I Hate This Ford Truck Boss Analysis

1) What are the three levels of thinking about a topic that Boss shares? Develop a different example than the two she shares, to illustrate the model in your presentation.

Boss’ three levels of thinking are experience, interpretation, and analysis. In level one, experience, we “describe our experiences. We do not, at least in theory, interpret or pass judgment on our experience” (Boss, p. 32). Interpretation involves the cognitive processing of experiences to interpret them and to either make opinion-based or well-informed decisions. As we move into analysis, we are looking to draw from various other sources and ask “questions about the assumptions underlying our interpretations” (Boss, p. 33).

Example Experience: I hate this Ford truck
She starts by describing our awareness to experience, in this case violence and being a victim, and further goes on to how one has to be shaken to the core before we question our views. Once this analysis occurs, we can take action against the injustice or matter and become united in our stance.

4) How do defense mechanisms work, to help us hold on to particular worldviews or “paradigms,” even if our worldviews are wrong? How can defense mechanisms be “healthy”? Briefly review the variety of “immature” defense mechanisms, giving an “everyday” example of three or four of them, if possible.

Defense mechanisms are “psychological tools … for coping with difficult situations” (Boss, p. 37). These “tools” are referred to as coping and resistance where coping allows us to “work through challenges to our worldview and to adjust out life in ways that maintain our integrity” (Boss, p. 38) while resistance involves the “use of immature defense mechanisms that are rigid, impulsive, maladaptive, and nonanalytical” (Boss, p. 38). An example of a healthy defense mechanism (also known as coping) would be empathy toward situations or difference. According to Boss, “isolation, rationalization, and denial are examples of immature defense mechanisms” (p. 38). Examples
Acting out: temper tantrums when individual cannot express thoughts or feelings.

5) Choose a topic in which you can create both an “is” (descriptive) statement and an “ought” (prescriptive) statement. What is the role of each kind of statement in making moral arguments?

Descriptive: The average cost of a Boston Red Sox ticket has increased by 1.4% per game in the past year.
Prescriptive: The Boston Red Sox organization ought to cut down on ticket prices to allow more individuals the opportunity to afford to attend a game.

According to Boss, “unlike science, which is descriptive, ethics is primarily prescriptive with descriptive statements playing a supportive role” (p. 45). This is to say that we have to use descriptive statements in order to make a moral decision, but prescriptive statements allow for an individual to connect the decision to one’s own values on the topic.

6) What is the role of logic (e.g., the study of correct thinking) in moral arguments? Include the components of an argument (a starting premise, an inference, and a conclusion) in an “everyday” example of your choosing. Use some premise or conclusion indicator in your logic argument and draw our attention to