During our conversations in class and our readings, I tended to lean towards more of a deterministic mindset. I personally do want to believe in free will yet I feel as if determinism is more appealing, has more options for why something occurred and has a stronger basis for its actions. Yet, as someone is class mentioned, I do agree that it’s a type of cycle. I do think that at one point, free will was there to make one choice but as life goes on, both free will and determinism take place, yet determinism has more of an impact on life and causes more actions to occur rather than free will does since you grow and react from the experiences you’ve had and also learn from them. I think that the concept of Kane’s self-forming actions gives a stronger support for free will and I do think he is correct in that yet I think that determinism leads a majority of actions that one makes.

I think that consciousness is a something that can easily be debated between philosophers yet I personally think that a consciousness that has grown and experienced things in a span of time in the mind is what makes a person, a person. Having a consciousness and it having evolved and had the experiences it did is what makes someone a person. Without these experiences and everything that someone experienced throughout their consciousness is what makes someone unique and able to have all the thought processes and feelings and emotions tied into being “human”. In the example we talked about in class, with a computer having the mind of someone, I still think that computer can in no way be human. It hasn’t experienced nearly half of what the person himself has. The computer hasn’t grown with the person and the experiences so it in no way can be a human. Being a human, to me relies on consciousness and the mind and it’s experiences.

Based on the research that I did for the mind and consciousness session; which was interactionism vs. epiphenomenalism, I looked more into them after class and I personally think that the interactionism thought process is more convincing than epiphenomenalism. Just like we discussed in class, interactionism is the idea that the mind and body are two separate entities yet they impact each other. I agree with this, I think that both the mind and body control different parts of a person yet they are fully capable of impacting each other. An example is stress. When some one is stressed out, that’s a mental thing associated with the mind yet it is scientifically proven that being stressed weakens the immune system and a person tends to get physically sick if they’ve been stressed for a period of time. An example of the body impacting the mind is, let’s say, when you’re working out and you lift a heavy weight, you begin to feel a stress on your arms. This physical stress leads your mind to think that you can’t lift a weight that heavy and you begin to tell yourself you can’t do it. Because of these examples, I think that interactionism is the most convincing idea of consciousness in the argument of that and epiphenomenalism.

In class on Wednesday, someone had mentioned how there might be some challenges for kids growing up in a same sex household in regards to possibly being judged by other kids at school and thinking differently than others. Though I wish it weren’t I do believe that some of this is true. I automatically thought back to an episode of Modern Family where Mitchell and Cameron are a gay couple who adopt a Vietnamese girl named Lily. In one of the episodes, she begins going to school and telling everyone she meets that she is gay. She won’t stop saying this because she believes that who you are is derived from your parents. Because her fathers are gay, then she must be as well. This relates back to how kids with same sex marriage view things differently. Yet, I think that if the public as a whole was more accepting and stopped portraying homosexuality as something that is out of the norm and something that is so different or wrong, I think that this notion will go away. This show to me portrays just how normal homosexuality is and how gay or lesbian couples are capable of raising kids and having typical lives just as much as heterosexual couples are. They did a good job in showing how to educate younger kids and families as whole on the concept of homosexuality is completely and undoubtably normal. If more people were open to this and started educating others, then I think that kids raised in same sex households will become something as normal as kids raised in interracial households, hetero households, and much more.

To me, I think that it is completely common sense and the moral thing to believe in rights of animals. In regards to Regan’s idea, I do believe in the direct duty views. I think that when you hurt a dog, it completely makes sense that you are hurting the dog itself. Animals have rights and have the ability to feel pain so why would someone inflict that pain onto the animal? To me, just because it is an animal doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have any type of rights. For example, those ASPCA commercials mention the abuse that some of these animals face and just hearing that and seeing the pain that these animals have inside just triggers something in me and in most other people to make us all feel as if there should be animal rights and a protection for them. They deserve love and care just as much as humans. Also, in relation to animal rights, this is the reason Michael Vick was in such deep trouble for his dog fighting circle. There isn’t anyone that I can think of that feels as if what he did wasn’t wrong. Hurting animals is morally wrong on it’s own which is why I support the direct duty view.

