Extending Ethics Authors

Do you agree with Homers choice to work in the same field practicing the same views as Larch even though they do not share the same values on the topic of their practice?

I thought that the John Irving article was interesting. I personally am pro-life. I do also kind of believe in circumstances though. In some circumstances, like the one reffered to in "The Cider house Rules" where the girl is a victim of incest and rape, I do agree that she should have a choice, but I dont agree with killing a fetus, so I am not really on either side 100% I guess. That is a really though one for me. I think personally if it were me I would still carry the baby, whether or not I was going to keep the baby. But maybe I wouldnt want to if I were actually in the situation. If it is bad for the mothers health to be pregnant and she is, then I first of all think that she should have been more careful and taken more procautions to not get pregnant, but if it does happen, then in that circumstance, I would agree that aborting the bbaby is the right option. Like Drs sometimes say, there might be a choice between you being healthy and losing the baby, or losing both you and the baby. I think that Mills theory kind of can relate to that. He believes in doing the thing that will bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people, so to back that up, you could say that it would bring the greatest happiness to have the mother live, rather than losing both the mother and the baby. I thought it was interesting that even though Homer belieed that a fetus has a soul that he would want to continue to practice the way that Dr Larch had been. I personally would not have done that. I would have refused and done something else with my knowledge rather than do something I was completely against just to make a living for myself.

Do you think it was ethically appropriate for Dr. Frankenstein to go find parts of human bodies and take them from people who had passed away and create a whole new life from those parts?

This is a tough question for me. Right of the back, without even thinking about it I would say no. I dont think it was. I grew up learning to respect those that had passed away, they are taken care of kindly and carefully and the buried and not bothered again. Also, I think it is gross. But, if I take a little time to think about it, then I guess it is kind of cool. Most of us live our lives hoping that we can become something, and that wee will be remembered when we have passed on. So it would be kind of cool to be able to be a part of something like that. I mean, it was a huge thing for Dr. Frankenstein to be able to build a moving and working being from the parts of other beings who had passed away. If you think about it, it is kind of like organ donation also. The parts of one being were used to benefit another person. But also, ethically thats not good.. because it was like organ fraud... these people did not give their permission for someone to come along and take their body parts off of them to use for someone else. They may have wanted to stay fully assembled...

I think that both of these topics are so broad that you could argue them either way for a long long time and never be able to come up with a right or a wrong. I really liked the ways that these authors talked about and portrayed these topics though. In fairly clear and descriptive ways that explained both sides of the topic.

Free Topic

This semester I have actually really enjoyed all of the topics that we talked about. I didnt think i would like this class at all, especially at seven in the morning..Hah! But I actually have! The topic that has stuck with me the most though is reasoning. I did my first paper on reasoning, which made me think about it even more than just what I did in class, and it has just really stuck. I had never thought about how I make decisons and why I make them the way that I do, and ever since we went over that topic I tend to think about Mill's theory of creating the greatest amount of happiness for the greatesst number of people. I always try to do that in my life, I am very much a people pleaser. I think I have always just done that subconsiously though. I never actually thought about it, just did it. But now I tend to think about it more. I do things to please the most people possible. At the same time as that though, I tend to tolerate people. I do things for people because they dont do it when I want them to have it done, or they dont do it good enough for what I want, so instead of asking them to fix it I will just start over, or take over and do it myself. This comes from me being a very punctual person, I always have things done on time if not 20 minutes early, and I always do them as good as I can. 

I am still working on figuring out all the legistics of my debate presentation. I have my topic picked, Inclusion classes for special education students rather than self contained classes. And I am debating for that. I have made a list of all the pros and cons of that and started thinking of ways to debate each thing on my list, and then adding to my list as I research and find other things and as I think of things also. I am also asking questions to the special education and general education teachers that I work with to get their opinions of what they think I should do. 

To prepare for the rest of the semester, I think I need to just keep doing what I have been doing. I feel like I have been doing really well in this course so far and if I just keep up with the readings and coming to class then I will be prepared to take the final, do my debate, and just do well in the rest of the assignments this semester. 

What am I learning? I honestly hate this question. I feel like I am honestly just learning how to think. How to think about things from different points of view and to not be biased about things. Or that if I am biased, it is okay to still think about things from a different point of view, so I can at least try to understand or see what someone else sees about something that we may or may not agree on. So I guess in a way maybe I am learning toleration? I just thought of that. In this class we learn to think of things from different perspectives, and when you tolerate someone thats kind of what you have to do. In the toleration unit someone said, or it was found in the book, I cant remember which... "Toleration is a virtue to behave in a way to be able to co-exist with people or things that you find to believe or do things that are against what you believe to be right." In order to do this, I think that you have to do what I said above, think about things and try to see them from some one else's point of view.