Personal Responsibility
Essays

Oh Wonder! That Has Such Similar People (to us) in it!

This paper deals with a security plan for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS). This organization is a large organization with a budget of over a billion dollars. It currently does not have a formal security plan that addresses many of the potential risks that are associated with the facilities in the unit.

This paper discusses the development of human beings at the stage of young adulthood. Although at this age most people have already achieved mental and physical maturity, there is still development that occurs. The brain is still growing at young adulthood. Also, this is the time when people learn to forge long-lasting relationships.

This paper focuses on a six day assignment in which the author was challenged to commit random acts of kindness. The first three days were dedicated to random acts of kindness for strangers, while the last three were dedicated to random acts of kindness for friends and family. The author reflects on how those actions made the author feel, but suggests that the constraints of the paper left the author feeling as if any resultant emotions were suspect.

Studies on health consciousness among Americans have been carried out on the telephone by Peter D. Hart Research Associates on the telephone among a representative sample of 1,018 "Less Active" American adults more than…

The issue of the death penalty raises deep emotions on all sides of the debate. Many feel that the death penalty no longer holds value as a tool for society to prevent heinous crimes.

Parable of the sadhu teaches us the importance of a group's commitment to the welfare of an individual. In corporate ethics, this would mean the support of the entire organization for the welfare and career/personal…

In discussing the strategies outlined in several of Malcolm Knowles books, one can clearly recognize adult learning theory as separate from traditional theories in education. In his book, Andragogy in Action, Knowles…

For several decades, many politicians and professors have been promoting the belief that the fate of liberal democracy in America is correlated with the quality of citizens' character (Berkowitz, 1999).

Does "Free Will" Exist and if so, to What Extent does it Exist? The concept of "Free Will" has been debated by many philosophers over a period of centuries, not only regarding its very existence but also regarding its elements, the extent to which it may or may not exist and its moral implications. Our assigned readings have merely touched on debates that have raged and will probably continue to rage as long as human beings contemplate the "truths" about being. Though an exhaustive review of differing philosophical treatments of "Free Will" would probably take hundreds of pages, this work will briefly examine several major philosophies of "Free Will" and some of their most notable proponents. In reviewing these sources and differing approaches to "Free Will," we can see that philosophers approach the concept of "Free Will" with differing definitions, examining disparate aspects and resulting in somewhat different implications for Morality. It is fortunate that this work does not require a definitive conclusion about the existence and impact of "Free Will," for review of sources from class reading and independent reading reveals that the only definitive conclusion can be that there is no definitive conclusion. It appears that each philosopher in his turn treats Free Will and aspects of Free Will somewhat differently and arrives at unique conclusions. Descartes takes the most extreme position examined, apparently believing that there is Free Will and that it is completely unrestrained and undiminished by divine grace or natural knowledge. Immanuel Kant believed that there is Free Will but it is based solely in the rational aspect of the human being and is known essentially because we rationally know that we have certain incontrovertible duties. Roderick Chisholm believes that there is Free Will but that it is specifically linked to a type of "agent causation" as opposed to transeunt or "event" causation. Peter Van Inwagen believes that there is Free Will but only in a very small set of circumstances illustrated by "a garden of forking paths," some of which are illusions. Daniel M. Wegner believes that there is Free Will but that much of our supposed Free Will or Conscious Will is actually a simplistic illusion created for our benefits by our minds. Finally, Benjamin Libet believes there is Free Will but simultaneously refutes much of the traditional notion of Free Will through experiments indicating that many of our actions precede our will and that our exercise of Free Will primarily resides in controlling commenced actions by "vetoing" them. In sum, without even addressing the work of philosophers who do not believe in the existence of Free Will at all, we see disparate approaches to Free Will, to its nature, to its extent and to its moral implications. Indeed, some of these philosophers themselves decry the "incoherence" of philosophical treatments of "Free Will" while attempting to contribute their own thoughts on a vital philosophical topic that shows no signs of uniform conclusions.