Moral Values Essay

Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between the ones that are good and the ones which are bad. The philosophy of morality is ethics. Morality is a synonym of goodness. Laurence Sterne has rightly said â€Å"Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners†. Moral values are important to an individual as it makes one feel peaceful. They give your life a purpose and make it meaningful. Honesty, decency, modesty, kind heartedness, sincerity, forgiveness and gratitude are some of the moral values. It is very easy for a person high in ethics to control his life. It changes your perspective. You only look at the brighter side of anything. The negative forces do not hold you back any more. It becomes easier for you to strive towards your aim in life. Moralistic approach seems virtuous. It helps you bond with the world far and away. Moral values make you trustworthy and accord you a respectable place amongst the others. World can be easily captivated by you as people count on your fair and sincere approach. Not only to others, moralistic approach assists yourself too. Your integrity will allow you to advance in both personal and professional life. Being compassionate is like a big virtue. It helps you deal with any misfortune that comes your way. Also you can be a big support to your friends and fellow beings in their difficult times. While I was studying, in my college days, I was more of a notorious child. Never realising the value of time was one main thing which I used to do. I never used to finish my assignments on time, always used to be late for lectures and even bunking the classes at times. I can still recall number of events where I had submitted late work. I never used to study regularly. Always kept on piling up work till the last day of assessment. A day prior to the exam used to be like hell on earth for me. As I had never prepared for the exam before I usually got low grades in the examinations. My parents always told me to adopt good values but I never listened. My mother always instructed me and even told me the ill results, but as is expected of youngsters I even ignored her. One similar day I went to the college. Walking confidently, showing off myself, typical me. When I reached my classroom what I saw shook my very foundations, it was an exam day. Only because I had never paid attention in the class I didn’t know about it. I somehow mustered my courage and sat for the exam. I saw everyone engrossed in writing and I was all blank. However the day passed. The worst had yet to come. It wasn’t far and the results were out. As expected I flunked in the subject. I was down with shame and disrespect not just because of failing but because of the extremely low grades. My grades were perhaps the lowest in the entire batch. I could not find any place to hide my face. It is still very difficult for me to put it in words how I faced my friends and family post the result. I went home, low and forlorn. The only person I could share it with was my mother. I know she was heartbroken, but she held me tight and told me there is never any time in life when you cannot rise up again and correct your improprieties. I hugged her tight. Her warmth gave me the strength to rise up again. From that very moment I resolved to leave behind all the bad habits and move on the right track. I did stick to this and was always moralist in my approach thereafter. It was then I realised how irreverent and impertinent I was and such a human being is incapable of any type of self-abandonment. He is either a slave of his pride or his egoism which ultimately makes him a prisoner of himself. This is exactly what happened with me. I was blind to values. I never gave things a chance to unfold themselves in their proper character and approached everything in such an importunate way that I only listened to myself and ignored the rest. Now I can proudly say adopting moral values has made me overcome any obstacle that has intervened my way of progress. I ended up my college with outstanding grades not only the result but I also managed to get myself a respectable job. I joined in a company as a business development executive and was eventually promoted to the post of a business development officer. I always wanted to excel in my professional life. But to achieve higher levels I needed higher education. MBA was my dream. But to adhere it I went through a difficult time phase. I was impatient as time was passing by but at the same time I had to be responsible to the compliance. As recognized by Socrates and Plato, it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it; I stuck to my moral values and didn’t lose patience. My hopes were always high. I knew I would attain my dream. Now I am in a foreign land, perusing a different course, for which I waited three long years. Things around me have changed. There is one thing that hasn’t and will not change ever – and that is my values. I follow them and they acknowledge me. I have been through quite a lot of experiences in the recent few years. All I can say is moral values are extremely important for your wellbeing. They will always keep your stress levels lower and help you lead a harmonious life. You are able to direct your behaviour towards beneficial and fulfilling activities. Moral values are the highest amongst all natural values. Positive values are the focus of the world whereas negative values are the greatest evil. Man himself is responsible for all his deeds and actions. Martin Luther King Jr said, â€Å"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control†. (Cravvley & Kendall, 2009) In goodness there shines a light which bestows on the good person an intellectual dignity. I feel I am lucky I was born in a family which withholds strong moral values.

