Case Studies Homework Essay Example for Free

Case Studies Homework Essay Sally is suffering from a debilitating illness which will eventually rob of her speech and mobility. She has requested that the hospital staff do not resuscitate her if she has a heart attack. This is a limitation on use of restrictions on rights because Sally does not want the right to life anymore if it means that she cannot speak and move without help. A pregnant single woman wants to abort her baby. However, the natural father wants her to keep the child. This freedom of expression as the woman has the rights to her own body and she can say what she wants and decide what she wants to happen to the baby as it is her body. An atheist teacher at a Roman Catholic school feels he has been prevented from gaining promotion due to his religious beliefs. This is a prohibition of discrimination because he should be treat professionally and not any different because of his religious beliefs. An asylum seeker is being threatened with expulsion from the United Kingdom. He is frightened to return to his home country because of threats of detainment or even death. He expressed political views against the government; he knows he won’t get a fair trial. This is against the right to life as his life could be taken away by others. It is also against the prohibition of torture because he could be tortured by others in his home country. Also, it is against the right to a fair trial and no punishment without law because he would not be given a fair trial in his country and be punished without breaking the law.

Power Relations in Summer of the 17th Doll :: Ray Lawler

Dramatic conflict consists of a struggle for power among characters, and dramatic resolution consists of a shift of power among them. Discuss the conflict and resolution in "Summer of The 17th Doll" in terms of the power relations in the play. The play summer of the 17th doll consists of many conflicts, some internal and some external. Some of these conflicts are resolved and some not. This essay will explore some of the internal conflicts as well as some of the external conflicts and elaborate on their importance to the play. There are a few themes in the play The Summer Of the 17th Doll. Some of these themes are Maturity, Gender stereo types, aging and time, ideals dreams vs. reality, loyalty and least expectation. I believe one of the strongest themes in the play is dreams vs. reality. Ray Lawler gives us a very big hint about what is going to happen in the play at the beginning of the play. Ray Lawler explains how the patio has some plants evading the walls. The patio symbolizes the layoff dream and the plans symbolize reality slowly but surely creeping up on them. There are many internal conflicts in the play. One internal conflict in the play is pride. This is best illustrated by Roo. Roos struggle with his pride is evident through out the play. It is so obvious that even other characters in the play can see it and comment on it. An example of this from the play is when Emma says to roo that his ?dirty lousy rotten pride? is changing the man she used to know. It is the reason for him getting in a tiff with John Dowd. But most of all his pride is the reason he is a broken man. His pride has made him stubborn and ignorant to help from other people. Fortunately, he is able to swallow his pride and work as a painter. His pride was the reason for his fall from the cane cutting gang and the reason he left them. In other words, we see the essentially good person (Roo) brought down by their fatal flaw pride. One external conflict that gives us great insight to the theme of the play is between Olive and Pearl. You could say that olive represents the illusion of the Dream that is known as the layoff season, whereas Pearl symbolizes reality.

Kant Categorical Imperative

Kant’s Categorical Imperative Kant’s Categorical Imperative is made up of two formulations, Formula of Universal Law and The Formula of the End in Itself. The first formulation is best described by the following statement, â€Å"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction. † (Kant, 1785, 1993). What does this mean? A maxim is the fundamental rule of conduct or your moral belief upon which you chose to act. A universal law is a law that everyone must follow regardless of the outcome.How do we determine if the maxim can become universal? One of the first things to do is to ask yourself if it would be acceptable that everyone do the same thing that you are considering doing in that situation. We were given several examples in The Elements of Moral Philosophy and the one that made the most impact was â€Å"suppose a man needs money, but no one will lend it to him unless he promise s to pay it back-which he knows he won’t be able to do. Should he make a false promises to get the loan? † (Rachels, 2012).If this happened the maxim or universal rule would be anytime you need a loan tell a lie that you will repay it and you will get the loan. This is not something that everyone would be willing to do because you will no longer believe others when they tell you this statement and no one would be willing to make the loans. The second thing you should do to determine if the maxim can become universal is look at your answer to the first question. Did you say â€Å"yes, I think that everyone will do it? †. If so, then ask yourself if it makes rational sense to want everyone in the same situation to do what you are contemplating doing.If your answer was no to either question then your maxim cannot become universal law because it is not considered moral. Overall, based on Kant, an act is morally right only if the primary rule of behavior, which is how you decide to act morally, can constantly and universally relate to you and others. The second formulation is best described by the following statement, â€Å"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. (Kant, 1785, 1993). Basically, this means that morality consists of doing your duty to treat people, including yourself, and an end, never as a means to an end. Kant combined the second formulation with the first because we have a perfect duty to not use the humanity of ourselves or others merely as a means to some other end. Most ends are somewhat subjective because they need only be pursued if they are in line with some particular hypothetical imperative that a person may choose to adopt. (Categorical Imperative Explained, 2012).The second formulation also leads to the imperfect duty to further the ends of ourselves and others. If any person desires p erfection in themselves or others, it would be their moral duty to pursue that end for all people equally, so long as that end does not contradict perfect duty. The question of whether or not Kant adequately addresses the problems evident in comparison of the two formulations cannot be summed up with a simple yes or no answer. He makes a good argument for both sides just as he opposes both sides.The difference is whether or not we have the right moral sense to determine why and how our decisions affect ourselves and others. Kant shows that you have struggles when rationality and practicality are conveyed to cover the same matter. So after all this we ask the question, â€Å"How plausible is the theory? † I think that it is a logical theory that clearly assists in making decisions. It provides a plausible account of morality because you can look at others and have a tendency to complete your actions based on those of others. Kantianism is a more consistent theory because it ca n be universally applied to all.It is more believable because even if the penalties of carrying out an action aren’t necessarily the best, the individual is still obligated to perform the action because it is their duty to do so. Kant’s theory focuses on the motivation of actions and has a clear and distinctive set of universal rules, and is morally sound. Consequently, ethically and morally they are doing the right thing. Bibliography Categorical Imperative Explained. (2012, April 12). Retrieved from Everything Explained: http://everything. explained. at/categorical_imperative/ (1993). In J. W. Ellington, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (p. 30).Hackett. Kant, I. (1785, 1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed.. . In J. W. Wllington. Hackett. Rachels, J. (2012). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. McGraw-Hill. Reason – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Reason Chicago: Reason – Wiki pedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Reason (accessed April 17, 2012). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http://jamesrachels. org/78improvedsentences. htm Chicago: The Elements of Moral Philosophy, http://jamesrachels. org/78improvedsentences. htm (accessed April 17, 2012).

