ENGL110 WEEK 6 responses

I don’t understand this English question and need help to study.

Response back to these 4 post with a minimum of 100 words

-Hello everyone,

The death penalty should be abolished because it is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Those in support of the death penalty could argue that it is a fair punishment. Since society has a high interest in preventing murder the strongest punishment available should be used and that is the death penalty. What is feared most is more likely to deter murder crimes. The fact that there are some states that do not have the death penalty has fewer murder rates is not accurate. There are states with high murder rates that have the death penalty and that if it would not have the death penalty the murder rates would be higher.

The arguments of individuals in support of the death penalty are just not in concurrence with facts. Capital punishment is cruel and unusual because is a relic of the early days when slavery, branding, and other immoral punishments were legal. Based on a poll done in October of 2019 a record of sixty percent of Americans prefers life sentence over the death penalty. Most believe that the death penalty itself is a waste of funds and has no public safety benefit. The ACLU has proven that states with the death penalty have higher mortality rates. This proves that it does no good for the justice system. There are also too many innocent people that may be sentenced to death. The death penalty is applied randomly so there is no guarantee of equal protection based on race, gender, ethnicity, and religion.

Ashley

-Electric vehicles are just as harmful to the environment than petroleum-based vehicles.

There are those that believe that the use of electric vehicles is reducing the pollution created form personal vehicles. The use of electric vehicles reduces the number of consumables a vehicle needs to operate including gasoline, oil, and lubricants. During daily operation, an electric vehicle does not emit byproducts from the combustion of fossil fuels and eliminates the need for oil. The use of renewable energy sources also reduces the pollutants used in the production of electricity.

While electric vehicles are not directly producing pollution form their tailpipes, they are contributing to pollution though their draw on resources. As per the 2019 study published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, only 17.5% of electricity in the united states is produced by renewable sources like solar, wind, or hydroelectric. Pairing this with the average consumption of 3,384 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, electric vehicles are drawing 82.5% of their energy from sources like fossil fuels, coal, and nuclear reactors. In addition to their power consumption, electric vehicles require the mining of rare elements like cobalt and lithium in order to produce batteries needed in their vehicles.

Josh C.

-What is right versus what is wrong has been a long debated question. There are people who believe that the facts are what dictate a right and wrong. Those people are moral absolutists. They believe that if you kill a person, no matter the circumstance, then you have completed a morally wrong action. There are also relativists. They believe in the same basic concepts that there are factual rights and wrongs. They have a more complex understanding of morality, a more expansion as to what is right and wrong. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, relativism is defined as “the thesis that all points of view are equally valid.” This means that they believe that if a person truly believes that something is right or wrong then they may not be wrong. They may believe that because they were taught a different reason, or grew up in a culture that had different values. Those who have a religious background may have morals based off of the Ten Commandments. Moral relativism has been criticized because it has been said that they are saying that anything can be moral. This however is an overstatement as to what is being stated. They are simply stating that people have different backgrounds, but they are also stating that the circumstances in which a moral decision is made can have an impact on their decision. The best example of this would be murder. Most people, besides perhaps a murderer, believe that murder is wrong. The law says it, the Bible says it and it is common. If you were a moral absolutist then it ends there. This action is wrong and thou shall be punished. On the other hand, a moral relativist would look at the circumstance around the murder. If the situation were that you were defending yourself then this would not be a moral crime.

The final point is that while philosophers tend to have many disagreements, those studying relativism all agreed that each point of view is unique and it is equal. This means that there is not a culture or a belief that is higher than any other. They should be discussed politely and with an open mind.

-Today I will discuss the moral relativism and moral realism. I will define them, explain their importance and how they differ, and discuss the arguments against each idea.

Moral relativism and moral realism each play a large role in overall concept of metaethics. The primary difference between the two is that moral relativism, also known as subjectivism, maintains that no deed is right or wrong by itself. Rather, the circumstances surrounding said deed and the opinions of individuals can help determine if the deed was moral or immoral. Moral realism, or objectivism, takes the opposite approach. According to objectivists, the morality of certain deeds, actions, or thoughts are not influenced by our opinions of them. They are concrete facts that do not waver over time, much like relativism can.

Each of these theories has a number of factual loopholes that divergent philosophers will challenge. Moral relativism, for example, holds that morality is dependent upon the ideas of the actor and society surrounding them. Subjectivity maintains that no one viewpoint is any more viable than another. A generic argument brought up in response to this is “if no one viewpoint holds more value than another, how can anyone ever come to terms on what truly constitutes a moral action versus an immoral one?” Objectivity has its own skeptics. “If morality is a true fact,” they argue, “then who determines what this fact is? God? What can we then say for secularists or agnostics?” Because there are no solid and concrete answers to any of these questions, the debate over relativism and realism has continued ever since the philosophical discipline was born.

-Jules