Morality the quality of the people or actions?

The way our system is run today it is the quality of the action that counts. Say mother theresa kills somebody one day they will judge her on her actions and not on the quality of the person she has been her whole life. Mother Theresa dedicated her life to helping others, but if she slips up she will be punished. i disagree with aristotle because i think we should judge people based on their actions and not their qualities. The reason being is because your quality derives from your actions. I think if you kill somebody based on hate or another reason that changes your quality as a person and you may not be the giving person you once were. Or you may still be a giving person but you disliked someone so you killed them but that doesnt make it right. Your actions determine your quality and having quality means not doing bad actions.

It is tough concluding how Aristotle would look at murder. Aristotle puts the more worth into the individual than he does the action itself. So according to Aristotle is it immoral or moral to commit a murder. I guess he would conclude that it depends on the worth of the person being murdered and calling the merderer an actual murderer; you would have to look at the past virtues this person contains. The act of murder in itself is looked at as wrong but calling a person a murderer, Aristotle would say could be wrong too. Since the murderer may have good virtues and it may have been done with good inentions.

I feel that certain people of different ages and different learning stages of life have different social contracts already. If you get arrested before you are 18 you are not as accountable for your actions as you are when you are 18 and older. This proves that everyone does not share the same social contract. If you are not 21 you are not permitted to drink alcohol but it is legal for everyone 21 and older to do so. Age makes a big difference on the social contract rules. The government has different rules on their contract as a whole but the individuals who make up the gov’t have the same social contract as any citizen. The gov’t also has checks and balances from each branch of gov’t so they check and make sure no branch is breaking the contract between them and the people.

In Kant’s view it is immoral to cheat on an exam. According to Kant things are immoral if you cannot make them into universal law. Cheating on an exam would be immoral according to Kant because you cannot make it universal law. If you did, then everyone would cheat on their test. Everyone would get perfect scores but what would that show. There would be no point to take a test your allowed to cheat on. Everyone would get the same grade and youd be stupid not to cheat. It is contradictory to make it universal law that everyone must cheat on their tests. Tests loose their value of determining how much a person has learned about a subject over a period of time. There would be no point in taking tests if cheating was universal law. Therefore, cheating as a universal law would not work and therefore cheating is immoral.

Connection between rationality and self-love

The connection between self-love and rationality is pretty clear. If you are cold and theres an open window  near you the logical thing to do would be to close the window. You would be thinking rationally and looking out for yourself and the fact that you are indeed cold. Naturally people think about themself and what makes them happy. Thinking rationally would mean that they are thinking logically and of sound mind to determine what they could do to make themselves more happy because we love ourselves, and want to see ourselves thrive. When we think rationally we are simply thinking in our self-interest.

Will human nature lead to a state of war?

 I feel that human nature would lead to a state of war. In nature humans would use their natural instincts to get food, warmth, etc. Using their instincts means fighting off other creatures that might want to take their things away. Natural instincts of a human are selfish. Even today we must hold back some of our selfishness to help others. It is easy to be selfish, natural to be selfish. It is harder to be unselfish and give things up. Humans would always be fighting eachother off and plotting to kill eachother at times for the last of certain food or for their territory. We have rules under our gov’t and society for a reason. The reason is that the nature of a human is to fight and be selfish. We lock our doors everynight because we do not trust other humans around us. We are protective of what we have. In our society today there are rules to protect our belongings. In nature however, there are no consequences for immoral actions because they are not noted as immoral, they are neccessary for survival.

Without government would morality even exist?

I feel that morality can definately be independant of just a government controling everything and telling people what they can and cannot do. Is the only reason humans aren’t killing eachother on a daily basis because of this structure we have set into our lives. Well maybe, but it is hard to believe that morality came from government and structured systems. It had to start somewhere in an unstructured world where people realized that it is not in their best interest or others best interests to be constantly killing one another. Government most likely came after morality was discovered. It came in place to protect morality and protect what the majority naturally felt was the right way to behave. You don’t pnly refrain from killing someone just because its illegal, you initially do not kill because you feel that it is wrong deep inside. Your instincts whether morphed because of the structured system we live in or naturally feel that killing a person you become angry with isn’t the answer. Instincts are for emergencies and as humans living nicely with few life threatening emergencies such as not having enough food to eat can put there natural animal like instincts to the side because they are of no use. True instincts i believe are drastic and they happen without thinking it through. Take passiong out for example. That is an instinct your body performs when your not feeling well so it can protect itself. We don’t think to ourself oh i should passout that will protect me now, it just happens. I think morality started before govt and will continue after govt. Sometimes our govt is not so moral after all.

If i had to choose one of the theories i would choose to believe Utilitarianism. I would choose this theory because it is less problematic than Kant’s theory. I feel that people as a whole, society itself determines what is moral and what is immoral. Utilitarianism is looking at society as a whole and its judgement on certain issues. Take for example abortion. If people voted and the majority stated that abortion should be illegal than everyone who has an abortion maybe be looked upon as immoral because one they are breaking a new found law and two the majority of the people have been proven to not agree with abortion. By looking at whether an action is moral or not and focusing on peoples motivation instead of the consequenses makes it diffcult to determine what is moral and what is not, especially if the consequences and the motive do not match up. In the world today i feel that we use the Utilitarian theory more often then we use Kant’s theory. Sometimes people who do things by accident or with different motives get punished based on the consequences of these actions.

Giving to charity is considered moral. Why? is the question. If i see a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk and they are starving and i am about to take a bite out of my Big Mac. I would think to myself, well i can buy myself another Big Mac this person is starving so it is sort of a feeling of duty to give this person my sandwiche. It would feel wrong not to because he/she is starving and i have enough money to buy as many hamburgers as i want. Maybe i would feel pity which is kind of a form of duty because you feel bad the person is not as lucky as you are to be able to eat. I do not agree that a I would give to this starving person on the sole motive that it would make me feel better about myself or happy because i did something supposidly moral. I mean yes you do feel good about the deed you have done but you don’t go around giving people things for the sole reason of feeling good. You feel good because you realized that maybe for the first time you didnt do something selfish.

I feel that happiness does have intrinsic values. It is natural to feel happy at times. The question is are we meant to be happy all the time. The answer is no or else we would be happy all the time. It is much easier for certain creatures as well to be “happier” than humans. Certain animals like dogs or cats. They live a much simpler life therefore it is much easier for them to obtain happyness. To them happiness is getting enough food sleeping and playing alot. If animals recieve this attention from their masters who take care of them they feel loved as well. Humans are much more complex even if a human has plenty of food lots of sleep and playtime they might not be completely happy. The more complex of an animals you are the more it takes you to be happy. I feel like happiness is a natural feeling, but the more complex you are the harder to obtain that feeling of happiness.

The objection for Utilitarianism my group presented was “Is Utilitarianism too demanding to expect people to act with the incentive of upholding society.” I feel that noone should be expected to always be doing certain actions just with the motive of doing something good for society. Mill’s states that your motives are usually entirely different. Your motives do not have to be a feeling of duty to our society. I feel that Mill’s has proven his point that Utilitarianism is not too demanding for people.