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Moral Situation
Both Tom and Joe contributed to the deaths of their wives. However, Tom's actions are more severe than Joe's are. In fact, Joe did not actually take any action at all. Tom actually, purposefully, and maliciously administered the poison, whereas in Joe's case, his wife accidentally took the poison herself. Her death can be considered an accidental suicide, whereas Tom's wife's death was an out-and-out murder. Tom's actions were premeditated: he planned the event and executed it in cold blood. Joe's inactivity was incidental. Although he desired to kill his wife, he made no overt plans to do so. He did not actually feed his wife poison, unless he had deliberately switched the container of cream for poison or unless he had placed the poison in the cream. However, if he did not do so, Joe cannot be considered as morally repugnant as Tom. After all, Tom directly caused his wife's death, whereas Joe was not the direct cause of his wife's death. Causality is therefore one of the major factors in determining the morality of this case.
However, Joe's failure to provide his wife with the antidote is morally wrong as Tom's deliberate poisoning of his wife. Both men had the opportunity to save their wives, and both made a conscious choice to let their spouses die. Joe simply watched while his wife passed away; he could have saved her and chose not to. During those moments of deliberation, during which he could have given her the antidote, Joe consciously decided to allow his wife to die. Joe's inaction was equally as harmful as Tom's action.
A court of law would probably rate Tom's crime as more severe than Joe's. Although Joe's inaction was as harmful as Tom's action, it would be easier to defend Joe on the grounds that his passivity does not amount to premeditated murder. Joe would probably receive a lesser sentence such as manslaughter or criminal negligence. Because the legal system is in some ways based on societal moral law, such a consideration must also be taken into account when deciding the relative morality of Tom and Joe.
What both these issues show is how advances technology / medicine are changing the overall scope of the ethical debate within the medical and legal communities. Together all of these events have helped to shape the way various ethical standards for medicine would evolve. This is important because they would clearly define the most appropriate conduct for medical research and how to interact with patients in the health care industry.
Moral Realism vs. Moral Relativism Philosophers have argued the merits or existence of moral realism and moral relativism for some time. Generally, the argument is designed as an either or proposition, where only one argument can be true. This is not necessarily true when one takes the time to explore what is meant by moral realism vs. moral relativism (Streitfeld). Essentially, moral realism is an objective view while moral realism is
I would have been thinking about social norms and categorical imperatives in Kohlberg's system -- or about the social value of self-sacrifice in Gilligan's. Instead I made a moral choice that reflects moral maturity: a level of caring that Gilligan would define as postconventional. Whether consciously or not, I was determined to preserve the dignity and promote the well-being of both my friends. I took myself out of the picture.
Intellectually my mind was saying: how could this happen in an open and public place with dozens of people walking in the area? There was also a sense of moral anger at the way that social rules and norms were being so openly being flouted. This feeling was strong and related to the physical sense of disgust and distress that I felt at the situation. Reciprocity The above aspects, the physical,
The principle of harmony's job is to take corrective actions when needed in order to create the balance of economic justice between the principles. For example, when the other two principles are violated by such things as unjust social barriers to either participation or distribution, the principle of harmony works to eradicate these barriers and thus restore economic harmony, or justice. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, economic harmonies is
Morality and Ethics in Henry Fielding's Novel Joseph Andrews This paper looks into the subject of morality and ethics as depicted by Henry Fielding in his novel 'Joseph Andrews'. The book seeks to discard the notions held by 18th century English society in connection with morality and thus offers a better and 'more active' definition of the term. According to Fielding, morality was not solely connected with chastity and thus he