“What is that?” Jan asked. Her daughter came flying through the house with something tiny in her hand. The daughter ignored Jan who was sitting at the kitchen table and beelined straight to her husband. “We have to go to the store!” the daughter demanded. While as small argument ensued between her husband and her daughter, Jan strained to see the small object in her daughter’s hand. She was quickly able to determine what it was and let out a shriek of terror. “GET IT OUT!” Jan demanded. “But mom” said the daughter. “NO BUTS!” Jan sharply replied. In her daughters’ hand was a little bird with no feathers.
Jan was not a bird lover. Birds had been the one thing she hated. Other people hated more rational things like spiders and snakes,
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“Where is the place for intelligent emotional argument?” is an easier way to sum up this theme. In Raimond Gaita’s Goodness Beyond Virtue, he gives a compelling argument that does just that. Gaita writes about the transformative experience of love that cannot be expressed in by traditional means of philosophy, yet vastly changed his moral outlook on life. So what are we dealing with here? I believe that while moral claims can be thought out and rationalized to a certain degree, our emotions play an active role in the realization of our morality. Without emotions injected into moral maxims, we might as well be robots. Love is an important emotion and is one of the great motivators of moral progress in my own opinion. Gaita was right when he said, “Often, we learn that something is precious only when we see it in the light of someone’s love.”(24). Gaita was just referring to how we can see other’s humanity through love, but I want to take it one step further. I think that we can see clearly that any being is precious in the light of someone else’s love. And this is how we can achieve the inclusion of animals into …show more content…
The story brings in an intelligent emotional argument, one that shows the transformative effects of love. We see in Gaita’s story a familiarity that we see in other stories. The love of a person for another changes not only the lives of the lover and the loved, but also those who witness it. Gaita gives many other examples throughout his paper of “unconditional conditioned” love (23). A couple examples he gives is the examples of a parents love for their children while the children learn to love each other from their parents’ actions, and even the religious anthropomorphic view of God who loves all of us unconditionally (Gaita, 22-24). The most interesting part of these loves is the claim that Gaita makes that they are conditioned. Parents are taught that unconditionally love is what they are supposed to do. Society tells us that a bad parent is one who doesn’t fulfill the need of their child for this kind of love. Sometimes parents do not fulfill this kind of love and instead focus love else where all the while other parents look on them as if something is wrong with them. This is because they do not fit what society teaches. I totally agree that parents should give their children all the love they need, and I was fortunate enough to have parents who give me that kindness. However, that is not fully instinctually as some parents where never taught that or actively shun that
In “Toward a Universal Ethics,” written by Michael Gazzaniga, a question is posed to coax his audience toward a science based ethics. “The question is, Do we have an innate moral sense as a species, and if so, can we recognize and accept it on it’s own terms? It is not a good idea to kill because it is not a good idea to kill, not because God or Allah or Buddha said it was not a good idea to kill.”(Gazzaniga, 420 para. 6). Gazzaniga answers the question for us, but he was wrong to assume that the brain’s systematic response to moral situations means that science should dictate ethics and morality. Instead, ethics and morality should be considered a part of humanity, which is influenced and balanced by many things including science, religion, and individual
In the article “A change of heart about animals” author Jeremy Rifkin uses rhetorical appeals such as ethos, logos, and pathos to persuade humanity in a desperate attempt to at the very least have empathy for “our fellow creatures” on account of the numerous research done in pursuit of animal rights. Rifkin explains here that animals are more like us than we imagined, that we are not the only creatures that experience complex emotions, and that we are not the only ones who deserve empathy.
