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The Blog That Was The Most Difficult To Write

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The Blog That Was The Most Difficult To Write

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My understanding of Morality Before The Class

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My understanding of Morality Before The Class

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Before this class, I didn't have much of an understanding of ethics and morality. I likely would have defined them both as the internal values that drive decision-making and while that isn't far off, I've learned a lot since.

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My understanding of morality and ethics now

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My understanding of morality and ethics now

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I now have a deeper, more informed understanding of morality and ethics. Having never taken an ethics course before, learning about the views of so many different philosophers was extremely helpful in forming my own views on the origin/development of ethics and morality. I now understand that morals are the individual principles that inform our thoughts and actions, and ethics are principles or rules attached to an external source. I can believe genocide to be morally wrong in any setting due to personal beliefs, and a relationship with a subordinate in a work setting to be an ethical wrong due to the assumed rules of that environment.

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The texts, Bhagavad Gita and Analects of Confucius provided context to ethics rooted in eastern cultures. Confucius' written rules to live by emphasize the value of order in behavior to maintain structure, and the Bhagavad Gita displays the importance of social organization to maintain order. Both highlight emotional self-regulation as a key tool to achieving a goal.

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Confucius lived in a time when China needed social order. The constantly warring states needed some kind of unifying structure to operate within, and Confucius ended up largely providing that. He believed strongly in order and in influencing society through the self -- one's own controlled actions, moral thinking, showing respect, and understanding of order. In his eyes, it was through thinking for oneself and self-improvement that society could achieve peaceful order. Emotional self-regulation was a key tool to achieving this goal and could be achieved by following the Analects of Confucius, which embodied the idea of controlling oneself in a respectful manner to achieve a harmonious society.

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The Bhagavad Gita, an important story in Hindi scripture, highlights the importance of duty and order, similar to Confucius. If one behaves properly, by controlling thoughts and actions, they will eventually earn passage to Swarga, a place of enlightenment.

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Hume vs. Kant

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Hume's views aligned with Empiricism and view morals as being rooted in emotion and influenced by experience. Therefore, they can change over time.

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Kant believed that morals were rooted in duty, and that to be morally right was to follow a set of absolute rules, such as one shall not lie.

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I found Utilitarianism to be a concept best illustrated by examples, so the constant discussion and visuals from Crash Course's video were helpful.

It added to my learning by boiling concepts down. Utilitarianism focuses on results rather than intent, and the ideal end result is happiness. Therefore the desire for happiness underlies any want we want or action we decide to take, and therefore drives our morality.

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Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36

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This blog was the most difficult to write because it covered topics that were so foreign to me that I had to do extensive research just to understand the questions being asked. I learned that when reading and analyzing a text, you need to also understand the context of the time period, the values of the people that wrote and read it, and the general culture and religions surrounding it. Understanding that Confucius' desire for harmonious society came from a history of constant conflict and disorder really put into context modern Chinese culture and social structure. This, with my personal experience being a Chinese-American in an immigrant family, allowed me to fully process Confucian ethics.

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Because this blog was early on in the semester, I didn't know much about other ethics. If I were to edit this blog, I would make connections between Confucian ethics and Kant's absolute rules, and discuss the concept of purpose within the context of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. They focused heavily on the concept of "will" and the idea that there is a point of happiness down the road to reach for, and I think it would be interesting to connect that with the "Swarga" in the Bhagavad Gita.

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The Blog That Asked Me To Think In New Ways

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The Blog That Asked Me To Think In New Ways

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I found most of the blogs to be thought-provoking and encourage new thinking, but blog 4 (Hume v. Kant) definitely questioned what I thought I knew the most.

Hume believed that human morals were highly rooted in emotion and sentiment, such that experiences colored future views with associative emotions. These develop into morals that are based on emotion and driven by reason. This aligned with Empiricism, and what I assumed moral development was.

Kant, however, believed in the following of absolute rules with no exceptions. And it was his view that "good lies" were impossible, that asked me to think in new ways. This Rationalism argues that morals are based in reason and that we are born with a set of them that is certain. Because of this, Kant believed that if someone lies to help another person and six or seven iterations down the line, someone dies, the original lie teller is responsible for that death. This made me question any action I'd ever taken that I thought was helping.

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If I were to add to this blog, I would contrast Kantian ethics with the others we discussed. In the long run, which would be most beneficial: Utilitarianism (which helps the most people) or Kantian ethics (which claims to help the most because of its strict rule following)? If Utilitarianism statistically performs with greater positive outcomes, then does that break down the entire basis of Kantian ethics? It's really interesting to find connections and overlaps between different ethical frames of thinking.

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This video mainly reinforced what I had learned about Utilitarianism from class. It confirmed the result-oriented nature of Utilitarianism. It challenged my view of popular media figures because it classified Batman as Kantian, which was not a connection I had previously seen, and am not sure I agree with.

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The Media Tool That Added To My Learning

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The Media Tool That Added To My Learning

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The blogs forced me to gain a deeper understanding of each concept/view /philosophy in order to write about them

Introduction to different perspectives allowed me to form my own opinions (ex. rationalism vs. empiricism, morals in evolution, etc.)

I have grasped the concepts well enough to bring them up in non-academic conversations and apply them to real-life scenarios

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What I've learned about Ethics and Morality through Blogs and Discussions