William Macleod

September 5, 2015
Phil 1000
Critical Thinking-Class Group Assignment
The first question asks do we have any duties with our money, if as a society we have an
obligation to help those who don't have the essential needs in order to survive. This is one
of those questions that as a human you can have a general knowledge of whats right, but
greed can hold you back from making those moral decisions. Money corrupts the kindest
of man into power hungry individuals. In theory you would question whether the top one
percent have the most obligations to give? Do the corporations that own the world wealth
have to give at least a little? These companies have enough money that if they decided to
give they could end world hunger. But is it their obligation? Well I believe your moral
obligation only begins with the people who are not born with the capabilities to take care
of themselves. Id like to think people want to give because it makes them happy, but
there are those that do not get pleasure out of those decisions. I feel as if you know
someone, know why it is they are poor, hungry or cold and what they are doing to get
themselves out of that situation at that point it is very generous but again not necessary.
Although it seems like I may have not been making a point the idea is I know that
the vast majority of the wealthy work hard to get where they are and the vast majority of
the lower class did not. In my opinion it has nothing to do with your social class you're
born into it has everything to do with what you decide to do with the opportunities given
to you. If you decide to give your money away make sure that someone is someone who
deserves your donation because you are where you are because you or your parents

worked hard to get you there. You have every right to let darwinism and natural selection
take place. Personally I give money to the homeless but first and foremost I make sure
that they are honest. Society has created taxes to take care of those that cannot take care
of themselves. When that system gets abused it hurts us all and contributes to the reason I
do not feel obligations to give.
The second question is how ethical is it to eat meat? In the last fifty years how this
question comes to peoples minds has changed. Before it was about whether or not killing
was okay, but now it has become a matter of how these animals are killed. I think that if
you do your part to try and eat less of the meat that comes from these major corporations
that the corporations will continue to work towards grazing and farming animals knowing
we wont eat it otherwise. But as far as meat goes in general terms I think it is fine to eat
meat, our bodies crave it and we have earned our way to the top of the food chain for it.
In New Zealand they do not have mass production on meat and the people there eat a lot
of meat and they are big people. They just arent wasteful and throwing meats away and
making cheap meats. Having said that we are also destroying ourselves physically
because of our diets. I think its important to eat meat but it is more important to
understand how much you should eat and not exceed that. Other foods can make up for
nutritional value that meats just doesn't have. If people were just more intelligent about
what they eat, these mass slaughter houses wouldnt exist and people would be more
comfortable with the foods they are consuming.
The third question pertains to what is truth; now this is one of my beliefs that is
actually very cut and dry I have had a lot of thought in this question and still stick with
the same answer. Truth is 100% relative, your background, upbringing, beliefs, and

morales make what you think to be true, true. If someone believes something is true, even
something absurd like murder is okay although their mind is altered from the reality of
the rest of society, that person still believes that is true.
The next question is how does one determine a good behavior versus a bad
behavior. This is different than truth and gets mistaken for truth consistently. Action being
good or bad depends on the intentions for magnitude of pain. Even if the action was not
mean to determine more pain. Maturity and knowledge need to be factored into the action
in order to judge it reasonably. If someone steals food from a store in order to feed their
family, feeding their family is less pain than the store owners loss of income in his
budget. Now lets say that the food being stolen made it so that the store owners budget
now made it so he couldnt eat. Even in this scenario where the store owner is now
dealing with starvation because of the crimes from the man who stole the food, in my
opinion the thief did a good behavior because he was not aware of the store owners
financial situation. Although my views on good behavior seem to weigh more toward
anarchy, a every man for himself point of view, it does still seem to logically make
sense.
The next question asks about reasoning behind the right action. My answer may be
biased due to that I was raised in the LDS church and they have strong beliefs on this
matter. The church states that your charitable actions need to be for others only and never
for yourself, other than to give yourself positive emotion and purpose. I strongly agree
with these teachings.
The next question reverses the scenario of the previous question asking if one were
to do a bad action with a good intention is the good intention less moral. This one really

depends on where the action is taken because if you steal to feed, you should really try
and make sure you're stealing from a large corporation that would possibly throw that
food out anyway. If you are going to kill make sure the persons death equals more life for
others.
What does the good life consist of? My answer again is relative, it has nothing to do
with wealth, health, love, or age. If you can master living life in the current moment and
instead of trying to find happiness in the future and understanding you are living in the
happiness now. You will always be happy and have a great life no matter what curve life
throws at you. The only reason homeless people are generally unhappy is because they
are looking forward to their next drug fix or getting out of their current situation. There is
no such thing as a bad moment. Moments are what they are you decide what to make
them.
What are the qualities of the superior individual?
Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, godlike feature that only the special
among us will ever taste, its something that truly exists in all of us. Will Smith. I
believe in this and I think that these qualities are as simple as accountability, and
motivation. People have a hard time keeping both a lot of people are motivated but blame
the world around them when their motivation isn't enough. A superior person is one that
has the ability to take credit for the world around them and know they have the ability to
change it.
The next question asks what the extent is for happiness and I stand by happiness is
living in the now and enjoying the qualities that a superior individual possess. They do
not need to relate but most of the time they do and that just depends on the type of person

you are. Whether being moral is part of your happiness or being inconsiderate is, either
way as long as you take care of whats important to you, you can still be happy.
As far as someones duties to society for a morally good life although it is not your
duties to do anything for people, if you want to claim your life as morally good you have
a duty to be something greater than yourself. No one has a duty to live a morally good
life but if you want your life to be good because that benefits your own needs you need to
take care of people when the right opportunities arise. One of the bare essentials is
treating other people with the upmost respect.
This Second part of the assignment is all of my views on the questions at hand after
going through the group meeting. I had only a couple of opinions that were altered
( mainly because the group mutually agreed on most things) I like how our entire group
was more than willing to keep an open mind. We spent a good time on each question and
we used time to argue the opposites against our own beliefs.
Only a couple of things changed my mind after the meeting took place, one of those
was my thoughts on truth being relative. I believe now that there is a single truth and we
are all trying to find that truth and anything we believe to be true outside of that truth is
do to a lack of knowledge. When I was thinking of truth at first I was thinking of
perspective and belief and maybe didnt understand the real definition of truth. A lot of
people believe the first thing that they are told and stick with that as the truth without
question. Typically when Someone learns something new that is also now a part of their
truth but that could be completely wrong.
The other thing I didn't quite change my mind on but it gave me a strong sense of
this belief was the motive or intention behind the action. After hearing the arguments in

my group that supported my belief on this it really strengthened my thoughts about this
belief. I realize now that it is 100% about the intention sometimes something bad happens
but with a good intention and that is just bad luck and their is not something you can do
about it. You shouldnt try not to do something with a good intention if you're afraid of
the consequences being bad.
Another thing that came to my attention was as far as giving your money away to
people in need although you dont have a duty to most you actually do have a duty for
your children and they cannot provide shelter for themselves. So what about other
children that were also not provided shelter for because someone left them. If my money
can help this children than absolutely it is my obligation. We just don't have an obligation
to those who can physically or mentally bring in the income but if they have the resources
to make it happen they dont deserve any of my hard earned resources.
The rest of the questions I kept the same opinion and didn't change from the original. I
kind of figured that none of them would change but when you have a mutual agreement
with people you can begin to understand how logical their thoughts really are and they
become more persuasive in argument.