Mcmahan's Epistemic Limitations

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

All primary sources are subjective; they are based on the source’s recollection and how it is remembered in their own memory. The importance of storytelling is one of the main premises in the Things They Carried. Telling a story is an illustration of memory, and memory is prejudice. "By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths" (158). Each soldier is going to have different memories, but most of their experiences are so similar they seem to form a universal truth and a collective memory of all their stories.

I would say that the Jews and African Americans are good examples for this type of propaganda. The reason why I pick these two groups is because African Americans and the Jews had the same thing in common in history as the Japanese Americans did during the mid 1900’s. African Americans had to be slaves during the 1800’s, for they didn’t get there “freedom” till the late 1800’s. The Jewish people were also in the same position as the Japanese Americans; however, the Jews had much worse than what the Japanese Americans had been through because they were being killed and their population had decreases massively. Therefore, both of the groups would react that no matter what ethnicity they are from, or what ancestor they came from, they wouldn’t agree with the foe even if they came from that

Racism is not a factor of the heart, according to Tommie Shelby in “Is Racism in the ‘Heart’?” He writes “the ‘heart’ does not have to be involved in order for an action or institution to be racist” (483). Instead, Shelby argues that racism is based on the effect of a person’s actions on deepening racist institutions or promulgating the oppression of a particular group of people based on their race. The individual intention of a person or the “purity” or his or her heart does not take precedence over the effect of his or her actions. Shelby’s argument is constructed as follows: Individual beliefs can be true or false but not inherently immoral. Therefore, it is not appropriate to morally condemn someone for holding a particular belief.

What has become clear is that I have no idea what he experienced, what he witnessed, what his training entailed, how many friends, neighbors and family members never returned home. He currently lives in a Veterans assisted living facility, where he is reminded daily of that time in his life. Moreover, the wounds and scars never healed and while the racism isn’t condonable, I have a broader understanding of where it comes from.

In his autobiography, An Ordinary Man, Paul Rusesabagina appeals to a sense of remorse, outrage, and sympathy, “Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense.” (Rusesabagina 121-22)

War is obviously top on the list of places for physical pain and tolerance. Trying to stay alive on the battlefield is easier said than done for many soldiers. It is even a challenge to hide from death at their own barracks. There is never a spot where they can completely and full heartedly say they are at ease and out of harm's way. Joseph Behm is a pure example of what happens when you get to comfortable on the battlefield and “because he could not see, and was mad with pain, he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down before anyone could go and fetch him”(60).

The Hurt Locker, a movie which depicts the the War in Iraq, looks at the many different aspects of war. The soldiers in this movie have to endure many severe conditions such as the possibility of dying on the spot because of an IED or trying to diffuse a bomb. Even though the mission is to win in a war, these fighters are still human beings. The soldiers look out for their own comrades, but also want to protect the Iraqis they have befriended. However, there were times when both the Iraqis and even some soldiers needed help, but got no aid.

To achieve this historical report I strived to give a factual, accurate, concise and balanced account using credible references and an unbiased approach to historical events to highlight the following. Contrary to many peoples perception of “For King and Country” there are thousands of individuals who cannot reconcile with their consciences with the taking of human life in the name of Nationalism. The objection of my report is to raise awareness to the fact that Conscientious Objectors are REAL people who face severe punishment in various forms including physical, social, phycological and emotional. It is important to gain an understanding that these conscientious objectors are not objecting as a means of sedition or indolence but are truly refusing service on the basis of their inner sense of what is morally right and wrong.

During WWII, America fought against the holocaust that was occurring in Germany and was spreading to the rest of Europe. The people of America realized they were fighting against the idea that the Aryan race is superior to other races. We fighting against Nazi’s while we were sailing to America with one ship for whites only and another for all other minorities, This is what made America’s people and government realize that they were hypocrites and what they were doing in their own country is what they fighting against in Germany. “Nazism reflected the wrongheaded and dangerous thinking that “the shape of your nose or the color of your skin” had something “to do with human values and culture.” A year later, in The Races of Mankind, Ruth Benedict denounced racism as unscientific”. (A Different Mirror, 339) The returning veterans and women shaped postwar discussion regarding an inclusive democracy by having a variety of powerful movements. The Civil Rights movement was one of them. This is

Both of these points of views are critical in understanding why war should not be glorified in any circumstance. Coming back from war is never easy for a soldier and the ones

Devastation, destruction and atrocity clearly define the savagery of war. This is echoed Michael Marshall’s statement about war. “There is no war without atrocity. War is atrocity, pure and simple: only greed, nationalism and faith help us pretend otherwise”. In this statement Michael Marshall conveys the belief that greed, nationalism and faith are used as excuses for committing the atrocity of war.

As we have discussed many times in class, an ethical issue is an issue that focuses on whether an action is morally right or wrong. Epistemic issues focus on how we know that certain facts are true or how we know what is possible. An example of an epistemic issue could be "how do we know that God is real?". This would be an epistemic question because it inquires about our knowledge and how we have come to that conclusion. An ethical issue could be, "how should we respond to humanitarian issues in foreign countries?". This can be considered an ethical issue because it asks what would be considered a moral decision in a certain situation.

Boghossian’s claim that Epistemic Relativism is a plausible way to interpret knowledge is explained by three dogmatic affirmations. Firstly, there exists no absolute epistemic facts that explain what specific beliefs a piece of information justifies, known as Epistemic non-absolutism. Secondly, if a person, S’s, epistemic judgements are even just slightly possible, it is unjust to express that, ’’E justifies belief B’’ as articulating the claim E justifies belief B. S’s epistemic judgement should be expressed like so— “According to the epistemic system C, that I, S, accept, information E justifies belief B.” (Boghossian 73). This is known as epistemic relationism. Lastly, there exists a multitude of fundamentally different yet equally rational

Now, the justification component of the classical definition of knowledge takes place at the center of recent epistemology. Consequently, various epistemic justification theories as contemporary theories of factual knowledge have been produced with respect to some different classifications of these theories — e.g. internalist theories (foundationalist and coherentist theories), and externalist ones (probabilist and reliabilist theories): While in the former ones justification of belief is internal, in the latter ones, external to the believer's mind/mental life. That is, internal justification of the belief is possible by reflection upon the believer's own conscious state of mind, i.e. upon her internal, doxastic state. In short, the justifiability of her belief is determined by what beliefs she has, and her direct cognitive access to the justification for her belief is required. On the other hand, in externalist justification some important feature of the belief justification is outside the mind of the believer. The externally justifiability of a belief may be a function of the reliability of a belief-forming process, which causes that belief to be a true one, or it may be a function of the probability of the belief. Such factors as reliability, and probability, which play justificatory role, are external, i.e. non-doxastic factors to the believer. She does not have direct access to them, while her beliefs, as being her internal,