Monday, January 25, 2016

Unit 2 (Gert) Assignment


  • Discussion Blog questions: 
  • 1st 3 students, According to Gert, why are the Golden Rule and/or Ten Commandments a poor basis for morality?”; 
  • 2nd 3 students, “How do moral goods and moral evils differ from other kinds of goods and evils?”; and 
  • last 4 or so students, “What is the rational basis for Gert's ten moral rules?”

11 comments:

  1. Gerts says, that he doesn’t believe in the golden rule or the Ten Commandments because of a number of reasons he listed throughout this essay. One of his main arguments for the not believing in the golden rule is that it simply doesn’t help at all. Using the golden rule you are often given the wrong answer just as often that you are given the wrong answer. The golden rule states, “do unto other as you would have them do to you.” This rule isn’t reliable or useful at all it doesn’t tell us how to use the rule and separate the good acts from the bad ones or how to use the rule when faced with doubt and uncertainty. Gert also doesn’t disagree with all the commandments but the one he does disagree with he says that it condo slavery and violet acts. Although time has change and we now know more then what we use to know in the past we still cannot accept the commandments because they do not fit in completely with the universal moral rule. These rules assume that all people are good people with only good moral intentions it doesn’t account for the bad. Following these rules or commandment are often times very misleading for some, it doesn’t say what to do in when a person isn’t following the moral rules of society. These rules should be more of guide lines then actual rules because these rules a contradicting in the society that we live in today.

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    1. I concur with all the main points you made. That the golden rule is not the best for every situation. One that I can name is if a really hot babe want to bang me yet I don’t want to she can say “do unto others as they would do unto you” and try and force me into it. My favorite line is the last one that says “These rules should be more of guide lines then actual rules because these rules a contradicting in the society that we live in today” pure genius. Another thing I would like to add is that Gert kind of harps on the 10 commandments yet three of his rules fall in with the commandments. Do not kill is parallel to do not murder and don’t deceive or cheat can easily fall under do not bear false witness against your neighbor. In the end the commandments were made for another tie and place but I think they provide some good ground rules for life today.

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  2. In this piece about morality Gert shows very clearly why the ten commandments and the golden rule are inadequate when used to describe morality. He uses the example of a burglar breaking into his home. If we were to use the golden rule we would not be allowed to call the police on them because that's not what we would want if we were the one breaking into a home. The golden rule is too all encompassing. As for the ten commandments Gert makes the point that they are outdated. There is a commandment that makes reference to having slaves. It is obviously not accepted to have slaves and the continued following of such old outdated guides to morality could give the wrong impression to people as to what is acceptable or not. On page 5 Gurt writes that his paper is not an attack on morality but an attack on the simplistic thinking about morality. There is no way to state in a sentence or even a hundred sentences what it means to be a moral person. The golden rule works for some instances, as does the ten commandments. But to base your decisions solely off either one would leave you seriously lacking ethically.

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    1. Throughout the reading I constantly got the impression that the only way that the golden rule would be effective is if the entire society followed the rule to a tee. In the times that the golden rule would not be effective we do not have to think hard about the answer, most of the time before there is time to think about the question we already have the answer. For example, in the reading Gert’s home was broken into while using the golden rule he would not have called the police. However, before we think about the rule we already know that the correct answer would be to call the police.

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  3. Gert talks about various systems of morality in his article. Gert looks at one of the most famous measures of Morality, The Golden Rule. This Rule states that one should, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Gert has a problem with this statement and shows why it is flawed. Gert uses the example of an encyclopedia sales men. Gert states that if you follow the golden rule then you would have to buy the sales man's product. The logic behind that being that if you were in the salesman'sShoes then you would want the person you are selling to to buy your product. So, Gert is saying that it is nearly impossible to follow the Golden Rule the way it is said. Gert is taking a literal stance when looking at the golden rule though. It is not to say that the Golden Rule is a bad measure of morality when using the rule in more general terms.

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  4. Moral goods and evils differ greatly from normal goods and evils. Bernard Gert says that a moral rule can be justly violated when a person would be willing to publicly let everyone in that situation to break that rule. For example, nobody would publicly allow anyone to cause harm to a person, but anyone would publicly allow everybody to cause harm to an individual if the person’s life depended on it. He gives the example of seriously ill people choosing to die rather than live with the pain. This is breaking a moral rule and causing someone harm, but it is also rational because it helps the person in pain. He also says that the situation can also be morally good if the person chooses to live with the pain over death. Either way one looks at the situation, it can be morally good or bad. It breaks moral rules to produce a good outcome for someone. He also used the examples of doctors treating patients. Doctors cause pain and disability, and this goes against the moral rules. But they have consent from the injured person to do so. So any rational person would agree that it is still good to cause such pain and disability if the person is benefitting from the situation. No rational person would do harm to a person, unless it was to ultimately benefit the person receiving the harm. So moral evils can be used, and moral goods broken, in order to achieve the greater good.

