...Influence of Moral Reasoning Mark R. Mitchell CRT/205 December 1, 2013 Rahana Schmalacker Influence of Moral Reasoning In accordance with this assignment to choose a person that is involved with the article chosen from the Opposing Viewpoint Resource Center, The article that I chose was “Superintendent, principal and two coaches charged in fallout from Steubenville student rape”, and the person that I chose was the Ohio State Attorney General. As to the actions taken by the attorney general was to charge four more adults with crimes that relate to the student rape case. This occurring after the Grand Jury spent eight months investigating the case. The four include two coaches, the principle, and the Steubenville School Superintendent, the charges range from tampering and obstruction to failing to reporting child abuse. Henceforth the impact of these actions is the four will be held over for trial and possibly result in serving time in prison or be acquitted of these crimes. Additionally if I were the attorney general I feel that I would also bring these charges and prosecute to the fullest extent that the law would allow. I would also use this to show that there should not be a place in any school system in the country that the lack of action to protect children entrusted to their care will not be tolerated, and the punishment...
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...1. Name and describe Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory was inspired by Piaget’s early work. Kohlberg used clinical interviewing of 10- to 16- year olds every 3- to 4- years for 20 years to develop his reasoning. We start with the Preconventional Level, where morality is externally controlled. Children are accepting of rules made by authorities and consider consequences for their actions. Behavior that receives punishment is considered bad, while good behavior results in rewards or positive feedback. Stage one and two of Kohlberge’s moral reasoning fall under this category. Stage One: The Punishment and Obedience Orientation: Intentions of other people are overlooked as children find it difficult to consider two points in a moral dilemma. They fear authority and focus on avoiding punishment rather than reasons they should behave properly. Stage Two:...
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...Recognize principles that underlie legal reasoning and argument There are several principles that underlie legal reasoning and argument. The first two are probably the most common and easily digestible in supporting an argument. These two principles of moral reasoning are the consistent and inconsistencies of principle; principle consistency establishes framework for repetitive pattern. What is presented is identical in all instances and shows no differences in relevant way; therefore the outcome should always be the same (Cheesebro, 2010). Second principle occurs when it appears violations are occurring with the consistency principle, which then bears a burden of proof is the person claiming such act (Cheesebro, 2010). If at work all employees were afforded their birthday off with the exception of one, then this would be a violation of the consistency principle and the burden of proof is easily delivered. When it comes to arguments, jurist and attorneys uses deductive and inductive reasoning; if deductive, the reasoning can be sound, valid, or invalid; and if indicative, it can range from strong to weak (Cheesebro, 2010). Arguments in court are submitted with a precedent case as a foundation to present a winning argument; this is the appeal to precedent (Cheesebro, 2010). According to “Case Briefs” (2015) website sites the Rule of Law where as “Statutes that make criminal all abortions except when medically advised for the purpose of saving the life of the mother are...
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...Stereotypes: A vice or a Virtue There is something about within us as humans that causes us to categorize. It has be theorized that this stems from early learning as children. Categorizing information is a useful and efficient tool to learn about our environment and different concepts as we grow and attempt to increase our understanding of our surroundings. We associate traits and characteristics with Consider the Harvard Implicit tests, a series of tests designed to measure a level of unconscious bias in people. The theory is that we as humans have and innate desire to categorize people based on an unconscious bias we have, either through development or other learning patterns. What is interesting about this study and the comparable research, is that it differentiates between this unconscious bias and our concscious efforts to overcome it. The tests require associations between words and stimuli; one for example is the racism test It is though that we have strong prior association between categories for example Wendy, we consider automatically to be a female name, ad vice versa, Will would be thought of as a guys name. this is applicable to other situations as in the race test, where we seem to automatically associate positive terms, such as successful, good, with white faces and others such as bad, evil and hurt with black faces. The results are even more startling with over 80% of those who took the racism test deemed to have a strong pro-white association with white...
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...‘How effective is Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development in explaining moral reasoning and moral behaviour?’ Morality refers to the ‘principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour’ (Oxford dictionary, 2013). Moral development focuses on the way morality changes from childhood to adulthood. It consists of two things; moral reasoning and moral behaviour. Moral reasoning is when an individual tried to work out the difference between right and wrong by using logic. This is a process that is undertaken by people daily in their lives when faced with dilemmas and they need to make a decision based on the morality of the action and what the consequences could be. Moral behaviour is the way people can behave depending on their moral reasoning. Moral behaviour consists of four components; moral sensitivity, moral judgement, moral motivation and moral character. Many theories have been developed on moral development. These theories are based on an individual’s level of cognitive maturity. This essay focuses on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and aims to discuss how effective Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development is, in explaining moral reasoning and moral behaviour. Kohlberg Developed the moral development theory based on Piaget’s theory. Piaget believed that moral development was only a two-staged theory; the first stage of his theory was common in childhood and was called the ‘Heteronomous’ stage. The general idea was...
