In the following, I will argue that people act upon their own free will and not through determinism, and disprove the third and fourth components of Strawson’s initial Basic Argument. Determinism is defined as the theory that everything that happens is determined to happen exactly as it does by what has happened before. Essentially, this means that every choice that a person makes they have not actually made- their choice was determined for them long ago and they are acting how they believe they chose to act. This is similar to the Christian belief of predestination, which is defined as the foreordaining of all that will happen in the future. The principal difference between determinism and predestination is that the concept of predestination…
Understanding the Spectrum of Jealousy in Dogs The article my group picked was “Jealousy in Dogs,” the experiment was conducted by Christine R. Harris and Caroline Prouvost out of the University of California, San Diego. The article was published in July of 2014 by the Public Library of Science (PLOS). The paper covers animal behavior, specifically dog emotions. The topic is interesting because I was always told you anthropomorphize your pets by giving them emotions.…
Tom Toles appropriately uses various techniques to use his illustration to spearhead a worldwide criticization of the Nobel Committee. Initially, as observable, he uses appeal to authority to simulate a nearly identical situation. Here, the sprinter, showcasing then President Barack Obama, receives the gold medal before the beginning of the race by a person who portrays the Nobel Committee. As observable, he carefully satirizes the biasness of the Committee in deciding the winner. According to the accusations, the Committee did this to show their “appreciation” to the President.…
According to statistics, more than one billion people in the world are undernourished today. In his article “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers”, Robert Paarlberg discusses recent food policy of Western countries, according to which food products should be organic and local. In result, poor African countries experience hunger and worsening of the agriculture infrastructure because most Western countries lost their interest to invest the agricultural systems of developing countries. While in the West food becomes more and more exquisite, poor countries become deprived of the most basic food products, such as rice, wheat, and others. Paarlberg emphasizes that helping developing countries is no more a trend today and the world market is justified…
There are a plethora of reasons to trust, believe, and feel the arguments the author provides. First, the reasons to…
The goal of this paper is to present a map of the argument in the article “Dude” by Scott F. Kiesling. This argument mapping will do the following things. First, it will present what I believe are the main claims of the article. While doing this I will also explain any important terms or concepts needed to understand the Kiesling’s argument. I will then link the claims to the kinds of evidence that Kiesling uses in order to support them.…
The article I read was entitled, “The Case for Good Taste in Children’s Books” written by Meghan Cox Gurdon, Children’s book reviewer, The Wall Street Journal. This author has been the children’s book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal since 2005. Her work appeared on numerous other publications such as Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and more. She worked as overseas correspondent in many different countries; Asia, Europe, Africa and in the Middle East. She graduated from Bowdoin College in 1986 as magna cum laude achievements.…
Klusendorf argues through a biblical standpoint that abortion is immoral from multiple standpoints. He starts with discussing whether if the Bible being silent allows it by default, clears up his views on what he considers human beings, and ends with an examination on the pro-choice interpretation of a Bible passage. His first point is that we should know that abortion is wrong because we are treating other humans unjustly by doing so. Racists are then given as an example, who had used Scripture’s silence as their proof. Another one of his main points is that it was unnecessary to address the matter at the time.…
In William James', “The Will to Believe, James provides a defensive response to religious faith regarding W. T. Clifford's position in his essay, "The Ethics of Belief" (James, 2001). Within his stance, James suggests that his views have a somewhat broader scope that Clifford’s (Princeton University, n.d.). Moreover, that in certain cases, it is not only permissible but inevitable that a person’s passional, non-rational nature will determine that person’s belief (Princeton University, n.d.). In summary, James presents that anything that is proposed for our belief is a hypothesis and that any question about which of the two hypotheses to accept is a person’s option (Princeton University, n.d.).…
I was largely swayed by Horowitz’s arguments to reconsider secession as an inviolable right. In his essay, he argues that secessionist states remain heterogeneous and minority groups in the new state suffer, and that merely having the right to secede incentivises violence. To this, Horowitz suggests that we should focus on “fostering interethnic accommodation within states” and improving institutional frameworks to mitigate conflict. (14) He brings up electoral systems as an example -- “If election depends, at the margin, on the ability to gain some votes from members of groups other than one's own, then political leaders will behave in an ethnically conciliatory fashion for that purpose.”…
Within this essay, I will argue that Galen Strawson’s basic argument, presented in Your Move: The Maze of Free Will, is correct about the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility. I will do this by first explaining the basic argument as proposed by Strawson, then raising an objection to it concerning the distinction between the self and the way you are by denying the second premise. And finally, I will be refuting the objection. Strawson’s basic argument can be boiled down to the simple notion that one cannot be ultimately morally responsible. He claims that anything you do in any circumstance is an effect of who you are, and the way you are.…
In this paper, I am going to argue that this premise…
I strongly agree with this theory because it counters every argument against it and provides arguments of its…
The essay, “It Always Costs” written by activist and scientist David Suzuki, argued for the importance of the negative outcomes of technology within our society. He further emphasized this idea by exploring the fact that although we rely and benefit from these technologies, everything comes at a price no matter how little or small it may seem. For example, malaria carrying mosquitoes, were being eliminated by a designed toxin (DDT) however, the genetics of the mosquitoes had mutated. As a result, the disease was difficult to erase and more toxins were used to improve the outbreak. The DDT affected the food chain and integrated into the egg shells of birds causing a high bird mortality rate.…
Annotated Bibliography Alexie, Sherman. “A Good Story.” The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. Eds. Rise B. Alexrod, Charles R. Cooper.…