David Kriner

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102
10/21/2015

(Annotated Bib 1)

Lehrer, Jonah. "The Moral Mind." How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2009. 167-74. Print.
Reflection
Personally, I find the beginning section of Chapter 6 very intriguing. It opened a new path in
which I see every day without realizing it. Most of the morals that we generate are off of
emotions and that most of the morals we hold true to ourselves, we cant defend them rationally.
In my debate class, back in high school, this was relevant. People getting emotionally flustered at
other peoples opinions and sometimes they couldnt handle the truth. Soon it became clear that,
even though they believe in these actions and laws and what not, they could not give good
reasons why they are helpful or why they should exist in the world. Politicians sometimes get
this way too, everyone gets this way myself included. Morality is not something we think about
and act on those thoughts, they are based off of emotions. Emotions are what make us human so
being emotional is not necessarily a bad thing. However, these emotions sometimes blind us
when faced with the truth or facts that go against what we believe. As a result, hostilities are a
most common outcome. I personally believe in what Lehrer is saying. In almost all of the
arguments that I have been in, the result is always the same. This is bad because I said so! or
Because its wrong!. These sayings dont help get the point across. They make it worse in a
way that you seem to force ideals and morals down peoples throats. Not only is this wrong, in
my opinion, but it kills off individuality and your own rights as a person and American citizen.
When dealing with psychopaths, understanding the root of evil actions are something I plan to
address in my paper. Since emotions are what drive morals, it makes sense if the psychopaths are
emotionless, almost non-human like beings with no remorse over their actions. I guess that is
why they kill in the first place, because they have the power to do so and since they have no
regret or feeling over it, then why not? This book has helped me get a better understanding of
morality as a whole.

Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, goes into detail about how we, as people, decide
our course of actions. According to him, Morality can be squishy, vague, concepts, and yet, at
its simplest level, it's nothing but a series of choices about how we treat other people. (169). To
this day, many people have misunderstood the concept of morality and how to deal with it. I
chose Chapter 6, The Moral Mind, for my example as a source. Throughout this chapter, he

goes through several different examples of what to do when things go morally wrong. The first
example talks about how a man named John Wayne Gacy. He had a normal background with no
childhood traumas but was indeed a psychopath. In March of 1980, Gacy was convicted of
murdering thirty-three boys in which he paid all of them for sex. Lehrer elaborates about how the
general public perceive serial killers such as John Gacy himself. We tend to label people like
John Wayne Gacy as monsters...but every time Gacy murdered a boy, he was making a decision.
(168-169). Believe it or not, they do make decisions. Everyone makes decisions in their life at
some point or another. We can choose whether or not to go to class or wake up early to do
homework. Psychotic killers are no different than the rest of us. They chose to kill, knowing full
well the consequences of their actions. While continuing on, Lehrer uses a source from The New
Yorker about what it was like to meet Gacy, who at the time was on death row. Alec Wilkinson,
the journalist who met and interviewed Gacy, stated that Gacy appears to have no inner
being...Compared to other murderers at the prison, Gacy seemed tranquil. (169-170).
Emotionless human beings are what psychotic murders and psychopaths are.
On the subject of emotion, Lehrer states that morality and emotions do correlate with one
another. We do things that are morally right to get positive reactions or emotions from the people
around us. Whenever people get into a moral argument, emotions come first, and the reasons
are invented on the fly, to throw at each other. (172). From these examples, Lehrer deduces that
the standard view of morality has been completely backwards for over thousands of years.
Logic and legality have little to do with anything. (173). From there, he gives a scenario in
which two siblings travel to France together. One thing leads to the next, and, with the proper
protection, they have sex. Both parties enjoyed it, but decided to never do this thing again and
promise each other to keep it a secret. Now, this would be considered incest, which is frowned
upon in most societies. But did they really do anything wrong? They both had the proper
protection, she was on the pill and he was wearing a condom. No pregnancies happened and it
improved their relationship. This social experiment was conducted by Haidt to understand how
people argue morally in bad situations such as this one. The one thing that he noted was that
people give a reason [why the sex was wrong] and when that reason is stripped from them, they
give another reason. Eventually, people run out of reasons and then start saying things like
Because its just wrong to have sex with your sister or Because its disgusting, thats why!
(174). Haidt calls this state moral dumbfounding. This is when people know that something is
morally wrong but cant rationally defend their verdict. Ultimately these are the key points that I
would like to address in my paper about morality.

