Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Chapter 6 Discussion

Pick one of the discussion questions from Chapter 6 and develop an answer in a short paragraph. Pay attention to spelling, capitalization, etc.

13 comments:

  1. Empirical truths are known by relying on evidence from our five senses. Conceptual truths are known just by understanding it. Someone might think that moral claims do not fall into either category, because moral claims can not be conceptual truths or empirical truths. Moral claims can not be empirical truths, because we do not discover them by our senses. One example is when you break a promise, you will notice many things. You can not see its wrongness. Moral claims can not be conceptual truths, because for any moral claim, we can completely understand it and still wonder whether it is true. One example of this is, spheres are cubes. Anyone that really understands those questions already knows the answer. Natural law theorists would put moral claims in empirical truths.

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  2. The difference between empirical truths and conceptual truths is that empirical truths require information obtained by one or more of our five senses in order to be true. An example of this would be if I said it was raining outside, I do not simply know that, I had to look out the window and see rain falling, or maybe go outside and feel it raining. Conceptual truths are not like this. Conceptual truths do not require any sense to be true. Conceptual truths simply need to be known to be understood. Knowledge such as 2+2=4 or no sphere is a cube are conceptual truths. They do not require input from our five senses, we simply know them. Moral claims are not conceptual truths because even if we fully understand a moral claim, we can still wonder if it is true. Moral claims are not empirical truths either because no amount of input from any of the five senses can determine if an action is moral or not. Natural law theorists would classify moral claims as empirical truths. They would be empirical truths because we can determine whether or not an action is moral by seeing if the match up with our nature.

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    Replies
    1. Moral laws are much different from the laws of physics or chemistry because the latter is considered a known fact in every part of the world. Moral laws, on the contrary, can vary depending on the culture being presented. For example, in certain countries, and even in past civilizations, it was permissible to abuse your spouse to show dominance in the relationship. In normal circumstances, that is morally unacceptable. It changes throughout the perspective of the society. Also, laws of physics and chemistry had to be discovered by someone; moral laws have always been in place and known since the beginning of human existence.

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  3. I think that human nature is about having the similar traits that all humans share. Not all humans are the same or have the same lives, but we all have feelings, express emotions, and have intuition, which are a part the traits of human nature. Even still, our lives are all different and have different experiences. So, what is moral from one person may not be moral for another, giving each person their own view of what is right and wrong depending on their background and opinion.

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  4. Everyone has a purpose in life. Humans are all designed to serve, we were all created by God to fulfill a set of purposes. Our main purpose was to serve God, and to show his light and spread his word. Even though God created purposes for all of us, we stray away from because it is our human nature to do what we want not what others want. Even if it is God ordering us to do something.

    Another view is that we are made to either be efficient,or have fitness. Efficiency is saying that we all have natural purpose. Fitness is to say that our purpose in life is to survive and to reproduce. Even with this view I still feel that God created us with our own natural purpose and we must all do our best to find our purpose. Yes our purpose in life, can be be moral. It is moral because our purpose is moral everything we can do is to fulfill our purpose is also moral.

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  5. The difference between empirical truths and conceptual truths is that a conceptual truth is one you understand and a empirical truth is one that we use out 5 sences for. For example a conceptual truth would be a square is not a circle and an empirical truth would be the sun is bright. Someone might think that they aren't either of them because morals can be questioned and conceptual truths cannot, they are facts. It is also said that we do not use our five sences in discovering moral truths. However Natural law theorists say that moral laws are empirical.

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  6. There is a difference between an Empirical truth and a Conceptual truth. A conceptual truth is something you understand whereas an empirical truth is one that you use your senses to find out. a conceptual truth is something like the fact that there is no such thing as a square circle. an empirical truth would be something along the lines that you burned your hand on a stove because the stove is hot.

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  7. 3. I think that human lives do not have a specific purpose. There are so many humans in this world, but all of them do not seen to have a purpose. What comes naturally to one person may not come naturally to another person. Efficiency model and fitness model best explains this. In the efficiency model, it explains how the heart is best at pumping blood efficiently throughout our entire body. Heats have a certain structure that makes it easy and efficient to do so. We can say that human beings are efficient at making puzzles. So if this makes something moral, according to the natural law theory, then does being bad at puzzle makes it immoral. That is why I believe that humans being do not truly have a purpose, and this sometimes does not relate to morality. If we also take the fitness model into account, then the fitness model explains that we are doing what best increases our ability to live and reproduce, so does that mean if someone commits rape, for instance, that it makes it right to commit such a horrible crime. No. I think that it is not. That is why i do not believe humans have a natural purpose in life, because sometimes what comes naturally to one person may not come naturally to another.

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  8. I believe that the purpose of human lives is the pursuit happiness. Whether one believes in this religion or that religion or no religion at all, we all seek something better in life. So the very motion of our lives, every single thing we do, is towards happiness. From the very core of our spiritual and physical being we all desire contentment, so we immediately try to achieve happiness and be content with our lives. Although this view is very hedonistic, it is the only valid purpose I have found. If I did not seek happiness, what other reason or purpose would I have to like for? So far I have not found a single answer to solve this question. Therefore I have no other choice but believing that my purpose in life, and every body else’s, is to seek happiness and ultimately achieve it.

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  9. I chose question number 1 : the difference between conceptual and empirical truths are that eperical truths are like where you have to rely on evidence of the five seances we have for example,the one they have is I live in a house that was built in 1915 . And a conceptual truth is one that can be known just by understanding it. For example the book has , no spree is a cube all interfere are even or odd. One relies of facts and the other relies on having you to understanding it .

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  10. Moral laws differ from physics and chemistry by the laws that we make. Like for example hedonism is the belief is that you do what makes you feel good is right and what you do that doesn't make you happy is wrong. This law is broken everyday because people do things they hate for the greater good for themselves. Chemistry is mostly based off of fact about what’s true. Like for example the Lewis structure is where you form a structure that represents the valence electrons. It also helps recognize the compounds of the elements that are made.

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  11. The question I chose was question number one. The differences between empirical truth and conceptual truth is that empirical truth means a true claim that can be known only by means of evidence gained through the scences and conceptual truth means is one that is true by definition. The reason why someone thinks that moral claims do not fall in neither catagory because you do not know whether it is right or wrong. The catagory that natural law theorist put moral claims in emprical the reason why is because empirical means means a true claim that can be known only by means of evidence gained through the scences.

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  12. #1:
    While an empirical truth is one known and understood with corroboration by the five senses (I live in a red brick house in Burlington, New Jersey and attend Doane Academy), a conceptual truth is known only by simple understanding that it must be (two plus two equals four. It is easy to understand the view that moral claims do not fit either description, as morality is not detectable by the senses, and there is certainly not a universal agreement on the state of morality. In response to this, a Natural Law Theorist would argue that moral laws are in fact empirical truths, because of the Natural Law Theory approach to finding the bases of morality.

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