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  5. Bernard Gert listed many differences between moral goods, evils and normal goods and evils. He lists a couple of moral goods and evils that everyone can agree upon. The goods would be Abilities, Freedom, and Pleasure. The evils that he lists are closely related to the goods, Death, Pain, Disability, Loss of Freedom, and Loss of pleasure. He explains the breaking of the moral goods and evils by bring in rationality. He does this by explaining that moral goods and evils can be broken depending on the situation. For example, a doctor would cut off a person’s arm in order to save them from a cancer that was spreading through their arm. This would be a moral evil because it is causing someone an extreme amount of pain. However, if the overall good overcomes the evil it can be justified. Another example from the reading is the argument if someone who is extremely ill and in pain prefers death. Now if they were to commit suicide this would be breaking a couple different moral rules 1. Do not kill. 2. Do not cause pain. However, it can be argued that a person in extreme pain would feel relief from that pain by death. Therefore, no matter which side you look at the situation it would be good or bad breaking both sides of the rules. Another argument Gert makes is that any person would avoid all the moral evils, except if the moral evils happening to them doesn’t outweigh the evils brought to someone else had they not accepted them. While the differences between moral goods/evils and normal goods/evils seem to have a straight line between them I would argue that there are many crossing over between the two.

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  6. In Gert's excerpt he explains the major differences between moral goods and evils compared to other forms of goods and evils. Where moral goods and evils follow his lines in "The Moral Rules", such as do not kill, do not disable and the like, the common concept with all of these rules is that it can be applied to almost everyone that can be held accountable or responsible for their actions. They also have to be understood by almost everyone, from children to adults, and this in turn causes these rules to be very simple and easy to follow in the right regard. This helps his idea of morality theory in that it can applied to everyone in general, meaning that these rules can be followed by anyone in any circumstance based on their decisions to either follow these moral standards or to not. Whereas with the other forms of goods and evils, Gert compares the rationality aspect of following their rules like a game, where only the players are affected by these decisions and not necessarily everyone else. This in turn makes it apparent that these other forms of goods and evils follow a different pattern, they cannot be applied in general to everyone and instead are based off of the rationality of these specific events or people. The rationality of these goods and evils are going to be very different when comparing it from person to person; such as a young child playing with their toys, to a cancer patient in a hospital, to an adult participating in jury duty, where each of these scenarios can consider very different goods and evils based on what they choose to do or even what not to do.

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  7. This was a concept that I was originally very opposed to. I firmly believed that what was right was going to be right no matter who the person was or the situation they were in. I did not think about what that meant for a patient who was in an incredible amount of pain and suicide would be a great relief for that person. I guess its something that I believed inherently was right even though it went against one of the strongest moral rules, not to kill, but I never really thought about it until reading this paper. There are too many situations in life for there to be rules set in stone as to what is right for every single person. I got to thinking that on a daily basis we judge others actions as right or wrong when in reality we have no idea what set of rules they are operating with.

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  8. Sorry for the late response, figured I should respond to it anyways. The rational basis for Gerts 10 moral rules is pretty obvious in the first paragraph in which he questions, “What rules would a rational person who wants to avoid the evils want as part of a public system that applies to everyone?” Here he is saying that these ten rules are ones that any rational person would want to protect themselves physically and emotionally and in turn the others in compliance with these rules. The first five rules are very self-explanatory as they are the reflection of the evils that were outlined earlier in the article. These first rules dictate that nobody shall commit evil / cause pain for another being. The last 5 rules are less concrete and leave plenty of room for individuals to perceive these rules in multiple ways. These rules are very general and still follow the statement quoted earlier, although these last five rules like “do not deceive” is a bold statement as we human beings are capable of deception without even knowing it. This is because the way we may think of something may be completely different than someone else’. Although one may not be intentionally deceiving another, one may be deceived in their perception of what the other was saying. This allows for these rules to be broken on micro and macro scales, another example is the rule “do your duty” this rule can be broken by someone in one’s mind but not another due to the fact that we may have different opinions on what someone’s duty actually is.

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  9. Gert has 10 moral rules that he stats in his work Morality versus Slogans. The first five he states are a direct correlation to the five evils he says previously. The first three are pretty simple to me, not to kill disable or cause pain. The next two are the ones that stand out “do not deprive of freedom or pleasure.” Gert say “you know that no rational person wants to suffer an evil” to me that isn’t really rational because a crack head is going to get pleasure from smoking crack. If I take that away from him I am depriving him of one of his favorite things. The rationality bias of these rules is that everyone is a good guy/girl and wants to follow these rules. Back to the crack head, he will probably break all 10 of Gert’s rules just to get some more crack. Another example is an evil person most likely doesn’t give a damn about the 10 rules. Let’s ask Hitler about do not cause pain or do not kill. The second five rules that Gert states are fairly straightforward aside from do your duty. Doing your duty could be a varity things, one thing for me is because I’m a student I have a duty to go to class and strive to do my best and get good grades. This often doesn’t happen because of distractions and other things. Gert’s rules are “simple and easy to follow” any morally good person should be able to follow them most of the time

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