Can the Golden Rule Test Morality?

The Kantian Perspective of thinking is that if anyone violates the rules then they should be punished. (Shafer-Landau 154) Many different approaches could be taken in order to delve deeper into this idea, but the first two that are brought up by Shafer-Landau are that of fairness and consistency.

            In order to test fairness and consistency two questions are brought into play, “what if everyone did that and how would you like it if that were done to you?” (Shafer-Landau 155) The golden rule, you shouldn’t do anything to others that you would not done to yourself, is brought up in chapter 11 of The Fundamentals of Ethics, by Russ Shafer-Landau, as a method to explain the second question offered above. 

A White Male on White Male Priveledge

After reading White Privilege and Male Privilege A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies, by Peggy McIntosh, I have to admit that I was a little taken aback and I felt almost attacked.  It was interesting how towards the beginning of the paper she said, “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.” (McIntosh 1998, 95) I must be one of the males taught not to believe that I had any sort of privilege here in the United States because I certainly in no way believe that.  At first the writing as a whole offended me, but then I kept referring back to that quote and thinking that maybe she was right.  It’s probably true that most white people take for advantage the fact that he list of 46 things is actually true and all of those are very applicable. I personally just struggle to agree, and therefore support her theory, that males really have that much of an upper hand in the work place.  She states that “Virtually all men deny that male over-reward alone can explain men’s centrality in all the inner sanctums of our most powerful institutions.” (McIntosh 1998, 96)

Can you reject moral objectivism based off of personal opinions?

Are people entitled to believe whatever they would like to?  Are all of their opinions equally plausible? Russ Shafer-Landau explores ethical objectivity in his book The Fundamentals of Ethics.  I believe that "Equal Rights Imply Equal Plausibility" was one of the stronger arguments from the chapter, Ten Arguments Against Moral Objectivity. The argument given in the section begins by stating that, “If everyone has an equal right to an opinion, then all opinions are equally plausible." (Shafer-Landau 2012, 323)  One can see that this is most likely the way that most people in our society were raised; constantly being reminded by your parents that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and that everyone is right when they give their opinions.  For that reason it would make the first claim seem plausible without reading into it any further.  

Can Laws be Gender Specific?

By reading through the introduction of The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau, I was able to make various outside of the classroom connections based off of his list of reasonable constraints that guide the way we live found on page 6.  Two of the constraints that seemed most relevant to what goes on in the world today were “Neither the law nor tradition is immune to moral criticism,” and “Equals ought the be treated equally.” (Shafer-Landau, 6)

            A relevant article that I found to deal with both was