Deep Time and Geologic History

Deep time refers to the time scale of geologic events, which is vastly, almost unimaginably greater than the time scale of human lives and human plans. It is one of geologys great gifts to the worlds set of important ideas. Deep Time and Religion   The concept of cosmology, the study of the origins and eventual fate of our universe, has been around as long as civilization itself. Before the advent of science, humans used religion to explain how the universe came into existence.   Many ancient traditions asserted that the universe is not only much larger than what we see but also much older. The Hindu series of yugas, for example, employs lengths of time so great as to be meaningless in human terms. In this way, it suggests eternity through the awe of large numbers. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Judeo-Christian Bible describes the history of the universe as a series of specific human lives, starting with Adam begat Cain, between the creation and today. Bishop James Ussher, of Trinity College in Dublin, made the definitive version of this chronology in 1650 and announced that the universe was created starting in the evening of 22 October in 4004 BCE. The biblical chronology was sufficient for people who had no need to concern themselves with  geologic time. Despite overwhelming evidence against it, the literal Judeo-Christian creation story is still accepted as truth by some.   Enlightenment Begins The Scottish geologist James Hutton is credited with exploding that young-Earth chronology with his painstaking observations of his farm fields and, by extension, the surrounding countryside. He watched the soil being washed into local streams and carried out to sea, and imagined it slowly accumulating into rocks like those he saw in his hillsides. He further supposed that the sea must exchange places with the land, in a cycle designed by God to replenish the soil, so that the sedimentary rock on the ocean floor could be tilted and washed away by another cycle of erosion. It was obvious to him that such a process, taking place at the rate he saw in operation, would take an immeasurable amount of time. Others before him had argued for an Earth older than the Bible, but he was the first to put the notion on a sound and testable physical basis. Thus, Hutton is considered the father of deep time, even though he never actually used the phrase. A century later, the age of the Earth was widely considered to be some tens or hundreds of millions of years. There was little hard evidence to constrain speculation until the discovery of radioactivity and 20th-century advances in physics that brought about radiometric methods of dating rocks. By the mid-1900s, it was clear that Earth was about 4 billion years old, more than enough time for all of the geologic history we could envision. The term deep time was one of John McPhees most powerful phrases in a very good book, Basin and Range, first published in 1981. It first came up on page 29: Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time. Any number above a couple of thousand years—fifty thousand, fifty million—will with nearly equal effect awe the imagination to the point of paralysis. Artists and teachers have made efforts to make the concept of a million years accessible to the imagination, but its hard to say that they induce enlightenment rather than McPhees paralysis. Deep Time in the Present   Geologists do not talk about deep time, except maybe rhetorically or in teaching. Instead, they live in it. They have their esoteric time scale, which they use as readily as common folk talk about their neighborhood streets. They use large numbers of years nimbly, abbreviating million years as myr. In speaking, they commonly dont even say the units, referring to events with bare numbers. Despite this, its clear to me, after a lifetime immersed in the field, that even geologists cant really grasp geologic time. Instead, they have cultivated a sense of the deep present, a peculiar detachment in which it is possible for the effects of once-in-a-thousand-year events to be seen in todays landscape and for the prospect of rare and long-forgotten events to occur today.