion is acceptable and maybe even necessary.

We have been discussing ethics without regard to specific cases up to this point, but we are now moving onto a very specific, very controversial topic. This topic is abortion and the rights of a fetus. First of all, I think we need to lay out why this topic is being discussed and why it is such a tough issue. Many philosophers that I know consider an act to be immoral if that act affects the health of another in a negative way. There is an exception to that, an exception that I don't think many scholars would disagree with. For the survival and eventual birth of a fetus, that fetus must parasitize the host mother for nine months. Whether or not the mother wants the baby there, her health is diminished by the presence of another organism inside her. This, however, does not mean that her overall fitness has been diminished, as she has the chance to pass on her genetic material (getting off topic now). So the question becomes, is it okay for the host mother to destroy the parasite fetus?

Now how many of us actually look at pregnancy as indicated above. Very few, I would assume, but that is besides our purpose. All we can look at for this discussion is the case that is being presented, and do so as objectively as possible. Let's move on to the actual discussion of abortion and rights associated with the fetus. It seems reasonable to believe that any person who is considered alive has the basic right to life. It also seems reasonable to believe that any person who is dead no longer has that basic right to life. As it stands now, in law, the death of a person is based solely on the subjective judgement of a doctor. From what I understand, a doctor will pronounce someone dead if there is no longer brain function. So it is reasonable to consider a person with no brain function dead. If we take this as our definition of a person who enjoys the right to life, we can make some arguments. The first argument stems from the fact that the fetus gains primitive brain function within the first trimester of a pregnancy. If the fetus has some brain function, it is considered a living person as the law is written now. If the fetus is a living person, then it is reasonable that the fetus should enjoy the right to not be killed unjustly. We must explain this further, however, because pregnancy is a special case as to the definition of unjustly.

We have already discussed how a fetus gained the right to life. We need to discuss whether or not a woman has the right to get an abortion. We can look at this in a couple of different ways, but one seems more obvious than the others based on our definitions to this point. If infringing upon anothers rights can ever justify death, then abortion should be considered reasonable. This means that we must define what justifies murder. Are there ever circumstances in which murder is considered ethical? I would say there are circumstances, such as preservation of my own life. If a person is to the point of killing me, am I justified in killing them first? I would say that this is reasonable to consider just. Therefore, if a fetus is to the point of killing the host mother, it is just for the fetus to be killed first. If I am deprived of food, but not past the point of starvation, am I justified in killing those keeping the nourishment from me? I cannot answer yes to this statement. I believe that I can only kill when it is a situation where I have no doubt that it is either another human or myself. This situation fits well with most pregnancies. Many mothers will face hardships by carrying a baby, but not to the extent where murder is merited.

