Analysis Of ' Natural Goodness ' By Philippa Foot Essay

When there are many biocentric individualists appealing to extend the moral standing to the other creatures than human, they always focus their minds on the every individual in the system no matter whether this individual is either conscious or non-conscious. Like the Taylor argued, “conscious or not, all are equally teleological centers of life in the sense that each is unified system of goal0oriented activities directed toward their preservation and well-being.” (taylor, 210). Gary Varner, as one member in the group of the biocentric individualism, is also having the similar argument that every non-conscious and conscious entity should have the moral standing in the different way. In this essay, I will first dispart and reconstruct Gary Varner’s argument into four premises and then indicate how it contradicts with the Peter Singer’s argument whose view is deviate from that of Varner in terms of the required conditions with which giving one entity moral standing.

When natural comes to mind, what do people think about? What is natural in the grocery stores? What behaviors do we do naturally? Does natural mean a good or bad? In “Why Doesn’t Natural Mean Anything Anymore” by Michael Pollan, he analyzes the word “natural”.

In the introduction of Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston’s book , Environmental Ethics: An Anthology, the authors explain the basic concepts of ethics: more specifically environmental ethics, and how they apply to everyday life. The main concepts discussed include moral agents, moral patients, anthropocentrism, weak or broad anthropocentrism, indirectly morally considerable, and directly morally considerable. These concepts are the foundations to the environmental ethics that Light and Rolston wrote about; however, in regards to the short story written by J. Lanham titled: “Hope and Feathers: A crisis in birder identification,” the two terms most predominately relating to the text are moral patients and moral agents. Lanham, in this text, describes the epitome of what it means to be a good moral agent, as interpreted by Light and Rolston, where others failed.

Every day we are faced with certain situations that challenge us with how to act in an ethical manner. It can be human nature to feel unsure or conflicted with the correct moral choice. Some can say that one should know how to handle such dilemmas and others may say that there should be a reference of some sort to help guide through such conflicts. Sometimes we know the answers and sometimes we are unsure of how to handle certain situations. Most times we go through life wondering what we should do. As I become further educated on the different theories of ethics, I believe there are answers that are available in guiding one through an ethical dilemma and or judgment. I will discuss Vincent Ruggiero’s three basic criteria, Robert Kegan’s order of consciousness, the three schools of ethics and the correlation between all three.

    Challenging the strict deterministic confines of literary naturalism, which hold that "the human being is merely one phenomenon in a universe of material phenomena" (Gerard 418), Edith Wharton creates in The House of Mirth a novel which irrefutably presents the human creature as being subject to a naturalistic fate but which conveys a looming sense of hope that one may triumph over environment and circumstance if one possesses a certain strength of will or a simple faith in human possibility.

ABSTRACT: Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) may be read in the way Cleanthes (and Philo as well) reads Nature, as analogous to human artifice and contrivance. The Dialogues and Nature then are both texts, with an intelligent author or Author, and analogies may be started from these five facts of Hume's text: the independence of Hume's characters; the non-straightforwardness of the characters' discourse; the way the characters interact and live; the entanglements of Pamphilus as an internal author; and the ways in which a reader is also involved in making a dialogue. These and other analogies should reflect upon the Author of Nature as they do upon Hume's

The book starts to build up the framework for resolving right versus right based off of Aristotle’s view of sleep ethics. Sleep ethics relies on “insights, feelings, and instincts” (Badaracco, 42) to solve moral dilemma and is also known as ethics intuition. Aristotle highly view intuition because it is “more reliable in deliberation than detached intellectual judgments” (Badaracco, 52) and that it “could penetrate to the essence of the issue” (Badaracco, 52). Aristotle’s sleep ethics supplements criteria to denounce me-ism and support development of ethical character. He purposefully made the criteria vague for people “to reflect on who they are and what they hope to become, to feel and act on what they cares the most deeply about, to make commitments and try to live by them” (Badaracco,

In “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives”, Philippa Foot argues against Immanuel Kant, that morality exists in hypothetical imperatives rather than categorical imperatives. For Kant, categorical imperatives alone serve as moral commands, and it would be impossible for a moral system to be based on hypothetical imperatives because such imperatives serve as means to ends and result from maxims that cannot be universalized into perfect duties. Despite this, Foot holds that acting on many hypothetical imperatives can be morally praiseworthy and can even serve as the basis of moral judgments. Although I agree with Foot that hypothetical imperatives can have moral worth, in this paper, I will argue that a morality based on the purposes that hypothetical imperatives are directed toward appears to be circular. To do this, I will explain Foot’s theory of how morality is known and binds. Then, I will argue that this theory is insufficient to explain the moral purpose that hypothetical imperatives must be directed toward, thus begging the question of what is the moral basis of the purpose directed toward in the hypothetical imperative.

