Virtuous Minds By Phillip Dow Summary

In the essay Plain Truth, James Chalmers believed that the colonies could not win a war against England, because Chalmers believes that America’s army is not strong enough to fight against the British. Chalmers recalls from Common Sense how it mentions that America has the largest disciplined army under the heaven, but if that is the truth, America wouldn’t need support from either Spain or French. Also, neither Spain or French would help America, because if they did, it would encourage their royal colonies to fight for their independence as well. America by its own power at this stage without the help of other countries would not be strong enough to be able to go against the British. Chalmer also mentions how common people would not fight

In chapter 2 the author discusses the difference between virtues and morals. “Virtues are qualities of a person that make that person a good person in community, and that contribute to the good of the community, or to the good for which humans are designed. They are qualities of character. For example, a good person has integrity and seeks justice. Moral ideals in this sense are moral aspirations to strive for, out beyond human reach. This then creates an ethics of moral idealism.” The author also talks about Matthew chapter 5 and the Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes. He talks the idealistic interpretation of the Beatitudes; there is also a grace – based prophetic interpretation, and how shall we relate gospel virtues to traditional virtues.

What is morality? Where does our sense of morality come from and why is it important for us to know? The cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, and scholar, Steven Pinker discusses this in his essay, “The Moral Instinct”. In this essay, Pinker claims that our morality sense is innate, it constantly changes, and it is universal among each culture. Pinker also explains that moral sense shapes our judgement as it is something that we value and seek in other people. The science of the moral sense is important since it shows how morality impacts our actions and it explains why we act in certain ways.

Every day in life we have to face tough decisions whether their good or bad. We have to makes decisions in regards to family, friends, work, and school. For this purpose, we have ethics that we use in our everyday lives. According to the book The Moral Life written by Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn, ethics is defined as the study of morality using the methods of philosophy, and morality concerns beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or characters (pg.1, 2014). There will be times when our personal ethics and believes will be challenged by others who have different views and believes than ourselves. Ethics is used when a problem arises and we need to solved that problem based on our own ethics and believes. Going into the nursing profession, I will have to apply different forms of moral ethics when dealing with my patients such as cultural relativism ethics, virtue ethics, and ethics of care.

John Paul Lederach’s The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace goes could only have been written by someone who had spent many years in the field of conflict management. With its underlying focus of the essence of peacebuilding, it looks far beyond what one may learn in any textbook or seminar. While the first 8 chapters of the text are ripe with areas for further analysis, here I will focus only on theme, found in one chapter, in the interest of brevity. In chapter 2 of The Moral Imagination we are introduced to real life micro-case studies. The cases aim to help the reader understand how people experiencing violent conflict throughout the world have worked to “transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our community,” building on Lederach’s statement on why the book was written. That being said, we can see that Lederach is operating under the assumption that current day peacebuilding and conflict management is not working as well as it should. It is clear that he thinks there is something more that needs to be involved in current strategies and models. He believes we must move from looking at actors in a conflict as separate involved parties and instead view parties as “a web of relationships which include our enemies.” This requires a shift in thinking for those in thefield of peacebuilding and for those involved in the conflict, but in making this shift, we can look at conflicts as existing within our communities rather than between our

Philip E. Dow wrote the book, Virtuous Minds, as a mission to make intellectual character a priority in a world of laziness, cheating, and dishonesty. In the workplace, educational institution, and in everyday life these vices run rampant. It is important to Dow we see how intellectual character is a virtue in our lives, and our relationships with God and people. In part one of the book Dow goes through, “The Seven Intellectual Virtues”, chapter by chapter. The first, is intellectual courage. To be intellectually courageous is to earnestly seek to know truth. Earnestly seeking truth may be frightening, it requires you to open yourself to threatening ideas that could change the way you think. This bravery is what promotes growth in our daily

We are born with faculties like we are with passions. “We are not made up of good or bad nature; we are not praised nor blamed”(page 225, Mayfield). This quote is explaining with passions and faculties are how we feel and desire which is neither right nor wrong, good or bad. Since passions and faculties are not defined, state of character is virtue. State of character is our actions and our habits. “The virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well” (page 225, Mayfield). In order to have true virtue you need to act to “accordance with a golden mean of moderation” (page 78, Palmer). This means that you need to find an intermediate so you will be praised and succeed. You can’t take too much or too little. Too much for someone could be too little for someone else, therefore each person needs to find their own individual mean.