Free Will in Experimental Philosophy Essay

Although the â€Å"free will† problem envelops a spectrum of ideas, I agree with the following belief: â€Å"The folk are compatibilists about free will. † While there are, of course, incompatibilists and indeterminists, for the most part, the general population consists of compatibilists. Now, I know experimental philosophy has a problem with the use of generalizations without actual statistics, but throughout this paper, I will explain exactly why the world revolves in a generally compatibilist manner. Firstly, to speak of compatibilism, you’d have to assume that the world is deterministic, meaning that everything that happens from here on out, including human action, is caused by the facts of everything that has happened before it. With that assumption in mind, compatibilist believe that we still have free will as long as we aren’t operating under external limitations. The problem with that is that although compatibilists believe we are free, there is still disagreement on just exactly how free we may be, which is the weak spot indeterminists and incompatibilists use to try to break the argument. One nature of compatibilism is referred to as classic compatibilism. This means that we’d be acting freely as long as we, without being impeded by any outside force, take a course of action that we personally choose for ourselves. These compatibilists believe that it is the presence of impediments such as â€Å"physical restraints, lack of opportunity, duress or coercion, physical or mental impairment, and the like† that would cause us to not act freely (Caruso, 2012). However, this line of reasoning is not accepted by those who support the Consequence Argument. In the simplest terms, this argument states that no one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature. Also, no one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i. e. , determinism is true). Because of that, no one has power over the facts of the future (McKenna, 2004). Compatibilists respond to this by saying that the focal point should be the differentiation between free and un-free, and not by the absence of causes. Other philosophers argue that we act freely when our first order and second order desires become aligned. Because our mental processes are more developed than those of younger children and simpler animals, we have the rationale to decide whether our instincts or raw desires should be acted upon. That rationale is referred to as the second order desires (Frankfurt, 1971). For example, Chris is at the bar with his girlfriend Ana. While Chris has stepped away to the restroom, Jose approaches Ana and flirts with her in a manner that she does not feel comfortable with. Once out of the bathroom, Chris sees this. Enraged, he initially wants to go and physically put Jose in his place. In spite of this, he remembers that he is up for a promotion at work, and getting into a bar fight probably won’t help his chances of receiving it. He tells Ana to collect her things. They leave. What we see here is the protagonist, Chris, experiencing first order desires that make him want to hurt Jose. His second order desires are what tell him that although he is feeling those first order desires, his second order desires are not in agreement and therefore, he shouldn’t act on them. Although some compatibilists seem to be satisfied with this reasoning because it justifies the causation of our actions, it doesn’t explain whether our thoughts and desires are consequences of the past as well. An example would be that Kate feels the desire to take a run in the park and does so. Yet, if determinism is true, which compatibilists believe it is, she is already determined to feel that way, and although she may want to feel that way, without any outside force acting on her she is not free (McKenna, 2004). Her first order and second order desires may even align, but without the ability to do otherwise, due to determinism, she would not be free. Even so, compatibilist Michael Levin says â€Å"minding or accepting one’s desires is as much an effect of past causes as the desires themselves,† but if our internal desires are causally determined, they cannot also be free. All it would be is a different form of causality (Caruso, 2012). Nevertheless, compatibilists argue that it isn’t necessary for an individual to have been able to do otherwise (Nahmias, Stephen, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005). If there were the choices of A through Z and someone that could manipulate me into doing A that would do so if I didn’t do it on my own, I would still have free will if I picked A without the manipulation. In this case, compatibilist see me as having had free will because I chose A on my own. My 1st order desires were aligned with my 2nd and that is why A happened. If I had been manipulated to do so, then the problem of free will would once again come into question, but being that the manipulator is fairly irrelevant to the story since I acted on my own accord, and would have done the same thing without the potential manipulative factor. Also, there a couple of studies done to determine what relationship non-philosophers believed existed between free will, determinism, and moral responsibility. In Study 1, there were three scenarios. Scenario 1 was negative. Scenario 2 was positive, and Scenario 3 was neutral. In all three cases, between 68 – 79% of folk said there was free will. While there were some fluctuations in percentages when it came to the association between free will and the ability to choose otherwise, the amount of participants making judgments that disagreed with incompatibilism was two to three times greater than those that followed along with incompatibilist intuitions. This study was supported by their second study. In this study, they tell the subjects that everything in the universe is caused completely by their genes and environment. The scenario takes twins, Fred and Barney, and places Fred with the Jerksons and Barney with the Kindersons. One day they both find a wallet with $1000. Fred keeps it, while Barney returns it to its rightful owner. When polling the participants, 76% said they both acted on their own free will and could have done otherwise. This shows that the majority of folk believe that compatibilism is true, and while external factors and facts of the past might influence the choice making process, it does not define it; therefore we are free within the confines of a determined universe (Nahmias, Stephen, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005). Now, why do I personally find â€Å"the folk are compatibilist about free will† to be true? Aside from the aforementioned statistics, the reason is that if we did not find a middle ground between free will and determinism, we wouldn’t do any of the things we do. Everything from the grading systems used in schools to receiving a promotion at work all the way to fighting wars is done in a compatibilist manner. The premise of all these concepts is the idea that if you choose do X, having the option of Y, Z will happen. If you work hard enough in school (X), you will receive good grades (Z), even though you can just be lazy (Y). If you are the most productive and pleasant at your job (X), you will receive a promotion (Z). If we go into a war (X), we have the chance of winning (Z). While all the factors in each of those scenarios might have also been determined, there is no reason for us to feel disappointment when we really studied but still managed to only get a B on a test or when we lose troops across seas. Though the previous paragraph does explain that folk believe in free will, it doesn’t explain why folk have the compatibilist view of free will. The reasoning for that is because while compatibilists believe that you can control some aspects of your life, you can’t control all of them. As Michael Levin said, â€Å"Compatibilist usually agree that free will does require behavior at least to be determined, since you cannot freely do what is beyond your control. † For example, we are born and we die. The sun rises. The sun sets. We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. There are certain laws of physics that we must adhere to. Some will argue that we believe those to be stable laws of how the universe will operate, but only because that’s what it’s done until now. Tomorrow we might not have the sun rise, and tomorrow we might inhale carbon monoxide and exhale nitrogen. However, since certain things have been fixed for a trustworthy amount of time, we, the folk, have accepted it as determined facts of the universe. The determined factors of the universe are the skeleton upon which we place the flesh that is our free will. ? References Caruso, G. D. (2012). The Folk Psychology of Free Will: Arguement Against Compatibilism. Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy, 26, 56-89. Frankfurt, H. G. (1971, January 14). Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person. The Journal of Philosophy, 5-20. McKenna, M. (2004, April 26). Compatibilism. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/compatibilism/ Nahmias, E. , Stephen, M. , Nadelhoffer, T. , & Turner, J. (2005, October). Surverying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about Free Will and Moral Responsibility. Philosophical Psychology, 18(5), 561 – 584.

