practice makes perfect

1. In order to help you mentally organize what you have learned in this class presume that you are having a discussion with a friend who passionately asserts that humans are not really capable of moral reasoning, or if they don’t practice it very often. Instead your friend claims that humans are conformist social animals who need to blend into group norms. They also point to the amount of harmful action (“just look at history”) that humans inflict on each other. In addition they argue that much moral reasoning is simply a retrospective rationalization of action already taken. You respond by trying to explain the reality and complexity of moral reasoning and what it looks like in practice. How would you employ our readings and lectures to help illuminate this debate? Do you think that such a discussion could come to any resolution? –no people are very set in their ways (NOTE: DO NOT randomly discuss material from the class, but be sure to shape it into a structured argument. This means picking and choosing among the class material.

1st paragraph: things are not that black and white things are more complex than you think.

Spelucean case: people have a sense of morality
They needed to kill someone because if not they would have died
They tried everyway
People inhetily want to do the right thing but sometimes they are forced by the situraion or a genetic malfunction aren’t able to do it
A circumstance alters their moral code

Purple shirts: they were morally evil
Something being against the law doesn’t mean that its morally right

Socrates paradox: research him Socrates and moral reasoning Abuse as a child leads to abuse-tends to be ironic
Drawing upon this abused chidren according to dadas go on and abuse their children This supports the reason that people are trying to be good but in the end people who are evil end up that way despite of knowing they are wrong-even though they were inhereitly good
Kekes is similar to Socrates