(Annotated Bib 2)

Raz, Joseph. "About Morality and the Nature of Law." About Morality and the Nature of
Law. N.p., 2003. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
Joseph Raz, Author of this article About Morality and the Nature of Law, talks about what
role morality plays in the law. The law can be valuable, but it can also be the source of much
evil. (1). These are considered to be two innocent truisms about the law. A truism is a

statement that is obviously true. Going off of these truisms, there is no bad blood between the
two. The source of good and evil in the world is based off of the people. Only the people can
make a difference in the world, good or bad. He asks the common man if we should be looking
for correlations in morality and law. Some of the connections that he has made involves things
such as the life and death of a man in custody, or states or legal systems manifest the virtues and
vices of our value pluralism. In his article, Raz mentions writers claiming that there are other
types of necessary connections between law and morality. For example, it is necessary that
everyone has a duty to obey the law of his country, everyone has a reason to obey the law of
his country, If the law is just all its subjects have a duty to obey it (or alternatively, a reason to
obey it), If the government of a country is democratic all its subjects have a duty to obey its
law (or alternatively, a reason to obey it), One has an obligation to support just legal systems.
(4). This shows us, the readers, that we are morally obligated to obey the rules of the land in
exchange to live and experience life in that country. However some lawyers do not follow these
natural laws. They claim that the law is a source of moral duties in the way in which one
often thinks of promises as a source of moral duties. (4). Laws generate a sort of moral duty that
only a citizen must perform on a daily basis. Much like a promise to a friend or peer, you are
morally obligated to help out. Because the laws are producing moral duties, acting within the law
typically restricts and confines yourself as a human. Laws are typically good but some of them, if
used poorly, constrict human nature.

This article was confusing. It took me awhile to fully grasp some of the main points of
the article. I feel like the law makes us feel morally obligated to follow what is written but

without any clear purpose. Its like saying Dont do this because it's bad. That really doesnt
explain anything to the common man. We just know that these things are bad and we should
respect the law in not doing those things. In return, we are offered protection, life in that country,
acceptance throughout the people of the country, etc. While in certain aspects it restricts are
freedoms somewhat, laws generally keep the peace for the most part if used correctly. Like Raz
was saying, the laws dont do good or bad things, the people do. The people create the laws and
enforce them good or bad for their own personal advantage. Humanity has come to the point
where we are unpredictable in our actions. What I mean by this is that, we sometimes lose sight
in the things we want to protect. We get caught up with our power that we sometimes go a bit
overboard and start passing or declaring things that arent really useful or resourceful but
because we can do this because we are in charge kind of thing. Overall, I believe that morality
does inhibit some decisions in the field of law. I would like to reference this in my paper when
comparing it to the works of Gandhi and Martin Luther King J.R.

(Annotated Bib 3)

Tilly, Charles. "Chapter 3 and Chapter 4: Credit/Blame." Credit and Blame. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 2008. N. pag. Print.