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...wrong is based on personal principles. Two of these principles, consequentialist and categorical moral reasoning, are presented in this video. Consequentialist moral reasoning is based on the idea that one’s actions can be decided as right or moral if the consequences of those actions are lighter in weight than the action itself (Justice). The examples presented included the trolley car cases where, in one case, one, being the operator of a trolley with no brakes, must decide whether or not to change the course of the trolley car in order to only sacrifice one life or let the trolley car continue on its course and end five lives. In such a situation, one has to truly examine one’s outlook on life and the differences between right and wrong to come up with an answer. In this example, the idea of inevitability comes to mind. The...
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...Individual: Influence of Moral Reasoning Due: August 12, 2012 Individual: Influence of Moral Reasoning In the article by R.Scherer “Did Penn State Officials Ignore Sexual Abuse Allegations?” the actions of Gary Schultz. Gary Schultz was the Senior Vice President of Penn State University who had the responsibility of the campus police was informed by Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director about allegations of sexual abuse against Penn State University football coach Jerry Sandusky by an eyewitness graduate student. The graduate student witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a young boy (on Penn State facilities). Gary Schultz, the Vice President did not take action until two weeks after this report. It was not until two weeks later that Gary Schultz took initiative to speak to the graduate student who witnessed the abuse. After speaking to the graduate student, Gary Schultz then reported the claim as “horseplay” to the President of the University Mr. Graham Spanier. Gary Schultz downplayed the graduate student’s eye witness claim of sexual abuse to mere “horseplay”, which led the President of the University that the claim was not serious and no action needed to be taken. Gary Schultz, withholding the truth and seriousness of the claim resulted in chain of negative outcomes. Also, when he went to court, he lied on the stand and stated that he was not informed of the abuse by the graduate student...
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...Influence of Moral Reasoning Rohana Bjorkquist Crt/205 03/16/2014 The person I chose to write about and discuss moral reasoning is the assistant coach Mike McQuery. Some actions he decided to take was witness Sandusky having sex with the boys in the showers but not reporting it to the police or child protection agencies. The impact of the action that McQuery took is that he allowed Sandusky to continue sexually abusing these boys for years because he didn’t say anything to authorities. He allowed the abuse to continue for another 8 years before Sandusky finally had to face legal consequences for his actions. By not saying anything to authorities it is also giving Sandusky an okay to continue with his sexual acts since he does not have to face any consequences. The assistant coach may have feared that he would lose his job or that no one would believe him regarding the immoral actions that Sandusky committed. McQueary had a moral duty to those boys to stick up for them when he knew what was happening was morally wrong. Though in other countries or societies it may not be but in our culture and society, molesting children is morally and ethically wrong. McQueary ended up testifying to witnessing Sandusky’s acts but that did not happen until eight years later in 2010 when he witnessed the acts in 2002. Though he did come forward in the end, but his ethical and moral response should have been to alert the authorities when he first witnessed the act. If I would have been...
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...Excellent analysis and explanation of the 6 stages of moral reasoning. You demonstrate your understanding and application of the concepts/ Moral Reasoning By Christopher M Benco 02/18/2013 PHL/323 Kohlberg defines moral reasoning to be decisions based on right and wrong. Kohlberg’s studies were founded on moral dilemmas, or theoretical events in which one must make a tough choice. He describes one’s stage of moral thought from the perceptive used to defend one’s situation while confronted with a predicament. Kohlberg believed this to be of greater importance than the actual choice, subsequently the choices one makes in some predicaments are not always clear or undeniably right. Here is an Example of a Dilemma Kohlberg studied. “Heinz Steals the Drug” "In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered...
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...Determine and assess the actions required when applying moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is a thinking process with the objective of determining whether a thought or action is right or wrong. It is significant to recognize the importance of moral factors in making decisions based on moral reasoning. There are two fundamental approaches of the moral assessment or appraisal of actions: The deontological approach and utilitarian approach. Basically, deontology refers to the study of the nature of duty and obligation. This principle depends on the action’s intrinsic nature, which defends that harming others is wrong regardless of its consequences. The utilitarian approach has a more practical approach in evaluating actions. The principle of utilitarianism, suggests that an action’s morality is determined by its consequences, for example harming others is acceptable if it increases the well-being of a greater number of people. According to utilitarianism, moral duty is instrumental, not intrinsic. Morality is a means to an end; not an end in itself. Some prefer one approach over the other when evaluating what actions are deemed right or wrong. There is no empirical evidence that one is better over the other. Though sometimes using both approaches simultaneously may be useful, depending on the particular context. Other times, it may be difficult to decide what approach to use, hence becoming a matter of judgment. Whatever approach we decide to use it is important to develop...
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...Helping Others Travis Heasley Ethics and Moral Reasoning: PHI 208 Craig Thompson 12/9/2013 Helping Others There are many places in the world that are not as fortunate as we are in this country and face issues that we cannot even comprehend as American citizens. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by Peter Singer is an article that talks about one of these issues that was affecting the East Bengal region of India in the early 1970’s. Singer was writing about how countries that have money can give relief money without affecting any projects that are of moral importance. Singer makes the point that “it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it (Sing, 1972).” Which means as I said above that if we have a road project, that if not built, would not affect any moral issue in the country. Singer says if something is morally right then as a human-being we should do what is morally right and not worry about something that is not morally important. Singer is very passionate in this article and wants help for his cause. His goal is to have countries to give relief funds to refugees of East Bengal region in India. He says in the article that “Britain has given £ 14,750,000 to the relief effort but in comparison to the £ 440,000,000 they have used to fund the Anglo-French Concorde Project, which is for supersonic transport, means they value transportation over lives...
