vibisarina

    Toni Morrison’s goal is to take what has been considered the standard of approaching American literature and to broaden it. Though her argument is applied to American literature, this argument is not specific to solely American literature. Morrison gained another perspective of American literature when examining the psyche of the writer and how language operates in the imagination of the writer.       Morrison describes her experiences reading, “I would like it to be clear at the outset that I do not bring to these matters solely or even principally the tools of a literary critic. As a reader (before becoming a writer) I read as I had been taught to do” (3). When Morrison first read these literary traditions, she read them as a reader, and she was not yet a writer. She read American literature under the guidance of a literary critic or with a series of professors in her American literature classes. She was guided through the dominant approaches, ideas, and theories of literary crit

What’s the appropriate punishment for human harms of animals? Should punishment consider animals as morally equivalent to humans? What would a world look like in which a chimp killer was seen for being a murderer? In this paper, I will defend a restorative approach to human harms against animals.             Some may argue that what qualifies a being for moral and equal consideration is rationality; however, moral consideration is given to beings who do not meet this qualification. Consider the case of a mentally disabled individual. She is given equal consideration to any rational human. This holds true in the case of babies as well, although there still lies potential for rationality in the future.             Like rationality, other characteristics are not specific to all and only humans or all and only animals. This inability to separate all humans from all animals is known as The Argument for Marginal Cases. Because there will always be marginal cases such as babies and mentally d

Who Runs the World? Contradictory to what Beyoncé might say, it’s most definitely not girls. Men have always run the world. They’ve always run the country, and they’ve always set the standards. This holds true in the Black Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits . In this paper, I will argue that Fifteen Million Merits speaks to the ongoing power men have to define women’s worth even in advanced liberal societies like the United States. I will agree with Bartky in her analysis of Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power and Manne in her Law of Misogyny . The gender hierarchy keeps women in a subjugated and inferior role; however, it is often women themselves who exact the worst effects of the patriarchy by self-policing in an effort to meet male expectations. Bartky states,          The woman who checks her makeup half a dozen times a day to see if her foundation has caked or her mascara has run, who worries that the wind or the rain may spoil her hairdo, who looks freque

     Could robots ever be an ethical subject? And, if so, would it then be morally impermissible for the robots to work for us, resulting in a kind of slavery? Would the creation of the robots in general be morally permissible? In this paper, I will explore Peterson’s position on robot servitude, chapter four of Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Zoopolis , and John Weckert’s position on robot servitude in “Playing God,” and I will argue against robot servitude as well as against the creation of these artificial people (APs). Steve Peterson himself who argues for the moral permissibility of robot servitude does have his own reservations as he mentions himself. Although he isn’t sure why his intuitions tell him otherwise, his written piece supports robot servitude, but he does believe that something about robot servitude is ethically fishy. This is because, although robot servitude is wrong, the inherent wrongdoing lies with the programmer himself. Consider this moral permissibility of robot serv

In this paper, I will argue that Singer’s utilitarian approach to animal ethics is more defensible than Donaldson and Kymlicka’s rights-based approach to animal ethics. I will argue this approach is superior for the following reasons: the basis for rights/equality is sound, clarity of a subject of a life is given, and differences in certain capacities are acknowledged. Singer advocates for a modified version of the utilitarian perspective on animal ethics. The original form of utilitarianism, as advocated for by John Stuart Mill, involves the calculus of pleasure and not pain (Mill 1). This form of utilitarianism is very different from the modified form of utilitarianism which Peter Singer advocates for which is based on preference or interests. In this modified form of utilitarianism, preference utilitarianism, pleasure and pain are included in this preference utilitarian calculation of how much happiness an action will result in. Interests and desires of all affected beings need to b