students may ask themselves on a weekly basis when cheating can be so easy and advantageous. Especially sense‚ as according to the polls taken in Pojman’s philosophy classes‚ about two thirds of students affirmed moral relativism‚ meaning that if everyone in the school believed it was morally right to cheat - then it was right to cheat (Pojman‚ 242). Let’s assume a situation where your friend tells you she’s planning on cheating on her exam‚ and justifies her plan on the grounds that cheating is
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possible murderers from killing innocent people‚ therefore saving innocent lives. Even though there is no evidence to show deterrence it is pretty obvious that deterrence would happen with capital punishment. In his argument for capital punishment Pojman brings up the lightening scenario. Which is a scenario where every time a person commits murder there are then struck and killed by a bolt of lightening. If fellow future murderers see every murderer being struck by lightening then it would most
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Ethical Relativism is the belief that nothing is objectively right or wrong and that the meaning of what is right and wrong depends on the individual and culture. Pojman breaks down Ethical Relativism into 2 main concepts: The Diversity Theory and the Dependency Theory. The Diversity Theory addresses the concept of what is morally right and wrong varies from society to society; therefore‚ there is no universal moral principles that all societies accept. For example‚ Homosexuality in the Middle East
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Louis Pojman argues for objectivism instead of relativism in morality even though we are attracted to the idea of relativism. Ethical relativism is made up of a diversity thesis and a dependency thesis. The diversity thesis is also known as cultural relativism and basically states that morality is different between different societies. The dependency thesis is similar to the diversity thesis‚ but states that morality depends on the context of the society. There are two views on the dependency
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Morality and ethics create the bridge between the savage and rational side of each human being. With the intent of explaining morality‚ Pojman displays three different types of ethical backgrounds. The first being ethical relativism which states that an individual’s beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of the person’s own culture. This idea explains whether or not morality is only a fragment of a person’s cultural norm instead of anything truly universal. For example‚ in
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punishment is not moral‚ while there are others that argue that if you are cruel enough to take a life‚ you deserve to get your life taken away‚ a life for a life. Louis Pojman and Jeffrey Reiman have debated this issue very closely‚ coming up with two opposite opinions on capital punishment. I will argue that even though I can see why Pojman thinks the way he does‚ he just doesn’t have enough evidence to back up his thesis when comparing it to Reiman’s. I will suggest an adjusted version of Pojman’s argument
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The Question of Animal Rights A Critique of Louis Pojman’s Thoughts The fundamentals of philosophy are based upon human beings’ ability to examine the "marvels and mysteries of the world" (Pojman xi) we live in. Keeping in mind that only a human being has the intellectual capacity to take on such deliberation‚ humans should be the sole beneficiaries of any morals or ethical rights derived from philosophical inspection. To suggest the possibility that our ethical rights could be transferable
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Louis Pojman stands for objectivism instead of relativism in morality. Ethical relativism is “the theory that there are no universally valid moral principles”. Ethical relativism however is different from moral doubt where valid moral principles do not exist at all. Pojman argues that what is considered as morally right or wrong varies from society to society. Pojman proposes that ethical relativism can be seen as a good thing but can get hard when getting into the details. Ethical relativism is
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Pojman argues the need for a death penalty. He makes the claim that because of natural instinct‚ we as human beings demand that a criminal is punished properly in relation the crime he or she commits. We are not fully satisfied until this punishment is fully brought against the criminal (Pojman‚ 2004). Yet at the same time‚ we as humans have evolved to be able to refrain from taking vengeance into
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Metaphilosophy relies on the idea that it might be productive to distinguish some general pronouncements about philosophy from philosophy itself. Contrasting with many other cultural practices‚ for philosophy the distinction is rather questionable‚ but a similar case is presented by language: when speaking in English about the English language one might assume a split between English-as-object and English-as-metalanguage. Philosophers using the term metaphilosophy being still a minority‚ it might
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