April 18, 2013
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I suppose this is acceptable… XP
I did a paper over Peter Singer for Ethics and Society titled “Legal Rights vs. Ethical Responsibility”. Basically Peter Singer believes people (especially those of us who are absolutely affluent [almost all Americans]) have an ethical responsibility to assist those who are living in absolute poverty. Without boring the hell out of you by going into further details (if you are curious, you could comment and I’d go into more detail) he has an argument referred to as “the obligation to assist”.
It says, if we can prevent something that is bad without sacrificing something of comparable significance, we ought to. Absolute poverty is bad. There is some absolute poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. Thus, we ought to prevent some absolute poverty.Simple as that. He then list five objections to his argument, then follows by disputing all the objections.The assignment was to take one of his arguments (or an argument of your own) and debate the two and say which is stronger. After checking with the professor that it was cool, I talked about two of his objections (take care of our own first & property rights) and argued that the obligation to assist was a stronger argument.A week and a half later it is graded…This paper clearly demonstrates a good understanding of the issues and arguments involved, and it puts forward solid arguments for your position. I think the addition of Kant’s categorical imperative works well for you, though it’s important to keep in mind that Singer is a utilitarian who (mostly) sticks to utilitarian arguments, so even though he and Kant might hypothetically come to the same conclusion they would do so for different reasons. That is, Singer isn’t really employing the categorical imperative, even when it might seem like he is. At any rate, showing that your conclusion is supported by two different ethical theories can only strengthen your argument. Grade : AThe more time that passed after I turned this in, the worse I felt about it. (That happen to anyone else??) Anyways, I was super relieved to check blackboard today and see an A and his comments. *HUGE sigh of relief!* Lol, now as long as I keep this up for the 3rd paper and the final I’ll be good
Comments (5)
Is Mr Singer a socialist or communist? He’s definitely not a capitalist. He probably doesn’t believe in evolution because evolution believes in survival of the fittest, ie stepping on others to get ahead.
I wonder if he’s a theorist or a pragmatist?
@sf2slc - Umm, the only title he was given in the book or by the professor was utilitarian. He seems pretty socialist to me. I wrote my paper in favor of his side though because based on the essay in the book and the other objections, his argument was stronger and easier to side with.
There was a paper similar to this about animal rights by Tom Regan. We have to submit weekly responses to all our readings, and on that one I commented Regan’s argument was strong, but I wasn’t giving up my eggs and bacon quite yet lol
@mypandabear - these paper are fun but a lot of teachers are partial and give good grades to people who agree with their viewpoint, even if you have strong argument for the other side. Sad but true.
Sound like a fun class though. Eggs and bacon sound delicious. haha
Great job Reilly. Props!
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