Jenny asked, “On the first picture what do you see?” Jacob replies, “I see a bird who wants to learn to fly. The bird then draws pictures so he can figure out ways to fly. This picture the bird has the fan so he can learn how to fly; the wind is pushing him, and he can stay in one place and learn. Now he has the air glider thing that way he could also fly different ways and then once he can do that he can fly. Now he has a rocket booster so he can learn how to fly fast, and now he has crashed in all of them. The birds that can fly are laughing at him, and it makes him sad. Then I ask do you think he will give up? Jacob replies, “No since he does not care what others think and now he is trying to make a new machine so he can fly. He made an airplane so now he can fly, and the others will not laugh at him. The bird is happy at first he was sad now he is happy. Jenny asked, “Why do you think he did not give up?” Jacob replies, “He knew he could not fly so he built machines so that he could
Then the girl had to take a break because it was snack time. But after she was done she came right back to playing. She got the entire family up and at the breakfast table, where there were tiny plates sitting at each chair. “Once you’re done get dressed and hop in the car,” said the mother. A couple seconds later she piled all of her dolls in the car. “Where are we going momma,” asked the little boy. After she drives the car around their house she says “we’re at the drive through zoo!” The kids scream with excitement. “Remember children, these are exotic animals, they can be found in the wild or the zoo,” said the mother doll. When the car would drive by the animals, the girl would make animal sounds to its corresponding animal. In addition to the animal sounds that were made, the student also said “oooohhh” and “aahhh.” After they got through all the animals she drove the car around the house and took all of the dolls out. The student then stated that she was bored and was going to move on to another center. She cleaned up her mess and moved
They loved them so much even though the parents didn’t deserve it most of the time. That is unconditional love. They grew up very poor and were often forgotten about. There dad was an alcoholic who disappeared for days at a time, and bouncing from job to job. When he was home and drinking he “turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up [their] mom or anyone who got in his way”(23). Most of her memories of her dad are him being drunk, which turns him abusive and rude. They don’t have much money so she looks at is as good opportunity for her father to stop drinking. Jeannette never only sees her dad as an alcoholic like she should, she still cherishes his love. Along with her father’s drinking problem, her mother’s lack of rules and parental skills are out of the norm. She believes "people worry.... “people worry too much about their children. Suffering when they are young is good for them”(28). Her mother believes that they can learn on their own, showing that she does not care about the hardships her children are constantly dealing with in their environment. With this negligence the children are often forgotten about as well. Jeannette was put in many situations where she thought her parents “might not come back for her or they might not notice she was missing”(30). That is not how a child is suppose to feel about her parents yet she constantly
Is virtue all we need? Virtue epistemology is the theory that all of the things we believe are done so through an ethical process. They play an important role, in that our own personal experiences and intellectual facets are what drive this process. The fundamental idea of virtue epistemology is that knowledge is a form of a more general phenomenon, namely success through abilities. Which is turn means: knowledge is a cognitive achievement through cognitive abilities (perception, memory, experience, etc.). Knowledge doesn’t need to be anything beyond a justified true belief.
The animal rights movement is trying to get people to see exactly how animals have been treated. Most people see animal cruelty as “…unspeakable acts perpetrated by warped individuals mostly against dogs, cats, birds, and sometimes horses” (Munro, 512). Once seeing how countless animals have been treated, numerous people across the world are joining the cause to help these poor “nonhuman animals”. One reason that supports that animals deserve rights is that “non-human mammals over a year of age have mental capacities for memory, a sense of future, emotion, and self-awareness to a certain extent” (Dog˘an, 474). With this reasoning, animals have enough mental capacity to be considered subjects of life, and therefore deserve rights to support this thesis. Another reason states that “rights are defined in terms of capability of having interests” (Dog˘an, 481). Animals show an interest in living. As stated, “[a]nimals have a natural motive to live…[e]very day, they practice caution and care necessary to protect themselves. Their bodies are likewise structured for survival” (Dog˘an,
‘‘A White Heron’’ begins on a June evening near the Maine coast. As the sun sets, nine-year-old Sylvia drives home a cow. This girl has no other friends and really likes these walks with the cow. However, this certain night it has taken her an unusually long time to find the cow and she hopes Mrs. Tilley, her grandmother, will not worry about her. But her grandmother knows that she likes to wander about in the woods so she will not worry. The little girl comes across a stranger in the woods this night and asked her for directions because he was lost. She invites him back to the house for the night and he is happy to learn Sylvia is interested in birds and confesses that he is searching for a certain white heron. He offers Sylvia ten dollars if she will show the hunter where the heron is. The next day they go out looking for the bird but do not find it. They call it a night and go back home. Sylvia leaves early the next morning and climbs a big pine tree where she observes the white herons nest. When she returns home she tells the hunter she is not sure where the nest is and the hunter leaves disappointed.