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...wealth; yet, absolutely no one is above it. That facet alone places it in a class all its own. Everyone must yield to its magnitudes. Yet, in all its magnitude there is no moral obligation to obey the law. We are faced with tough decisions day in and day out. There are many deciding factors that aid us in our decision making. One major factor is our moral judgment. Morality may differ from one individual to the next, but the desire to live by them remains the same. When obeying the law comes into play it does not inflict, by any means, whether this moralistic trait determines your duty nor does it dictate cause to obey the law. Your moral duty is loyal to your own wellbeing and what in your own mind is best for your own person. Even if what you are doing is to benefit others your own person is being satisfied, and yes in some cases this may involve not obeying the law. And in many cases whether you obey the law or not the law does not change. So therefore your obligation to it in reality has no value to it, only to yourself and your own wellbeing. The law will not suffer consequence if not obeyed only the one not obeying it. We obey the law out of rational thought not morality. If you are a licensed driver passing through a reduced speed zone in a school district you will slow down and not speed not out of moral duty, but out of rational thought that I may hit a kid if I drive too fast or I may get a ticket, but whatever...
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..." TER 1 Wat Is Morality. I \\·e are discussing nd-sm~ll matter, but how we ought to live. SOCRATES, AS REPORTED BY PLATO IN THE REPUBliC (CA. 390 B.C.) 1.1. The Problem of Definition Moral philosophy is the attempt to achieve a systematic under standing of the nature of morality and what it requires of us in Socrates's words, of "how we ought to live,r and why. :It would be helpful, therefore, if we could begin with a simple, uncon !roversial defiuition of what lIJ,Qrality is. But that tums out to be impossible. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyoud Socrates's simple formulation is bound to offend one or another of them. This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter I will describe what I call the "minimum con ception" of morality. As the name suggests, the minimum con ception is a core that every moral theory should accept, at least as a starting point. We will begin by examining some recent moral controversies. The features of the minimum conception will emerge from our consideration of these examples. 1.2. An Infant with No Prospects: Baby Theresa Theresa Ann Campo Pearson, an anencephalic infant known to the public as "Baby Theresa," was bom in Florida in 1992. Anen cephaly is amoll'g the worst cong~nital disorders. Anencephalic infants are sometimes referred to as "babies without brains," and . dlls gives...
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...destroyed by an extremist group who plan to kill all the remaining villagers. Jim runs into the havoc and screams for an end to the violence. The leader of the extremist group, Pablo, offers Jim a choice—Jim can either, pick any one villager and shoot them, having the sworn oath of Pablo and his men to spare the remaining nineteen villagers, or Jim can choose not shoot one villager and leave them to be mercilessly killed by the extremist group. The three positions are that, Jim is obligated to shoot one of the villagers, Jim is not obligated to shoot any of the villagers, or Jim is neither obligated either to shoot or not to shoot. It is my argument that the position in which Jim is neither obligated to shoot or not to shoot. This is the most moral position. Jim is not obligated to either shooting or not shooting for various reasons. These reasons are ultimately dependent on the circumstances surrounding Jim’s final decision of whether or not to shoot, and can find that either choice can be morally acceptable thereby making neither choice obligatory. The first reason as to why shooting is morally acceptable would be that Jim would end one life but save nineteen lives. Many people believe that whenever one person must die you should try to save as many lives as possible, so it is morally acceptable to save the nineteen lives at the cost of the one, on the grounds that you should try to save as many lives as possible.1 This view sees that all life is equal, therefore making the worth...
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... Tim Carter 01/17/12 In “Some Moral Minima,” Lenn Goodman disputes on certain things that simply wrong. I totally agree with him. Slavery, Polygamy, and Incest are just some of the things that he feels is wrong. It is never acceptable for the amount of killing just to kill, raping to get a good desire, or take advantage of someone’s rights for gain of success, respect or approval of others. Goodman was right about that everyone whether it be man, woman, or child has the right to live and be free from all cold-hearted behavior. No one should be treated like an animal. Goodman just explains himself on judging things that are morally right. I feel that all individuals should be treated equal and able to live their own life. Violators have no right to commit the treacherous acts that the do to innocent people. People should not judge one another. Why should individuals have the right to rape, murder, and take advantage of others rights just to possess, for selfishness, and greed? Some cultures and individuals have to disagree with Goodman’s point of ideas. How can you argue with the fact of someone’s ideas that can help save lives and decent respectful standings? These individuals who disagree with the ideas may go against this due to their culture or because of the way they were taught growing up. Warfare is also an issue at times in our country if we may need to go to war and kill for good reasoning. It could be to protect someone’s life or to get...
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