Ethics
Question 1. Punishing criminals is justified as it reforms the criminals into good citizens. Pojman on capital punishment argues that capital punishment is a permissible form of punishment and that it is supported by (1) and (2). Retribution is a “backwards-looking” approach to discipline. Capital punishment is an ethical issue of punishment that is added to the problem of whether it is ever morally right to take away a human being of life. Therefore, sentencing someone to death is generally immoral; this is because it allows the state to pick who deserves to die, and lawfully kill in the name of justice (Allen, pg. 39). Death is a permanent set of punishments, considering how easy it is for an innocent person convicted of a crime. Therefore, capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Pajama’s first argument is in support of the death penalty through the retributivist. Thus, the interpretation could only allow the death penalty to be more appropriate for murders, but Pojman disliked this issue. His central idea was to expand the set of offenses by the capital in this debate, Pojman is aware of this unclear problem. He goes ahead and explains that human beings have dignity as self-conscious rational agents who can be acted upon morally. To be able to maintain in precise, their moral goodness or innocence that bestows dignity, therefore human beings are entitled to live. Taking away one’s life is evil, and the perpetrator forfeits his own life, he or she deserves to die as well (Stuart-Maver, pg. 53)
According to Bright, any assessments on the death penalty must not be based on abstract theories about the retribution, and deterrence. Therefore, to asses the death penalty, whether it is right or wrong, we have to understand the realities of the death penalty. The death penalty discriminates against the poor and minorities. Therefore, arguments against capital punishment include, capital punishment is arbitrarily and unfairly imposed; thus, capital punishment is not morally permissible. Justifications of premise include wrongful convictions, meaning some people sentenced to death are innocent. Inadequate representation, people such as Gary Graham was executed in Texas most likely because he had a notoriously horrible lawyer. Arbitrary prosecution, no law requires prosecutors to seek the death penalty; it is entirely up to their discretion. Racial Bias; bright wrote an article indicating that the United States Justice system is systematically racist. Deterrence, 99% of murders are not punished by death. The 1 % matters since it is degrading to the society to engage in the same behavior as criminals carrying out punishments. Pojman would say that law applied in an immoral manner does not imply that the law itself is immoral. Only the application is immoral. Bright’s response was that law is nothing other than its implementation. This is because human beings are irrevocably imperfect, and death will always be final and irreversible. The finality and extreme severity of death make the application of the death penalty a special case.
Question 2. The existence of animals on the borderline of our moral concepts; the results are that we sometimes find ourselves according to our thoughts of secure moral status, but at times we also deny our moral condition. Therefore, the Philosophical thinking on the moral standing of animals is rather diverse and can generally be grouped into indirect, direct, but unequal theories that have moral equality theories. The indirect methods deny animals’ moral status or equal considerations with humans due to a lack of consciousness, reason, or autonomy. They ultimately reject moral status to animals. These theories may still require animals not to be harmed, only because doing so will cause harm to the morality of human beings. Direct but unequal methods according to some moral considerations to animals, but in the end, they then deny them a full moral status due to the inability in respect to another agent’s rights or display of moral reciprocity within a community of equal agents (Singer, pg. 10). Ethical equality theories also allow the extension of similar considerations and moral status to animals by refuting the moral relevance of the aforementioned unique properties of human beings. Arguing by the analogy, more equality theories often extend the concept of rights to animals because they have similar physiology and mental capacities as in facts or disabled human beings. Singer’s argument thesis has indicated that humans and animals are morally equal. But according to Steinbock argument against equality, states that humans are not morally equal to animals. Peter Singer has written about the assisted reproduction of animal rights through abortion, infanticide the environment, and famine relief. Therefore the treatment of non-human animals has traditionally been regarded as a trivial matter. The treatment of non-human animals has traditionally been considered to be a trivial matter. Aristotle said that, in the natural order of things, animals exist to serve human purposes. Christians tradition added that man alone is made from the image of God, and that animals do not have souls. Immanuel Kant went ahead and said that animals are not self-conscious. So we can have no duties on them. The utilitarian took a different view by holding that they should consider the interests of all beings, humans, and non-humans Peter Singer took up this argument in the mid-1970s.
Question 3. Despite frequent proclamations of war and a dramatic increase in government funding and resources in recent years. Their many indications that the problem is not going away and may even are growing worse (Santas, pg. 45). in the past year alone, more than thirty million Americans violated drug laws and billions of occasions. Drug treatment programs in the majority of the cities are turning people away for lack of spacing, and funding. In places such as Washington, D.C., drug-related killings, mainly one drug dealer r, is held responsible for doubling the homicide rate over the past year. In places such as New York and elsewhere, courts and prisons are clogged with a virtually limitless supply of drug violations. Both in large cities and small towns alike, the corruption of police officers and other criminal-justice officials by drug traffickers is rampant. There four types of drug-related harm, any cost-benefit analysis of prohibition must separate the four categories of damage related to illegal drug use. Therefore through a legalized debate. These categories include injury caused by prohibition; this consists of the problems caused by the law enforcement approach to the drug problem. The second harm is prevention through prohibition; this category includes all the evil committed by people to allow themselves or others since drugs are illegal and thus less available. There is also harm to the prevention by a prohibition that has failed to prevent all acts of illicit drugs by the occurrence today despite the ban (Stewart, pg. 633). Finally, the harm related to, but not caused by the use of drugs, and they often fall into the trap of scapegoatism. Kant’s formula of humanity states that with humanity, whether in your person or the person of others, always at the same time as an end. Therefore, to respect someone’s humanity is to respect what makes them human; their ability to be rational. Drugs like cocaine and heroin can take away our rationality. They are thus dehumanizing. Arguments from dehumanization include cocaine, and heroin can destroy our humanity, thus if legalizing them, cocaine and heroin are morally impermissible. Arguments from an increase in Drug use, if made legally available, it will increase the drug use.
Question 5. The emerged analysis of the major arguments on abortion explains why the debate on abortion is intractable. Most arguments state that fetuses have a right to life. Abortion is defined as the deliberate removal of a fetus from the womb of a human female. The case is opposed since if killing fetuses can be made permissible because they are not fully-fledged members of the moral community, then the same can be applied to the killing of newborns (Hendricks, pg. 245). Therefore, with the view that abortion is rare, gravely immoral has received little support in the recent philosophical literature. However, most philosophers believe that the anti-abortion position is either a symptom of irrational religious dogma generated by confusing philosophical arguments. Therefore, this argument is based on significant assumptions that most people are insightful and that abortion is morally permissible. Thomson’s argument on abortion stated that abortion is morally permissible in many cases. According to Marquis, abortion is morally impermissible in most cases. For the sake of argument, Judith Jarvis Thomson grants argued that a fetus is a person, with a right to life, from the moment of conception. Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person from the moment of conception. Therefore, with the false premise that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception is wrong. Accordingly, this argument treats the right to life as if it were unproblematic, while it’s not, and this seems to be more precisely the source of the mistake.
References
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