Why is incest deplorable amongst humans, but not for dogs? What makes it acceptable for a man to kill a deer, but wrong if he kills another man? Why do these lines get drawn between humans and animals? David Hume has an answer to these questions. Though many philosophers, like Saint Augustine, argue that humans are morally different from animals because of their capability to reason, Hume states that it is passion and sentiment that determines morality. In his book, Treatise with Human Nature, Hume claims that vice and virtue stems from the pleasure or pain we, mankind, feel in response to an action not from the facts that we observe (Hume, 218). Hume uses logic to separate morality into a dichotomy of fact and value, making it clear that the only reasonable way to think of the ethics of morality is to understand that it is driven by passion, as opposed to reason (Angeles, 95). In this essay I will layout Hume's position on morality and defining ambiguous terms on the way. After Hume's argument is well established, I will then precede to illustrate why it is convincing and defend his thesis against some common objections.
By choosing to lover her child, the mother acknowledges that she doesn’t feel as if she is obligated to do so because she wants to love him or her and is prepared for the challenges that await her. Thoma Oord writes in his article “The Love Racket: Defining Love and Agape for the Love–and–Science Research Program” that the definition of love refers to the “promotion of well being of all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner” meaning that when a person loves someone, they will try to do whatever they can to their beloved’s benefit (922). The child is benefited in many ways when the mother chooses to love him or her, for example, the child’s anxiety levels and sense of fear are lowered because they have the security of the bond they possess with their mother (Tarlaci 745). In his article, “Unmasking the Neurology of Love,” Robert Weiss explains that love is a “goal-orientated motivation state rather than a specific emotion” which arises the possibility of a mother “falling out of love” with her child if neither feelings or goals are present. Tarlaci observed an experiment conducted by A. Bartels and S. Zeki in which they compared the brain activity of both a mother looking at a picture of her child to a lover looking at a picture of their beloved. In the experiment it was discovered that “just about the same regions of the brain showed activity in the same two groups except for one” the PACG, which has been confirmed to be “specific to a mother’s love” (Tarlaci 747). So the chances of a mother falling out of love with her child are there, but are different from that of a lover due to the areas of the brain involved. Therefore, explaining the bond between a mother and child as something that forms when a mother chooses to love him or her implies a greater sense of willingness and
Nonetheless, this really is a tale of compelling love between the boy and his father. The actions of the boy throughout the story indicate that he really does love his father and seems very torn between his mother expectations and his father’s light heartedness. Many adults and children know this family circumstance so well that one can easily see the characters’ identities without the author even giving the boy and his father a name. Even without other surrounding verification of their lives, the plot, characters, and narrative have meshed together quite well.
Gabriele (the mother) expressed love compassionately, but only when she had the time to do so. She was a hard-worker, an overachiever that had no time for others, but in a way she had to because of financial difficulties. Economic vulnerability affected the bonding and attachment with her children therefore love was expressed minimally. Emotional neglect can certainly affect the relationship between the child and parent. Her parents were in the same situation since they had to work a lot therefore other caregivers were around to express their love to her. Gabriele was aware of the negative effects of getting neglected. That is the main reason as to why she overly expresses her love compassionately with the little time she has with her children.
In this essay, I will discuss and define both speciesism and moral individualism in Paola Cavalieri’s book, The Animal Question. Additionally, I will provide my opinion on which is the strongest argument for speciesism and why I still disagree with it. Speciesism is the belief that humans are inherently superior to all other animals, solely based on their species membership. This widely held belief is used to justify the blatant discrimination of nonhuman animals, resulting in a lack of moral rights and the exploitation of defenseless beings. This view, that humans are of special moral status, is constantly attempted to be rationalized in various ways.
So in closing I believe there is far more evidence that proves animals are in fact emotional beings that have feelings, than that they are just living creatures that are here on earth with us as food or pets.
Animal rights have unequivocally been a major concern amongst humans for some time now. Animal rights are based on the notion that non-human animals should be allowed to live freely: free from abuse and suffering, as humans are. The extreme issue amongst humans is whether or not non-human animals have the capacity for rationality to deserve such equal consideration. When examining the issue of animal rights, one may have come to question one’s psyche on whether or not animal rights are ethical.