While I was watching the Ted Talks video and Singer mentioned the video of Wang Yue, I couldn’t help but tell one of my suitemates about it. When I showed her it, she showed me this picture of a little girl that collapsed on her way to a feeding station and a vulture waiting behind her until she dies to prey on her, which is apparently a normal situation in Sudan. It’s a picture that Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist, took in 1993 to showcase the poverty and hunger children are facing in Sudan and the rest of Southern Africa. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. That same year, he committed suicide. The main assumed reason for this is the pressure and backlash he received from this photo became too much for him. Everyone was shocked and mortified that he spent all that time adjusted the lens and trying to get the perfect picture instead of helping her to the station. This reminded me of the altruism topic that Singer discussed, on how it’s everyone’s responsibility to help people less valuable. I am aware that when people like Carter visit to take pictures and report on the issues in these places, they are advised not to touch the children too much in case of diseases that they might have but it raises the question–is it ok that he spent so much time taking this picture, watching this little girls suffer and be in pain in front of him? Yes he did a good thing exposing this situation to the public, but personally, I don’t know if I could live with myself after spending so much time taking one picture then running off instead of helping her make it to the feeding station. The St. Petersburg Times said this of Carter: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.” My personal opinion is that Carter felt remorse and regret in his actions, this is why he committed suicide. It relates to the idea that altruism is everyone’s responsibility who can give it and was Carter wrong in what he did.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us in class agreed with Scheffler’s passage on the importance of an afterlife to us. To me, knowing that there will be future generations present after I pass gives me a sort of comfort, I know that I everything that I put effort into is worth it in a way since I know that people after me will benefit from it–whether it’s a professional thing like a business I’m building up or if it’s a personal thing like having children to have their own children who will have their own. I think that knowing that there will be generations after us gives us all reason to do what we want to do and gives us a brighter look like “Hey, someday, someone is going to appreciate what I did and in some way, I will benefit their life”. This, to me, gives us all a purpose and a motivational push to do what makes us happy since our happiness will lead to more generations that will be impacted by our actions. Who’s to say that we would be happy doing what we are if we knew that it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone if there is no future generation? It’s the idea that we will mean something to someone in the future that gives us a purpose and makes a feel like we have some type of legacy to leave to others. Because of this, I do agree with Scheffler’s argument that knowing there will be future generations does give us a purpose in life and we do depend on that thought.

Out of all the concepts that we looked at and read about, I think that one that  convinced me the most would be DIT. But, I will say that I am a Divine Independence Theorist AND a theist. I do believe in God and I would consider myself a pretty religious person but I wholeheartedly believe that a person can be moral and have a good heart whether or not they believe in God. I feel that morality is 100% independent of God. I think that that’s one point that some of the atheist readings that we’ve read should have acknowledged. I think that there are a lot of people who will agree with me, saying that there can be belief in religion and belief in morality  regardless of God. My personal opinion is that a lot of people who believe in God do great things to help the world, such as Mother Teresa, and that non believers also do great things that benefit society, such as Stephen Hawking. Morality is not dependent on God, yet I still do believe in the existence of God and a higher power. I think that God is just used as a guiding source for others and as a backbone for us humans to use in times of desperation. I think that the ideas of DIT, being able to be moral and having us humans evolving and figuring things out on our own is the most convincing topic.

In my opinion, I think society has more of an impact on morality than much other things.  I think that the way a person acts is dependent on the environment they were raised in and what is acceptable in their society. Just like Rachels mentioned, I think that there is no objective right and wrong and that it all depends on the culture and society that you were raised in.  One thing that might be considered immoral or wrong in one culture could be valued and respected in another. Because of this, I feel that there is no objective right and wrong. You can’t tell someone that their values and how they were raised is wrong. In our minds, we think that our way of life and what we think is considered the right way. It’s just the way we were raised and how we thought. I think that Rachels theory works the best in the case that there is no specific right and wrong and that morality isn’t defined by something that God says because there are many different ideas on God’s existence and which God is the right one to believe. Because of this, I think that society and our cultural environment impacts morality the most, more than I think God’s existence does.

If we look back to the debate Craig and Kurtz had on whether morality and goodness can exist without God, I think that Kurtz overall had a more convincing and understandable argument. He argues how regardless if one person believes in God or not, they are still capable of doing amazing things that are good for morality and society. There are many scientists that we all know who didn’t believe in God that, with their skill set and knowledge, helped make the world a better place and who have a solid set of moral values that were based on being good to others. If someone uses the judgement of being moral because of God and that it’s what he wants, then is that person truly moral? Craig argues that we as humans are really considered animals and a type of species so just like other animals, there’s no way we can have morality without God. Kurtz argues with a valid response that us as humans are much more evolved and because of this, we are able to distinguish between good and bad without the basis of God being of things. I completely agree with Kurtz. As human beings, we are more evolved and adept to the world around us. We can tell what is good and bad before God even becomes an idea. When someone does something wrong, the first thing that comes in their head usually isn’t “well I guess God is gonna be mad”. It’s typically remorse or just feeling guilty because in your gut, you know that what you did is wrong–completely separated from religion. I think that people can be moral and have a goodness in their heart with or without the belief in God.