Great Video I thought I'd share

This isn't really related to the class, but I saw this and I thought it was too good to not share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mVh75ylAUXY#!

The Importance of the Paritcular in Third World Development

As we have observed throughout our philosophic careers, the duality of general vs. particular is a highly abstactable concept that applies across all fields of intellectual endeavor due to it's importance in the organization of knowledge. We see also that it applies in Easterly's duality of planners vs. searchers; planners being individuals who focus on big, "utopian" efforts of top down development and therefore emphasizing the general; and searchers being individuals who focus on local small scale, endogenous economic activties, who therefore emphasize the particular. Easterly rightly emphasizes an appreciation of the particular in this circumstance, citing various statistics about the overall failure of huge projects. However, being a total hippie who meditates and loves the "general" in every sense of the word, (particular/general, body/soul, material/immaterial, business/household, utility/idealism), I still believe that have, not the practices, but ideals of general utopia and welfare is right(especially by my duality list). pce and love guys. Tune in, but don't drop out....or maybe if thats your cup of tea.

Why are we burdened?

The book seems to indicate that we don't really know how to fix the problems in the third world.  If this is the case, why are we still sending aid?  I'm not against helping people that are less fortunate, but Easterly's thesis seems to be that not only is our aid not really helping, but it sometimes even hurts, which means that I find it hard to support wasting money on such efforts as there are no positive results.

Nature AND Nurture

In The Moral Animal, Wright’s position, seems to be that, while we may perceive that we have complete and total control over our behavioral tendencies and our choice of action in any given situation, we actually are responding to our biology. In essence, our actions can be boiled down to chemical reactions. While Wright’s ideas are certainly logical and well-supported within the scientific community, there is one major problem that I have with his findings. If we are merely at the mercy of our biology, then responsibility and morality become irrelevant, and in a sense so do we. Instead of excusing ourselves on account of our nature, I think that we should take into account the information that Wright reveals to us and learn recognize the genetic components of our nature and habituate ourselves to act in a way that is accordance with our moral ideals. Nature and nurture should not be in conflict, or mutually exclusive, but rather should work together to determine how we live our lives.

The Animal Inside

Can one always know the right thing to do in any given situation? Does it all rest upon the human actor or the action?  Is it a combination of both?  The problem with Wright's work as stated by many of you is that it lends itself to a sort of moral relativism while seemingly pushing humanity out of the equation.  It is from our sense of right and wrong that we judge the actions of others or even the character of other actors.  However, if one thing is wrong in one area and right in another country/tribe/what have you, where is the right and where is the wrong?  How does one fit humanity into this picture of "the moral animal"?  It is a constant regeneration of the question of how to be moral in every situation juxtaposed with the mess we find ourselves in: humans giving in to baser instincts and desires, acting out of only self-interestedness, and humans also acting for the good of the whole, for others rather than self and the list may go on.  It is a journey in what it means to be human as well as live the way we do each day, making decisions based on instinct or principle or even gut feeling.  It is fighting with the animal we know ourselves to be, the beast that hides in darkness ready to devour its prey.  There is a dark side to human nature that lets us know there is more to "being human" that what we had once thought.  It may be in the darkest instance we find the real answers to our quest of morality and the limits it may hold.

The Limit of Morality

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not there is a limit to morality and I have come to the conclusion that there is, and that this limitation has to do with the human instinct. The limit of morality then become the ethical theory's lack of ability to prevail when one has to act with a sort of reflex or gut reaction due to the circumstance of one's situation. All of the theories that we studied thus far seemed to rely heavily on deliberation, which is not something that we always have the time or the necessary resources to carry out. I think that in Virtue Ethics, this limitation is somewhat surmountable because in teaching yourself to act virtuously, you increase the likelihood of your gut reaction being a virtuous one. However, in Consequentialism and Deontology, I think that this is a necessary feature because there does not seem to be ay gray area to accommodate the circumstances of one;s situation. In Consequentialism, regardless of the act or actor, the greater good must prevail. Likewise, in Deontology, the act must be good, regardless of the harm that may result. The implications of my judgment are that in order to ensure that we act in the best way possible in a ny given situation, and are therefore the best, most flourishing version of ourselves that we could possibly hope to be, we must have our morality and ethical code internalized to the extent that it because instinctual to act in an ethically an morally correct manner.

The Most Effective Ethical Theory?

While I do not think that one specific theory encompasses all of moral action and offers "the answer" so to speak, I think that Virtue Ethics and Autonomy offer the strongest solutions because they focus on the actor, the freedom to act, and our responsibilities as a result of this freedom. Out of these two theories, I believe that Virtue Ethics is the stronger. Virtue Ethics basically makes the claim that instead of focusing on the act itself or the consequences of the action, you have to look at the person acting and what his or her motivations may have been for acting in that certain manner. Virtue Ethics offers the view that in order to truly flourish and thrive as a human being, you have to cultivate your sense of virtue until it becomes almost like a habit because acting in a way that is not virtuous leads to fleeting happiness that ultimately leaves us unfulfilled and unhappy as human beings. When we train ourselves to act virtuously, then we are working on overcoming the base parts of ourselves that cause us pain and suffering, and we are also increasing our chances of acting in the best way possible in any given future moral dilemma. If we were to rely on consequentialism, then there would be instances where we would have to take ourselves out of the picture, or act in a way that should seem morally wrong to us, in order to benefit the maximum amount of people, or cause the greatest amount of happiness. If we were to act deontologically, then while our acts may be inherently morally right, they may not be the best for the given situation. Virtue Ethics, because it focuses on the agent/actor instead of the action, best serves to accommodate the situations and circumstances surrounding a moral action.

Ever right to kill?

I thought about this the other day and thought about previous discussions regarding deontological rules of morality.  I was trying to figure out if someone who believes it's never right to kill can possibly make an exception.  If a rapist or murderer is wearing full body armor on everything except his head and neck, can you justify killing him to stop him?  This is assuming the person in the position is a trained marksman who can't get to the  person in the act of the crime by foot (he's on top of a building or something to that effect).  

What's not in the genes?

Wright writes his book in the context of most human action being a result of genetic evolution over the course of billions of years.  One can use this logic to state that human action is a result of genetic imperative.  What would Wright say about suicide?  Would he say suicide is simply a way of weak members of the herd not getting in the gene pool (i.e. people who kill themselves because of genetically inherited depression), a way for people who lack adaptive capabilities to create offspring (i.e. people who kill themselves because they lose their job) or is suicide an exemption from the rule that our actions are for our genes' interests?  (Our genes don't feel pain as we do, so we couldn't say an end to our suffering is an end to theirs as well.)