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ENG101/102 6

1 April 2013

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Whats Going On in the Field

A) At first the goal of this paper was to critique religion and its followers, praising

secularism for its skepticism in the realm of religion. After much research and

finding books that better fit under the philosophy section at the library, I was

inspired to narrow my topic from a very broad paper about religion, to something

slightly less controversial (but not completely unpartisan): the topic of ethics.

Ethics is a topic in which everyone can put in their two cents, but nobody can

conclusively say Im right. Because of this, Id like to research thoroughly,

inform, and clear up any misconceptions and promote critical analysis with those

who lack such abilities. Socrates is a great thinker famous for advocating the

abandonment of conventional values and independent thinking. Steven Pinker

wrote a book called The Better Angels of Our Nature which discusses the fact

that religion isnt necessary to be a moral person, and that morality is a part of

human nature and human wisdom. If it werent for our empathy and logic, it is

unlikely that the idea of morals would be anything regularly taken into

consideration. The Origins of Virtue is a book by Matt Ridley which, much like

Pinkers book, discusses where our moral value came from and why we have

them. His view is that they derived from religious practice, became incorporated

into government practice, and is for the majority of people today moral values are

decided by each individual.

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B) Steven Pinkers book could be used in my paper because Pinker is a renowned

psychologist and therefore a credible source. He would probably be used in the

body of the paper and would make up a large portion of my argument that

moral values should not be passed down from one generation to the next, but

they begrudgingly are. To further my argument, incorporating moral values

without proper reasoning does not encourage people to think for themselves,

which may hurt them later in life.

C) I have found the views of psychologists and philosophers on the topic of morality.

What I need to do next is find the theories regarding morality. One example of

this is Kohlbergs Theory of Moral Development; I understand the gist of this

theory but more depth would be beneficial. Understanding how the famous Greek

philosophers, primarily Socrates and Aristotle, came to their conclusions and

their philosophical ideas is important, so more information in that realm will be

much needed. It is pertinent to note that many of the Greek philosophers decided

against using religion as a basis for philosophy, and Socrates was killed by his

government because of this. A book called One Hundred Philosophers mentions

all of this, and goes into detail about the discrepancies between subjective and

objective morality: that is, morality is changing and morality is staying the same,

respectively. This idea will be imperative to my argument of moral indoctrination:

those who believe in objective morality will teach very one-sided beliefs whereas

the others will teach and promote dynamic moral virtues.