Sociological imagination Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Sociological imagination - Essay Example People see themselves merely as recipient of society rather than recognizing their dual roles as both creators and receivers of the artifacts of society and socialization. The film â€Å"A Better Life† demonstrates many of these characteristics. Its main characters, Carlos, and undocumented immigrant, who buys a friend’s gardening business only to have its main asset (a truck), only to have it stolen, and Luis, seem to only be able to brave the struggles that are thrown at them every day without being able to act to change the systems that oppress them. The film makers, thus, fall into the trope of creating victims of society and socialization, without giving them agency to actually be a force for change in the social fabric. The film â€Å"A Better Life† is certainly a heart rending story, with people working incredibly hard just to make ends meet, and who face an unfair system that tilts their struggle for life against them. One of its main problems, whoever, i s that it does not give its characters a great deal of agency beyond simply responding to one crisis after another – reacting to the things that are presented of them. This trope begins from the very opening of the film, when Carlos is (apparently for the nth time) offered his partner’s gardening business. He faces a choice foisted on him from outside circumstance: to buy or not to buy? When he hires someone who then steals his car, he likewise faces choices on how to deal with it, and eventually decides to steal the car back. Finally, when pulled over and deported, he has a choice of remaining in Mexico or of trying to get back in to America, and he chooses the latter. This sequence of outside crisis is certainly how many people imagine their lives, noticing only what Mills calls the â€Å"millieux† around them, that is, their circumstances, without recognizing that they have a part in shaping those circumstances. This is not at all to seem critical of the char acters – that they should be doing more to give themselves a better chance at life. This issue is the film plays into a problem with the way people imagine themselves in the world with being solely the receivers of society and culture, rather than the creators and recipients of it. This film could have been better if the main characters at least recognized that they had some ability to shift the dynamics that were occurring, and that if many people like them made likewise changes then long lasting, changes for the better could actually occur. As it currently stands, the film tells the story of a valiant fight against a society that stacks the deck against much of its own population, but is not critical of the dynamic and trope of the individual responding to crisis foisted upon them by an outside, distinct society that they have no role in creating. â€Å"A Better Life† is certainly a good film outlining many important issues in sociology, such as oppression, the inter action between race and culture, the situation of immigrants and acculturation to new cultures and so on. Yet it falls into a trap that is very easy to stumble in to,

