Extra Credit 2

Compared to the first week I enjoyed this past weeks readings much more.  I had a very hard time trying to relate to both Singer and Regan's arguments for animal rights.  I found both of them far too restricting in the sense that I believe in animal rights however, I struggled with the idea that they possess the same worth as us.  I found Warren's reading to coincide more closely with my ideas about animals and how we can exist together with them.  I liked that Warren established that the reason that humans treat each other equally not because 'god said so' but rather because the price we pay for moral equality is treating others equally.  Moreover, those who deserve this moral equality are those who are able 'listen to reason'.  This idea was not new and was rejected as a criteria for moral equality because not all humans have the ability to reason, specifically those who are mentally handicapped and infants.  Warren addresses both arguments adequately, and thus, I think that this reading was crucial in me determining where I stand on animal rights issues (these ideas were presented in Prompt 06).  I believe that we should not inflict unnecessary pain to animals, however, at the same time I do not believe that any animals deserves the same moral standing as a human.

However, the articles that we have read relating to the environment have incited a lot more thought from me.  Starting with the Lecture 5 on policy and economics caused me to think about things in a different light.  It made me realize that being raised in a capitalist society I have adopted an analysis method without having realized it.  Many of the decisions we make reflect what is important to us.  Prompt 07 allowed me to analyze purchasing meat, something that I rarely think about.  What it made me realize was that purchasing standard beef (that is not organic or grass fed) is a cost-benefit analysis where we weigh the cost in dollars versus the suffering of an animal.  While the option exists for a more expensive beef that has been raised in a manner that reduces suffering very few people even contemplate this decision.  This is only one example however, this type of analysis can be used in almost every decision we make in our life.

Another issue that was reviewed this week was about endangered species.  We read Russow's text 'Why Do Species Matter?' which presented a variety of reasons about why we should preserve species. I found this text interesting because I think just about everybody acknowledges that endangered species need to be preserved, but the why is a little bit more complicated.  Russow presents three different reasons about why we should preserve these animals and goes on to describe the flaws in each argument making me question the why as well.  However, my anthopocentric side eventually was able for me to make sense of the issue for myself by instead of arguing for the lofty steward responsibility or intrinsic value I found that probably the most reasonable reason we can justify allocating resources to preserve a species is the assumption that these species possess some sort of extrinsic value which may some day be needed by humans.


Prompt 9 I feel I made a breakthrough because I was able to finally culminate prior knowledge from the course into Taylor's text.  The final section in Taylor's text about rejecting the superiority of humans was intriguing.  It made me realize how humans have developed this idea of superiority from Greek society, built upon by Judeo-Christian philosophy and then solidified in my opinion by Cartesian dualism.  When we think about all of these concepts as moral relativism it is an almost earth shattering revelation.  That this concept of human superiority that is held by most for the reasons listed above is nothing but something fabricated by humans we may better be able to understand our place in the world.  With this mind set we can better understand and internalize texts like those written by Calicott.  Calicott's text helped me to realize how ecological ethic can fit into our lives.  Both Calicott and Taylor's texts together have helped me to develop my current feeling on ecological ethic and how it is not based upon anything higher but that it is something higher similarly to our morals regarding our community and that it can be achieved by having a greater respect for the land.

Extra Credit: Review of First Week

This is the first philosophy class that I have learned a lot in this one week.  As an engineering student I have always had some resentment about classes like this because of how they do not present science but rather subjective ideas.  I was surprised to see however, how interesting and relevant this course has been to my own life.  Starting with the correlation between philosophy and ethics.  However, I think what has really helped contribute to this learning process has been the philosophizing through the correspondence that we have been required to keep by writing comments.  I think that very rarely do we allow other people to critique our philosophies often because we are afraid of people poking holes in our beliefs.  I found this has already happened to me on several occasions the first after Prompt 1 (1).  I made a comment about eating meat being natural in the world around us.  However, Ethan was able to provide some insight that I had never considered comparing meat consumption of animals which is directly related to survival vs a human eating an animal is a choice because other options exist that can sustain our life.

Another item that we learned about was the idea of the moral continuum.  This segment caused several rather earth shattering revelations about the idea of my ethics and how they were formed.  I believe this is because I possessed the rather egotistical view that the views I had were somehow a universal code.  However, upon learning about extreme realism and relativism I was able to better understand that my my morals have been derived from my surroundings which is an already established Idea known as cultural relativism.  The next lecture presented even more ideas about my perception of the world.  I have realized that for most of my life I have looked at the world solely in terms of humans being the most important species this idea being anthropocentrism.  This served as a very appropriate segue into the discussion of animals rights.  We read two different readings from Singer and Regan.  Both of these ideas presented different ideas about animal liberation but both recognizing that animals have rights.  Singer uses the criteria of whether or not an animal should have equal rights as a human by whether or not a creature can experience suffering because this is the limitation of properties that we can use if we consider the least common denominator among humans and thus some animals are capable of feeling this emotion as well.  Regan uses a more vague term of 'inherent value' as a metric for which animals should have equal rights.  While I have found that my views are still represent speciesism I think that acknowledging other argument is crucial in so that we can help solidify or even establish a view on a subject.  The most important shift I think that I have had during the first week of this course is better understanding my own beliefs (not even just limited to the topics in this course) as well as an acknowledgement that my own beliefs are not right and to keep a more open mind when understanding other peoples arguments.

(1) http://phil149.blogspot.com/2012/01/prompt-01.html#comment-form