In “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” Philippa Foot argues that moral judgments are in hypothetical imperatives rather than categorical imperatives. For Kant, categorical imperatives are actions that are good in themselves and do not depend on desires, while, hypothetical imperatives are “actions that are good to some purpose” (306). According to Foot, hypothetical imperatives alone serve as the basis of moral judgments because categorical imperatives give us no reason to obey them. In this paper, I will explain foots argument that moral judgments are hypothetical imperatives. I will then argue that that Foot’s theory of moral judgments fails in two ways. First, placing moral judgments in hypothetical imperatives fails to designate moral from immoral contingent ends, and second, the hypothetical imperative weakens morality by making it too optional. To show this, I will first argue that placing moral judgments in hypothetical imperatives begs the question of what is the moral basis of its own contingent end. I will then propose a decision procedure for determining the moral value of the contingent ends of hypothetical imperatives. Then I will argue that the Leningrad does not solve and that basing moral judgments in hypothetical imperatives still makes morality too optional.

Both in and out of philosophical circle, animals have traditionally been seen as significantly different from, and inferior to, humans because they lacked a certain intangible quality – reason, moral agency, or consciousness – that made them moral agents. Recently however, society has patently begun to move beyond this strong anthropocentric notion and has begun to reach for a more adequate set of moral categories for guiding, assessing and constraining our treatment of other animals. As a growing proportion of the populations in western countries adopts the general position of animal liberation, more and more philosophers are beginning to agree that sentient creatures are of a direct moral concern to humans, though the degree of this

One of the most controversial topics in modern philosophy revolves around the idea of non-human animals being considered human people. Controversy over what makes up an actual person has been long debated. However, society deems it as a set of characteristics. The average person normally does not realize how complicated a question this is, and in fact many scientists, philosophers, and individuals will side differently on this specific topic. I personally do not believe that animals are capable of being human people, but throughout this argumentative paper I will address critical views presented from multiple philosophers on why this seems to be the case.

There are a variety of different ethical systems that have developed of the course of millennia. However, even though the subject has been covered so thoroughly, it is still heavily debated. The varieties of ethical systems that are in existence look at various ethical problems from different perspectives and can be applied differently in different circumstances. Because of the subjective aspects to applying ethics, they can be as much an art as they are a science. Ethics are something that must be practiced and really cannot be perfected. In this way, studying ethics is a continual process that does not really stop. This paper will argue that ethics are the most important subject that an individual can pursue.

In our society today, we are mostly challenged by two questions: ‘is it right to do this or that? And ‘how should I be living in society?’(Bessant, 2009). Similar questions were greatly discussed in the history by our ancestors in their philosophical discussions. The most ancient and long-lasting literature on moral principles and ethics were described by Greek philosopher Aristotle. He had an excellent command on various subjects ranging from sciences to mathematics and philosophy. He was also a student of a famous philosopher. His most important study on ethics, personal morality and virtues is ‘The Nicomachean Ethics’, which has been greatly influencing works of literature in ethics and heavily read for centuries, is believed to be

I assert that for a moral system to be necessary and applicable, there must exist a moral agent who possesses both the desire and the ability to choose. By denoting certain actions or ways of being as better, a moral system implies that there are also other potential actions and ways of being that are worse. The individual must choose between them. Without this element of choice, an action has no moral qualification. For example, a computer acts, but it does not choose its action. Consequently, while a computer can be judged better or worse in its ability to carry out an action, it cannot be judged responsible for the action. Rather, the person who uses or creates the computer is in fact responsible, for it is that person who chooses for it to act in a particular way. In a moral system, choice, responsibility, and the viability of judgment are linked inextricably.

Experiencing subjects of a life, in the eyes of Regan, are argued to have an inherent value, a basic right that is equal amongst individuals. Regan believes that because an individual is a subject experiencing life, said subject has an inherent value. Regan notes that critics argue that only humans have inherent value, but if such delegation of species takes place, speciesism, a form of discrimination, the fact of the matter becomes essentially immoral. The reduction of a subject’s inherent value based on grouping of species is indeed a form of inequality…of speciesism. He argues that in order for inherent value to be portrayed equally, discrimination of the sort cannot be morally acceptable, nor tolerated. Regan accepts that simply saying that humans have more inherent value than animals is not a rational justification. One can say that an individual’s mother has more worth than a dog’s mother; however, on what grounds does this argument lie? This is merely an irrational and immoral statement that degrades an individual. In turn, the justification of which individual has more