Rights and Social Responsibility

Where do rights come from? Who or what entitles us the rights we hold so dear? I contend that moral rights do exist, although they are not always protected. First, I feel the need to outline my definition of a moral and legal right. I differentiate these two partially on the consequences of acting out of accordance with the right. If a person infringes upon the legal right of another, that person is subject to penalty imposed by the government enforcement to which that legal right pertains. On the other hand, I see a moral right as something that should be adhered to and infringing upon these rights results in a person being seen as a bad (immoral) person, but does not result in penalty, unless the moral right coincides with a legal right. That being said, I believe that moral rights are universally and individually owned. What I mean by that is that every individual (human, for the sake of this discussion) have certain moral rights from the start of life (you can pick where you want life to start). These rights are inherited by all humans from the fact that we have reason. I will use reason as defined by early philosophers (take Aristotle's definition for example). The rights obtained by birth I would term natural or human rights. One of the human rights that I believe exists in this manner is the right to life. I believe that all humans have the right to life. Even though these moral rights are bestowed upon humans just because of their humanity, it does not mean that the rights will be enforced. Most humans live in some sort of community. It takes action from the community to enforce even the most basic human rights to ensure that these rights are protected. I recognize that there may be certain rights that do not exist at birth, as well. These rights may have arisen as humans adopted communities as a way of life. Some things are not necessary to own as rights when alone, but suddenly become a reality when living in a community. Now, to change topics, I will move on to social responsibility as I see it. I recently had a discussion about politics with a friend of mine and it actually did not get out of hand. I did come up with a realization of the nature of society today and its relation to politics. The specific topic being discussed was the basic nature of Democrat vs Republican economic policies (note that all of the discussion of political party policies come only from my perception and are not based on any affiliation with either party). We (my friend and I) agreed that the basic plan proposed by Republicans puts money in the hands of the highest levels of the biggest companies in America in hopes that the money will work its way down the market to all branches of society. We also agreed that the Democrats' plan would take money from (figuratively) the highest levels of the biggest companies in America with the intention that it could be directly given to those at the lower end of society. Again I want to say that these are assumptions of the basic economic plans, not from any reputable source. We noticed, however, that neither plan would work and this is why. The Republican plan assumes that the people in the highest levels are willing to share with those below them. I contend that people who have risen to this level have only done so by not sharing (this is also from my own observation). The Democrat plan assumes that giving money to the people in the lower branches will allow them to climb and to increase the middle class. I don't think this will work as the big wigs in the company will have to decrease wages or move to another country to achieve the level of wealth that they once had (something I see as a big problem right now). I believe that America has lost the sense of Social Responsibility. This is my term for the belief behind JFK's famous speech. He said something along the lines of "Ask not what your country can do for you..." you know the rest. If we look more towards the overall goal of things, I believe our country and individual communities can rise back to the level of world respect that we once held. Sorry this is so long.

Mill on Justice

Mill's argument pertaining to justice is just as complicated as his definition of justice. He tries to lay out the origins of the words justice and right and wrong to explain how they are connected with morals. He determines that somewhere along the line, right and wrong were turned into law, while justice deals with impartiality and punishing fairly for crimes committed. He noticed that a moral aspect of justice comes from sympathy of humans and their ability to retaliate to wrongs committed against them. This means that a person will align themselves with a victim in wanting a person guilty of crime to pay for that crime. He notes that the other part of justice, while not determining morality, does give justice the attractiveness of the subject. Overall, what I think he is trying to say is that the idea of justice poses a strong argument against the greatest good argument, but that justice is actually a special case of utilitarianism.

Mill again

On Friday we discussed the definition of proof as proposed by J.S. Mill. I think that Mill has a valid point in terms of proving philosophy, but overall I don't think that this definition of proof holds water. He describes proof as something that cannot be known to be true but only reasons for why something could be true. This definition of proof requires that there be some recipient of the proof in order for the argument to be true. What I mean by this is that without someone to hear the reasons why an argument is true, the truth is unknown. I think, however, that proof must validate an argument without the use of a listener. There must be some other way to validate an argument, rather than just telling a person a bunch of reasons as to why they should change their mind. I do recognize that mathematical proofs cannot be used in other means of rationality. They are too limited in scope to portray the world around us. I do feel that scientific proof, or proving a null hypothesis wrong, can be used outside of science. With Mill's definition of proof, it is very hard to challenge his arguments as all he needs to do is just state another abstract hypothetical situation where his belief is held true. I like the way Mill writes and I think his ideas are valid. We will see how the rest of the book goes.

O'Neill

Onora Oneill is a modern Kantian. After discussion of her in class, I learned how she tries to apply Kant's views to a modern issue. Her belief is that children's rights cannot be grounded on moral rights, rather they must be grounded in moral obligations. This argument says that the rights of children would be better represented by the law if we look at it in this way. I think this is because children only have the rights that are provided by the fulfillment of obligations by the adults around them. Failure of adults to fulfill these obligations therefore should be the basis of the laws about children, rather than laws stipulating the rights that children should have. I think her argument is a valid one to a point. I don't know where she draws the line between children and adults because this could change the ability of children to fulfill their own obligations.