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instagram + the folklore love triangle ♡

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I’m turning my tumblr to a Taylor Swift stan page!

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Blog Entry #9

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Natural Law Theory states that humans are created in a particular manner, and therefore should not deviate from their nature, which is to do good and avoid evil. When a certain thing is used for a different purpose, other than the purpose of which it was created for, its potential is not actualized, therefore deeming the action wrong. One of the criticisms for the naturalaw theory is that humans would have a hard time trying to figure out what their purpose is. Since the creator is the one responsible for instilling the purpose of humans, only he would know what this exact purpose is. The human mind has its own limitations, and figuring out what the creator gave humans as a purpose would be very challenging— not everyone will be able to realize this. And when a person does not know what his purpose is, how can he be actualizing his potential? Does this mean that the fact that he is living a life without knowing his exact purpose, is actually wrong? time stamp: 27 October 2019, 7:44 pm

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Blog Entry #8

John Locke and Thomas Hobbes both have different takes on the social contract theory, but both aim to give justification to the role of the government in our society. Hobbes’ idea was that without a governing body (specifically, the civil government), society will be in a state of nature— where life was poor, nasty, brutish, and short. If all people had absolute freedom, there would be a state of war, since anyone is free to kill anyone as they please. For Hobbes, the government’s role is to promote peace and order, and by doing so, the people have to surrender their absolute liberties. And by giving up these liberties, they are giving the government absolute power to create, enact, and enforce laws to ensure that people would live in peace. The downfall of this idea, however, is the fact that when people give absolute power to the government, the government therefore is the one who has the power to assess and decide whether or not an act is right. If the government orders the execution of people who have committed heinous crimes, then it is the right act to do, even if there are a lot of people who think that killing is wrong and nothing can ever justify it. Locke, on the other hand, believes the opposite: that without the rule of a civil government, everything would be in harmony. However, even in a harmonious world, disputes are inevitable. And this is now where the government comes in. Locke’s idea of the role of the government is that it has to protect our basic human rights— the right to life, liberty, and property. Through this, the people puts partial power in the hands of the government. The basic role that the government performs is that when someone endangers another person’s right(s), the case has to undergo due process, and the government puts in jail whoever is found guilty of violating the rights of another person. And because of this, an action can be determined if it is right if it abides by the law. The gray area of this idea is that some laws like death penalty, sees killing a criminal as ethical, even though a lot of people may disagree. There are also ethically wrong acts that aren’t covered by laws, such as cheating on your girlfriend. I mostly agree with Locke on his idea of the social contract, however I also would like to take note of Hobbes’ idea of a state of war. Without a governing body, people wouldn’t know the limitations of food supply and other natural resources. And when these supplies eventually run scarce, there could be disputes which may result to killing each other for survival. time stamp: 20 October 2019, 8:55 pm

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Blog # 7

According to Aristotle, an action is considered right if done in the right amounts, right time, with the right intention and right source, in the right manner, and by the right person. He also stated that in order to achieve Eudaimonia, we have to develop virtues (eg. honesty, courage, etc) which cannot be taught in school, instead can be learned through experience, thus, the concept that older people are more experienced and therefore wiser than younger people. One criticism of Aristotle’s philosophy is thay the statement that older people are wiser, does not always hold true. It is also implied in the statement that older people have to act their age, and therefore are not allowed to make mistakes as much as younger people do, because making mistakes when you’re older isn’t as easy as when you were younger. In my opinion, the process of learning these virtues from experience is continuous and isn’t confined to a certain age group. Another criticism of the philosophy is about the nature of a right action. It has to come from a good person for it to be considered right, and a “good” action done by a bad person could still not be considered right. time stamp: 13 October 2019, 9:02 pm

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Blog Entry #2

“Where do we draw the line?” is a question in ethics studies that stirs debates when people answer it. Up to what extent is our freedom of choice? And up to what extent is our moral responsibility?

For one, I think that as human beings, we enjoy having freedom, but the word itself is complicated and has a lot of unclear limitations. Freedom comes from the existence of will, our capacity to act. My own personal analysis to this issue based on the discussion in our ethics class is that freedom means we have the ability to choose, whether it be a decision about drinking milk or water, or the dilemma whether or not to cut class in order to review for a different course. However, some of our decisions and actions may be involuntary; like breathing or sleeping. Actions can also be classified as voluntary, which are actions that are automatic in nature. These are the actions that we are so accustomed to doing that it seems automatic or routinely for us to do, like attending ethics class on Mondays and Thursdays. Some actions are also deliberate, which means that these are the decisions we make consciously, and we put much thought into it before doing an action. An example of deliberate action is choosing a restaurant for dinner. By looking at the definitions, it seems like the differences in the nature of these actions are clear.

However, that is not always the case (at least for me). The nature of actions can be confusing at times. Say for example the concept of looting after a calamity. If the victims of the calamity do not have anything to eat anymore, and the only choice they have would be to take groceries from a supermarket, would it be considered a deliberate or a voluntary action? Would it be morally wrong, considering the fact that they only act for their own survival?

To answer the first of the two intriguing questions, I think that freedom does not have clear limitations. We may be able to choose our decisions freely, but certain situations do not give us a choice to think about our action and its consequences at all.

And then here comes the question “To what extent is our moral responsibility?”. We define moral responsibility as acts or state of affairs for which you can be praised or blamed (Klein, 2005) . Let’s tackle a situation: a burglar breaks a window into an old woman’s house in order to steal some of her stuff, but upon entering, found the woman unconscious. He did not push through with his plan to steal. Little did he know that the woman was unconscious due to carbon monoxide poisoning, and breaking the window allowed air to flow freely in and out of the house, thus allowing the deadly gas to diffuse and oxygen to enter the house. This saved the woman from death. And so the question is, is he morally responsible for saving the woman’s life even when his original plan was to steal from her? Some might argue that he should not receive praise because his original intention was to do her harm.

Let’s take a look at a lighter issue: A woman was standing on a sidewalk when she were suddenly hit by a car. The car swerved to the sidewalk in order to avoid a tree that suddenly fell on the middle of the road. The woman was injured. Is the car driver morally responsible for the woman’s injuries?

To answer this, there is a principle in philosophy that “ought implies can” ascribed by Immanuel Kant. This means that we are only morally required to do things that are possible us, therefore we cannot be held morally responsible for situations that are out of are control.

Following this principle, the driver of the car could not be held morally responsible for the woman’s injuries because the situation of the tree falling right in the middle of the road was out of his control, and if he did not avoid the tree, he might be killed. Sure, the driver might be part of the chain of events that lead to the woman’s injuries, but he isn’t morally responsible for that. Instead, the situation is termed causal responsibility, which means the driver is only one link in a chain of events (Causal Responsibility vs Moral Responsibility, 2019).

This said, there really is no clear line in determining the extent of our freedom and moral responsibility.

References:

Causal vs. Moral Responsibility (2019). Essays Professors. Retrieved September 8, 2019 from https://essaysprofessors.com/samples/analysis/causal-vs-moral-responsibility.html

Klein, Martha (2005). “responsibility” In Honderich, Ted (ed.). Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acref/9780199264797.001.0001

time stamp: 08 September 2019, 11:16 PM