In one edition of “The Ethicists,” the idea of falsifying one’s name on an application in order to avoid unconscious gender or racial bias was discussed. The group went through several issues with the topic: the importance of cultural identity, the conflict with affirmative action, and limitations on lying. However, the general consensus by the end of the discussion was that if one was so determined to avoid bias on the basis of their name, they could legally change their name rather than falsifying their information. Kenji Yoshino’s perspective – which seemed to derive itself from his legal knowledge – was the driving force behind the group’s consensus as he claimed it would no longer be name falsification if you actually changed your legal

In philosophy there are many theories that philosophers argue, James Rachels argues the main points of moral relativism, where he describes the differences within cultures. Philosophers attempt to prove their theories to be true, but it can be complicated because if someone proves one premise false of your argument then the entire argument is invalid. There are different types of relativisms that favor moral relativism, such as, personal belief relativism, societal belief relativism, and then there is the cultural beliefs argument. All of these topics of relativism fall into the same category as moral relativism, meaning they all have the same general statement. Which is one cannot declare what is morally right or morally wrong. Moral relativism is the umbrella term and the others are points that can affect it. Moral Relativism claims that there is no objective truth concerning morality, therefore no one can draw a line between what is right or wrong.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”, stated Oscar Wilde, writer and poet. The narrative Perfect Peace by Daniel Black tells the story of a boy named Paul Peace, who was born Perfect Peace and spent the first eight years of his life believing he was a girl. Black’s use of character development and setting causes readers to question his or her definition of individuality and provokes awareness of our own selfish ideas concerning how the roles of other people in our life should be defined.

One of the fundamental requirements in modern philosophy is impartiality. Impartiality is the idea that all people are morally equal and that we should treat everyone’s interests as equally important (James Rachel). However, if you come to think of it, you will question whether or not impartiality is really an important feature of a moral life. In “The Ethics of Virtue”, James Rachel gave an example of any mother. A mother cannot be expected to care for all children equally as for her own, and there is nothing wrong with that. In this case, a moral theory like virtue ethics can account for all. Some virtues are partial (friendship, love) and some are not (generosity). Virtue ethics provide an understanding of the nature of these

To conclude, the efforts to use moral enhancement to further empower human virtues that help provide moral facilitation, and education of virtues is something that has already been regulated through psychiatry. Chemical and medical intervention have been a powerful regulator for those who lack self control, empathy, intelligence and positivity closer to a societal norm. Many individuals, however seem to think that they do not have all the same moral virtues that they would like. If we were to look what an ideal posthuman model of moral enhancement would go beyond being just a therapeutic solution of fixing individuals isolated flaws. Once the most obvious flaws are addressed there are still many more complex virtues that will need to be solved in order to create a more difficult perfection of character. The problem is that these more difficult virtues can be challenging to enhance in order to achieve the ideal character is a challenge for moral enhancement. The main goal of moral enhancement should be intelligence, self control, niceness and positivity. We can see that there is already substantial evidence to prove that the medical community has already begun the process of regulating weaknesses in these four virtues. While controlling these virtues have been under way, the challenge of regulating smaller and more complex issues are the greatest challenges to successful moral enhancement.

Based on the difference in the two parts of the soul that shared in reason, Aristotle then distinguished virtues into two kinds. People with well-formed reasoning part of the are believed to have intellectual virtues. They possess “philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom” (1103a). Philosophic wisdom here refers to the ability for one to reason logically about complicated philosophic problems, while the practical wisdom makes people understand “what sort of thing conduce to good life in general” (1140a).

Many virtues such as Sincerity and Cleanliness, two moral virtues which I had no trouble accomplishing the previous time, remain applicable today. However, the virtue of Order was a bit troublesome, so I have decided to morph it into the virtue of Planning, for one cannot, however frustratingly, obtain complete control over the will of another. Planning in combination with Resolution seem to account for Order. Temperance and Moderation have been combined into just Moderation for they were awfully similar in my first experiment. I have decided to keep the other virtues, with new meanings which ought to do a better job at describing each one then previously, and a more lengthy explanation as to why the definition has been changed in the way it has.

From the beginning of time, ancient philosophers and educators have taught different life developmental skills to aid people as they grow. Those educators often taught students how to develop ethical and moral character. With teaching those characteristics as a foundation they were able to teach students to branch out and understand a deeper meaning of authenticity, virtue and value. All three of these concepts are required to live a meaningful and balanced life in both the physical, mental and spiritual realms. I will be discussing how authenticity, virtue and values have affected my life, along with how they affect my future. Secondly, I will be discussing how these principles have helped guide me through my life. Values, authenticity, and virtues have an effect on a person from the time they were born and as they continue to age.