"The End of Philosophy," written by David Brooks, is a column from the New York Times that discusses recent changes in the way scientists and philosophers conceive of and explain moral reasoning in humans. The column mentions some interesting connections to the Ways of Knowing. The column can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html
Comment on those elements you find applicable to what we looked at this year.
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This article is relevant to me right now because over the past year I have been reevaluating why I do what I do, and reasons for continuing to uphold my morals. I have been trying to find where my morals should stand once I am at college and making moral decisions entirely on my own. The first question that I posed to myself in this consideration is why I stick so strongly to some morals when reason alone finds them unecessary. I realized that often this is because the morals just feel right.
My explanation for much of that is my faith in God. From my standpoint God gave us the ability to instinctively distinguish right from wrong, and from those distinctions form morals. This would be one way to explain why so many different cultures share similar codes of morals, even when they have no contact with other cultures. They almost always form laws and customs rather than falling into a mode of survival of the fittest. I think that this ability to distinguish right from wrong could be dulled from being ignored, but that each person is born with it.
The interesting part about this article is that it provides the evolutionist rebuttal to my belief. It explains this by saying that humans as a species have learned to work together forming morals because it makes us collectively stronger. It claims that we instantly feel what is "right" or "wrong" because it has been hard-wired into our evolution for our good as species or civiizations.
I know that neither of the explanations can be "proved". I just enjoy considering the multiple explanations for why some morals are so closely linked to ethics.
The first thing that popped out to me about the reading is that they were talking about how we create a biased view on everything we look at as soon as we see it. Our brain determines if we like something or not based on aesthetics. This relates back to the Descartes reading we just went over. He was attempting to recycle his views and come out with new ones, but this was nearly impossible because he had so much bias built into what he knew. This article had a very direct correlation to the Descartes reading, as well as to the matrix.
I personally feel that the language we use in this day and age is becoming less and less important, and more and more biased/sexist/racist. However, I also feel that we will not be able to stop this change, and that the debate over political correctness has become old news and that we should move on. Sure, our language is vulgar and crass, but we are the ones who made it that way. It has been our choice to form our language in such a way that terms such as "cougar" have multiple meanings. I feel like it is unimportant to look at language in this way when we could be working on where language truly matters, in the schools. The major problem I find with language is that people simply have no understanding of how to use it. That said, maybe we should try to keep the names of our already perverted television shows a little less "racy". This could help us move on to the more important dilemmas in life, such as what to do after today, THE LAST DAY OF HIGHSCHOOL!
Thanks for the mind opening opportunities you have given us in this class Mr. Currier.
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