Essay On Moral Luck

Every day we as citizens of this country make decisions either consciously or unconsciously on how we go about our daily lives. We make all of our decisions based on our own personal moral behavior and what we believe in. Moral rules are defined in the book as things along the lines of people should not drink in excess or children should come before self (pg. 26). One’s moral behavior is primarily based on how they were brought up and what they were raised to believe. To test ones moral behavior ask yourself whether you perceive stealing, whether it be a candy bar from a gas station or stealing someone’s purse as wrong or right. Whatever the answer you just picked, you picked it because of your very own personal moral behavior.

Philippa Foot presented a series of moral dilemmas when she discussed abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect. One famous problem of her was the trolley dilemma: “..he is the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track onto another; five men are working on one track and one on the other; anyone the tack he enters is bound to be killed.” (Foot, 1967, p. 2) What should the driver do? Despite what he does, he will harm someone!1

He argues that we come to conclusions about the truth of both moral and nonmoral facts by assuming a theory, and then observationally testing our theories. To use his example, we might have the moral belief that Zenobia is a good person, and independently theorise that good people keep their promises. From this we will develop the observational prediction that Zenobia will keep her promises. So our faculties for perceiving moral facts operate in the same way as our faculties for perceiving nonmoral facts, and so moral perception is not actually

In Thomas Nagel’s response to Bernard William’s, Moral Luck, Nagel questions whether our “moral goodness” or “moral badness” is simply a matter of sheer luck. Judging if someone is in fact “good” or “bad” or in other words, the way we are, the circumstances we face and, the way things turn out are indeed caused by luck. In this paper, I will confirm Nagel’s assertions in that the way things turn out, how we respond to given situations, and how one was raised are all a matter of luck in deciding ones moral goodness or badness.

Good versus evil is a battle as old as mankind. Every second of every day, the score changes. Sometimes, good is winning. Other times, evil. But at the end of day, good always prevails. Always. In the novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Werner, an “eighteen-year-old” Nazi soldier, blurs the line between good and evil on a daily basis. As an unwilling soldier of the Reich, Werner is faced with difficult decisions that force him to examine the relationship between his allegiance and his morality. He is also affected by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s statement, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” For Werner, his choices were never straightforward. Yet, Werner almost always took

The stories The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and The Rocking-Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence share similarities in their stories. The difference is based on the three major areas in examining any story which are the character, plot, and setting. In general, the atmosphere is configured so that readers are attracted to fiction. A brief prose tale that can be read in one sitting, usually plot function as the driving force. The writer allows the reader to have a complete view of the story, based on the configuration. It can be used to divert the reader. It can also be indicated that the configuration is an important feature in short stories. Both authors used symbols to support reading. These symbols will help readers have a better understanding of the story. However, both stories are different, regarding having love and the absence of love.

Amy Tan is one of the most famous multicultural authors in the world to this day. The Joy Luck Club, one of her most popular books, is highly influenced by her life. This book is about four Chinese women and the loss of culture transferred from them to their daughters. The book takes place in San Francisco and partially in China where the main character goes to find her half sisters. Just like the daughters in the book, Amy Tan has lost a lot of Chinese culture from her parents, who were born in China, to her and her brothers. The relationship she had with her mother, her mother’s experiences, and her lost Chinese culture are all reasons to why Tan’s life is so connected to the book.

“The most finite resource for all humans is time.” My father says this to me all the time, and I’m beginning to understand why he says it. So my personal philosophy, at this point in time, is that since time on Earth is limited, one must make that short time meaningful and make the most of that time. This can be done by living life by a moral code, chasing one’s goals, as well as being aware of one’s own deficiencies.

The Lucifer Effect by Phillip Zimbardo aims to provide psychological explanations in occurrences of evil. The book provides a framework to examine ordinary human transformations from good to evil. Zimbardo makes the point of stating that people should be held responsible for the actions they make, however, both situational and systemic factors should be observed. In this book review, I will use points of analytical framework to analyze the main points of Zimbardo’s text.

Throughout history many great philosophers have attempted to unravel the origins of virtues by developing moral theories of their own. This document is designed to provide the reader with an overview of some of the more popular theories concerning morals. Three of the most popular moral theories are… Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Aristotelianism. Though Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Aristotelianism differ in many ways, they also share similar fundamentals.

In “The Perils of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram describes the situation of obedience to the authority through the series of experiments of testing people and determine if they submit themselves to the authority’s orders or not. Milgram believes that obedience in many people come from their training, attitude and ethical background. This dilemma is inherited in human beings from the beginning of human race e.g. the story of Abraham, Plato’s argument. According to some conservative philosophers, society’s base or strength is being threatened by disobedience. On the other hand, Humanists think that individual’s conscience is very important for society. The author explains that there are many philosophies about obedience but they don’t give much information about the behaviors of subjects in critical or complicated situation. Milgram sets up an experiment at Yale University to see the reaction of a citizen when ordered by the experimenter to hurt other person. The author

To understand the Basic Argument and prove its validity, I’d like to break it down into 3 steps.

“In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an amphitheater, a place where actors burst from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they told me I was lucky.” (Sebold 4)

Moritz Schlick is a representative of logical positivism doctrine. His definition of free will, determinism and moral responsibility derives from the definition of punishment. He supposes that “Punishment is an educative measure, and as such is a means to the formation of motives, which are in part to prevent the wrongdoer from repeating the act (reformation) and in part to prevent others from committing a similar act (intimidation). Analogously, in the case of reward we are concerned with an incentive." (Schlick, p. 152). So, Schlick’s view of free will and responsibility is connected with punishment. He supposes that a person in responsible if the punishment for his action is able to change his behavior in the future. So, his determinism differs a little from that of Blatchford. In his point of view, "we are trying to discover who is ultimately responsible" (D'Angelo, p. 37). So, he thinks that moral responsibility is not derived from heredity and environment. But what is the source of free will and moral responsibility? Schlick doesn’t give any unequivocal answer to this question. I think that moral responsibility depends on the scale of free will of a person and his attitude to the actions of other persons. In other words, our behaviour is the result of both our heredity and nature, and some outside factors which depend on our relation to other persons’

It has become apparent throughout time that moral conflicts are constantly challenging engineers. Whether it is related to infamous incidents that led to the downfall of professionals or the daily obstacles that engineers face, moral excellence is of the utmost importance in any field. Intellectual and character virtues, as exemplified in the philosophical context, are essential to engineering ethics. Of these virtues, engineers should strive for honesty, courage and fairness. Achieving the aforementioned moral excellences will allow engineers to conduct good judgments and commitment to their professional life.