Reflection On Philosophy

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While attending orientation at Texas State and meeting with my advisor for selecting my courses, I was a little unnerved to find out I had to take philosophy. I assumed we were going to discuss Aristotle for the entire semester. When the first lecture came around, I was relieved we did not have to read books about some Greek guy. I had no interest in philosophy or discussing whether man is inherently evil or not. Now that the semester is coming to a close, I realize that it was not about questioning a topic that seemed to have no answer. All the papers and discussion tasks were practice for students to learn how to disengage any argument. This course has taught me how to look for the flaws in arguments and how to come up with refutations; ultimately, …show more content…

Everyone holds animals in different regards, which caused the riff between me and the other members in my discussion group. All 3 of us had different views. After closely listening to their argument, it made me reevaluate my own. I did not notice how easy it was for someone to break down an argument to the point where it is no longer plausible. Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases set the foundation for how I view arguments. Alastair Norcross states concrete ideas, along with rebuttals that make the paper practically indisputable. He also includes that people may argue “the suffering of factory raised animals is merely foreseen as a side-effect of a system that is a means to the gustatory pleasures of millions.” (p. 234). I believe those people are wrong, which is why I chose to discuss it for this assignment.
Throughout my high school career, I have been told that in order to catch a reader, you have to hook them. Norcross does just that. He immediately begins his paper by introducing a man named Fred. As it turns out, Fred was ’a great lover of chocolate’. Fred endured head trauma, and as a result, he no longer tastes chocolate. This caused Fred to turn to drastic measures. He discovered that he could taste chocolate again, under one circumstance: he had to torture innocent puppies to extract a specific hormone from their

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