Commercial Rental Market in Midwestern City Research Paper

Commercial Rental Market in Midwestern City - Research Paper Example Per square foot annual rental cost = 43.12 + 7.47 * Occupancy - 3.9 * Wiring1 - 0.9 * Distance to City Center - 0.76 * Distance to Airport + 0.53 * Number of Elevator - 0.35 * Length of Lease - 0.11 * Years to last Renovations + 0.09 * Building Age. For a 3 year lease of 50,000 sqft of newly renovated and wired space that is one mile away from city center and fifteen miles away from the nearest airport, with 75% occupancy, three elevators, four years since last renovations in a ten year old building, the predicted per square foot annual cost of rent is $34, and predicted total annual cost of rent is $1,701,712. An office that is ten miles away from the airport its per square foot rent is valued on the real estate market at $33, while an office that is twenty miles away from the airport is valued at $26, with a discount value of 70% per mile. Similarly, the presence of office wiring is valued at $34.5, while no office wiring at $30.6, with a discount value of 10%. An office with 0.75 occupancy is valued at $29.8 per square foot, while an office with 0.97 occupancy is valued at $31.5. Potential savings are best made by increasing the distan

Are males and females motivated differenlty in PE Essay

Are males and females motivated differenlty in PE - Essay Example The participants were asked to answer a questionnaire to establish the gender differences in the motivation of students to participate in sports. The author, Nathalie Koivula, used a seven-point scale very similar to the one used by this author in the questionnaire created for this study. The author also discussed relevant research and studies previously conducted by other researchers. Koivuli (1999) concluded hr findings after explaining the results by stating that: The findings of the present study suggest that gender and gender-based processing correlate with the reasons given for participation in sports, some of which have been demonstrated in the present study, as well as earlier ones, to correlate with both frequency and the amount of time spent participating. It is therefore of interest to include these variables when generating and elaborating theoretical models to explain sport behavior. This article is useful to this study in that gender differences with regards to motivation is discussed in detail. This author was able to glean important points that was explained in the discussion section of this dissertation. It is important to note that although Koivuli had different results than this author, a point of comparison was made and an improvement in the motivation for participating in PE classes was seen as a result. Student Motivation in Physical Education: Breaking Down Barriers; Student Motivation in Physical Education Typically Declines after the Early Years. Why? and What Can Be Done about It? By Claire M. Mowling et al. This article discusses student motivation with regards to participation in Physical Education classes. The author delves into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how they present a problem with regards to students not being encouraged that much to participate actively in PE classes. The author then proceed to outline methods on how to bring down the barriers and improvements that can be made in order to address the issue

