Argumentative Essay On Moral Luck

Human factors are involved wildly in human behaviors and various social systems, including social laws and religion doctrines. Just like what I mentioned previously, scientists believe that the human life is pre-determined and human’s behavior is inevitable. They consider that if someone has all the information of one person, he or she may get to know how he or she is going to change in advance. But from the point of view throughout the history of human society people often turn to emphasize personal responsibility. Law and legal penalties for criminals act based entirely on the idea of individual “free will”. Most Jewish and Christian also believed that individuals should be responsible for the crime and suspects should be punished. We can imagine a psychology professor who believes determinism would say to a student: "You have to concentrate to your study, otherwise you will get nothing!" You can see the contradiction of human behaviors from this typical and ironic statement above, and notice that there exists a deviation between theoretical knowledge and actual human behaviors.

Waverly was going to tell Lindo of her and Rich’s engagement, but whenever she mentioned him, Lindo cut her off and began to talk about something else. Waverly was convinced that her mother did not have any good intentions, and that she never saw good in people. Due to this, she was afraid of what her mother will say when she would meet Rich. According to Waverly, she and Rich shared a “pure love”, which she was afraid her mother would poison. Waverly planned to go to Auntie Suyuan’s house with Rich for dinner, knowing that her mother would then invite the two over for dinner to her house, and this would give her mother a chance to get to know and warm up to Rich. However, when they went for dinner, Rich did everything incorrectly- he didn’t understand Chinese customs and made several mistakes that were seen as

Luck is many times considered silly or just part of someone’s imagination, but it can really play a big role in what becomes of an individual. In the first chapter, titled “The Matthew Effect”, we

Evil can be categorized into two forms, moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is brought about by bad choices that stem from our free will. Natural evil is bad things that happen to people, whether they deserve them or not. The problem with evil is,

Joseph Conrad once said, “It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck”. Nailer, the main character of Paolo Bacigalupi’s book Ship Breaker, wasn’t born lucky, he was born a ship breaker. Ship breakers are child and adult laborers who spend their days starving, poor, and working away to take the anything valuable off old ships for the big companies. Throughout Nailer’s life, he has suffered through various unfortunate events. However, with a strong belief of luck and having other superstitions, his life becomes more manageable. In Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi demonstrates that being superstitious and believing in various degrees of luck allows people to more easily feel in control of uncontrollable situations.

To be able to have control over a situation, first you need to have control over yourself. We can use as an example Stephen King´s novel Cujo written in 1981. In the book, Donna Trenton´s four year-old son dies and the reason for that is because Donna wasn´t able to grasp control of the situation. Her desperation didn´t allow her to think clearly and she never actually stopped and tried to figure out a solid plan, she just did everything as she went along. If Donna had been able to have control over herself and stop her desperation from clouding her mind, she might have been able to

The bond mothers and daughters share is unique, it’s connection that can only exist between mother and daughter. The article talks about how a mother and daughter don’t always get along the older the daughter gets, and the more independent the daughter becomes. This can relate to the story of the Chinese mothers and their daughters in The Joy Luck Club.

Nagel identifies four types of luck: constitutive, circumstantial, causal, and resultant. He identifies these phenomena to support his claim that almost all our actions are contingent on luck, but that moral judgments are made nonetheless.

There is one question that everyone asks but to which no one knows the answer: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The misfortunes of good people raise problems not only for those who suffer, but also for everyone who wants to believe in a just and livable world and in a fair and compassionate God. Rabbi Kushner, author of "Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People", attempts to bring light to this difficult question. In doing so he evaluates past attempts to explain suffering, offers his own approach to the justification of suffering in today's society, and makes suggestions for how one can deal with suffering and continue his or her journey into the future. This essay will examine these

There are times in life that we attribute good luck to our hard work, dedication or talent but there are some other times when we can say that luck is just a chance that we get. As we can see on the work of this two authors James H. Austin the author of “Four kinds of chance” published in Saturday Review and Robert H. Frank author of “why luck matters much more than you think” published in The Atlantic (May 2016) they show the reader how chances can influence in different ways. After reading their work I consider Robert H Frank article more effectively fulfills his thesis.

The case of moral luck was introduced by Williams Bernard and developed by Thomas Nagel in their articles respectively. Both raised the question whether luck can influence the judgment of morality. In this essay, the definition of moral luck and four kinds of moral luck by Williams and Nagel will be discussed through several case examples, and then followed with some arguments from Judith Andre, Donna Dickenson and David Enoch and Andrei Marmor who disagree with the concept of moral luck.

Nagel identifies four types of luck: constitutive, circumstantial, causal, and resultant. He identifies these phenomena to support his claim that almost all our actions are contingent on luck, but that moral judgments are made nonetheless.

Under a general character-based approach, decisions result from a tendency to act in way that is virtuous. When faced with the moral decisions of daily life, a person of good character usually decides to do what is morally and socially acceptable without much consideration to the specifics of their situation because they are inclined to take action through a strong consideration of their character, as opposed to the consideration of the possible consequences and repercussions. The actions that are made are not dependent on the ever changing environment of the agent, but instead on the agent himself, whose character is evident through his tendencies and usual mannerisms. As a result, one following a character-based approach is consistent and

Generally speaking, it is equated with good things coming to you, but what about when luck saves you from a negative situation. It would be easy to say that luck can’t come from bad things, but it is a fact that it happens. In an example, similar to Spelman, if a person was texting and driving and hit a car head on, killed the other person, but survived, would that make them worse than someone who was texting but missed the other car? If you asked someone this today, they would automatically say that the person that was responsible for a death is both more ethically and morally wrong. This all would fall under the type of moral luck Spelman refers to as resultant moral luck. However, if you scrutinize the details, you start to wonder, did the driver that missed have more luck or was he better at texting and driving? In, all reality both drivers were texting and driving, regardless of the outcome they were both wrong, just in different capacities. So, since I believe this, Spelman would say I am not a follower of resultant moral luck. In my opinion, this does define both

From the film The Joy Luck Club, Chinese girls were supposed to act obedient and respectful to their parents and elders. This included the girls having to abide by each and every Chinese tradition that their parents instilled in them. Girls were also expected to be quiet and considerate to their parents and elders. They were only supposed to speak when spoken to at all times. Acting out against anything their parents enforced upon them was completely unacceptable.