Should I Stop Consuming Meat?

In the article "Vegetarianism, Causation, and Ethical Theory" , Russ Shafer-Landau focuses on arguments against meat consumption. One of the main argument's that Shafer-Landau focuses on is the argument made by Consequentialists. Consequentialists believe that meat eating is wrong because it inflicts harm on animals. What Shafer-Landau is arguing in this article is that Consequentialists fail to show that their is an obligation to not consume meat.

Utilitarianism: The Problem With the View of Actual Results

In The Fundamentals of Ethics, Russ Shafer-Landau spends a chapter focusing on act utilitarianism, a version of consequentialism. In the chapter he discusses the structure of act utilitarianism and its principle of maximizing goodness. He also provides some of the attractions of Utilitarianism and the scope of Utilitarianism. What I plan to focus on however is the Utilitarian view of moral knowledge and the problem of using expected results over actual results when committing moral actions.

Do Movies Play a Role in Motivating us to Act Morally?

This past weekend the Oscars took place and while awards were being given out for best picture, best actor/actress, and a number of other things; one of the undertones of the awards was the underlying message in some of the movies. Movies such as Lincoln, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Django Unchained, were all up for the award of best picture along with other candidates, but what all of these films had in common were that they each focused on key principles of morality that we have been discussing as of late in my Ethical Theory class. The movie Lincoln had the moral undertone of oppression and how the enslavement of others is objectively wrong; the same goes for the movie Django Unchained. Zero Dark Thirty focused on the moral undertone of torture and despite its benefits is it still morally right to do. The movie Argo focused on the moral undertone of dogmatic approaches by two powerful institutions during the 1980’s which was the American movie industry and the Central Intelligence Agency.

How Far Have we Really Come: How to address the issues of race in America

"Don't let your past come back to haunt you". That saying has stuck in my head since the first time I heard it at the age of 10. I always believed that if we reflected on our past to much it would prevent us from moving on to what our future has in store for us. Yesterday, however, my view has somewhat changed when it comes to that saying. This is due to Dr. Sundiata K. Cha-Jua. I had the fortunate pleasure of attending Dr. Cha-Jua's lecture yesterday, "Resurrecting Ghosts of the Past: Building Black Studies on its Radical Intellectual Tradition". Dr. Cha-Jua's lecture focused on the problems that exist for African Americans in the American society and how black studies in the collegiate curriculum can fix this. Before I go into more details though, let me first give a brief background of Dr. Sundiata K. Cha-Jua.

Reading Response: "They say, I say" pg. 20-22

The authors’ of They Say, I Say believe that when constructing an argument, orally or in writing, a person should first start with “what others are saying” and then respond to this with their own ideas. The authors suggest that when doing this, the person constructing an argument should summarize what the others say as soon as possible and remind the readers or listeners of it at strategic points as they go along. The authors argue that by constructing this style of argument you a person is giving their audience a quick preview of what they are arguing, and not just drowning the audience in details right away. This advice of the authors somewhat contradicts the common advice given to writers, which is the idea that writers should start with their own thesis or claim. The authors acknowledge this contradiction and respond to it in two ways: First