Workers Without Health Insurance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Workers Without Health Insurance - Essay Example It will finally draw a conclusive recommendation on how workers can be provided with medical covers to enhance their heath care service provision. The primary source of health insurance covers in the United States is the employer-sponsored insurance -ESI1. ESI offers job-based health benefits which are in some cases subsidized by the federal government by exempting employer tax on health insurance premiums. In certain companies there are private employer sponsored which are voluntary and depends on the company's financial ability to meet the health care requirement for its entire workforce. Since not all employers offer insurance covers to its employees, not all workers have insurance policies and consequently, their children and spouses do not have them. In most cases, people who are not insured are either workers or family members of the workers. Previous research has shown that most American citizens obtain their health insurances through their employment agencies. However, some working environments do not find it economically possible to offer health insurance services to its workers. These working environments include; those who earn low wages, short job tenures, working part-time or those with low incomes2. In 2003, the Kaiser commission of inquiry reported that of the 124 million workers who were uninsured, 80% of them were self employed and this can be explained by the fact that these group of people do not get access to group insurance which is somehow cheaper. Another group of uninsured workers who formed the remaining percentage were workers with non-working spouses. Causes of medical disenfranchisement People become medically disenfranchised because they lack proper medical insurance cover that they can depend on whenever they are not feeling well. Poor health care in America today has been blamed on lack of worker insurance policies and programs leading to high costs of medical services. As many people continue to work as casuals and part-time jobs, in addition to low wages and salaries, they are not able to meet the medical requirements needed not only by themselves but also by their families. This has led to increased number of people who operate without medical and insurance covers for a better part of their lives. In fact, research has shown that three out five working Americans are not covered with insurance covers. This trend has in the past sparked a lot of condemnation from all quarters especially from government critics. Pressure is therefore building on employers to ensure that all its employees are insured. However, with increased incidences of political unwillingness, societal diversity and stagnating economies, it is no longer economically visible to offer all people the medical insurance cover they need. The burden has been therefore left to the workers to seek private insurance covers, which are very expensive to them.

Why Organisations Should Spend Time Gathering Secondary Data Prior to Coursework

Why Organisations Should Spend Time Gathering Secondary Data Prior to Undertaking Primary Research - Coursework Example An organization may carry out primary research in which researchers gather facts about the prevailing situation through observation, surveys, and behavioral data and through experimentation. Most organizations initially gather secondary data before undertaking the primary research. Secondary data are data about the subject at hand that may be already into existence somewhere within the reach of the organization, having being collected by the organization or another body and therefore the information may be useful partly or wholly in handling the problem at hand. Reasons Why Organizations Spend Time Gathering Secondary Data The information that already exists somewhere may help the researching organization in expanding its knowledge regarding the problem to be solved. The company may use such report to find out what others have done in a particular field of study. The secondary data may also help an organization it its preparation for primary research, by helping in identifying the to ols and materials that need to be used in order to make the future research successful. The secondary materials may also help an organization to understanding the progress that other researchers have made. This help in avoiding certain research problems in order to use the available resources effectively. The company may also use the secondary data to identify the needed resources for the research work to be successful. It helps in setting realistic period for the research work that the organization intends to undertake, and to assemble a team of researchers for different roles in the research process. Advantages of Using Secondary Data Data collected externally may be more objective since no one within the organization may have influenced the outcome of the data. This is usually useful when the data needed to solve the current problem does not exist anywhere in the organization, it may be appropriate to obtain the data that may have been collected by other pioneer organizations in the same industry. This helps the researchers to identify areas of focus to solve the problem effortlessly. Using data that was collected by other organizations in solving related problem is part of the learning process that is useful when handling many research problems for the first time. This helps in avoiding some obvious mistakes that may lead to wastage of resources and time in the earlier researches (Kotler et al, 2009) The organization may find relevant data that touches similar problems that the company is seeking to solve. In marketing, it is common knowledge that all products goes through the product life cycle and all organizations goes through the same learning curves. It is therefore a reality that the problem that any organization may be dealing with at present may have been faced by another organization in the past. When data is acquired from other organization, it may influence the learning process much faster for smaller organization, whose resources are constraine d. It is cheaper to obtain in different forms of research findings as needed by the organization for solving a specific problem at hand. The process of obtaining materials that already exist to be used in solving a related marketing problem is shorter. The processes of obtaining such existing data may at time cost the organization almost nothing or only a small cost may be involved. This is useful when there is need to save on the cost and time availability. Secondary data is readily available in variety. Today the world is today experiencing information explosion, and therefore every type of information that may be needed by