Charles Tilly, author and Political Scientist and Sociologist of Credit and Blame, talks
about how the credit and blame system in the world. Till describes Credit as something that a
recipient has done something that actually caused an increase in the value of an important
activity. (65). whether we take credit for something or give credit to someone, we recognize that
the action that someone had performed was of significant value. Some real world events have
portrayed our credit system in the form of award ceremonies. In the next chapter, Blame, Tilly
starts off describing an event that happened in 2003 where an accidental fire occurred in West
Warwick, Rhode Island. The perpetrators were the Derderian Brothers and their manager Daniel
Biechele, who were giving a concert at a local music hall and a malfunction in the pyro
technicians burned down the hall and killed 100 people. Three years later, the court of Rhode
Island charged Biechele with involuntary manslaughter and Michael Derderian received a
sentence to a four year minimum-security prison and Jeffrey received 500 hours of community
service. This punishment for the loss of human life was very small which angered a lot of people.
Though it was by accident, many victims, loved ones, family, etc., were very unsatisfied and
took it upon themselves to blame the brothers and manager for killing those people. Tilly makes
a point that blamers estimate the loss in value of some important activity. (93). The victim's
value the loss of their love ones in such high standards that, though it was an accident, they still
felt that some form of a higher punishment should have been given. Tilly continues to list more
examples on cases with punishments not suitable for the crime.
Overall, my opinion on credit and blame is that credit, while used for good purposes as to reward
someone for their actions, can also be used poorly. People can lie and take credit for things that
other people have done or do. Plagiarism is something that comes off of stealing credit from
others. Blame also works the same way. Many a time have people been wrongly accused of

committing certain crimes. We are sometimes blinded by anger and grief that we sometimes
commit these things. We make poor moral choices that dont really help either party. I believe
that I can use this piece to further exemplify the way that our moral choices can impact not only
simple life choices, but also major life choices such as plagiarizing or blaming someone for a
heinous crime.

(Annotated Bib 4)

Thomas, Geoffrey. "Chapter 2: Ethics and Moral Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives

and Green." The Moral Philosophy of T.H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. N. pag.
Print.
Geoffrey Thomas, author and Sociologist of The Moral Philosophy of T.H. Green, goes into
depth about the thinking behind our actions. Specifically in Chapter 2, Thomas explains that
there are several theories about how we make and determine what actions are and why we make
certain actions. In page 74, Thomas explains that If it [the action] was physically or logically
impossible for me to do an action, or I lacked opportunity, then no intention of mine could have
produced the action and I cannot blamed for not doing it: I escape responsibility. From there, he
goes on about there being three necessary conditions of moral responsibility for an action. (A)
was able to do (X), (A) did (X) knowingly, (A) could have done otherwise, if he had chosen
(X). (75). These reasons present themselves to be true for the most part. If we cannot perform
the action, we generally do not do the action to avoid any responsibility if we fail. The three
conditions are also presented true. Each action that we perform or are able to perform coincides
with condition one, we are able to do the action. Condition two is proven to be true because of
each action that we act out, we did the action knowing what was at stake. In other words the pros

and cons of what we did. Condition three is also met because if we had learn another way, a
more correct way in doing an action, we would have taken that way. For example, if there was a
safer way to perform a safety test, we would do the safer way in order to prevent getting hurt.
Sometimes we act on things that are known to be true. For example, we know that if we touch a
hot surface our fingers will start to burn and cause jolts of pain that go through our bodies. So
with that knowledge, we do not touch hot surfaces. Another example is that, we know that not
eating or drinking anything will eventually render the person dead. So in order to stay alive, we
eat and drink as much as our bodies can take. This is what is known as The Rationality of Moral
Actions. (81). We perform certain actions based on what is true. We rationalize what is bad and
what is good and make the good choices based on the current situation. Overall, I believe that
learning about the thought process about how we carry out actions would provide my paper with
more detail about how certain, publicly known people acted the way that they did.

(Annotated Bib 5)

Walton, Hanes. "Chapter 3: The Foundation of King's Moral and Political Philosophy."
The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub.,
1971. 38-76. Print.
Reflection

Getting deeper into the mind of MLK is something that I find useful when addressing my topic.
Understanding the thought process and the actions of one of the most inspirational figures in not
only The United States but in the world opens new doors of knowledge and life lessons. I
somewhat thought that there can be naturally good people to begin with but MLK takes the cake,
Even though he experienced all the violence and mistreatments White Americans give to African
Americans, he looked through his hatred and realized that fighting fire with fire is not the way to
go. The point of his revolution was not to make a big statement that ends with chaos and
destruction, but to make a big statement in a loving way and it worked.
Hanes Walton Jr., (September 25, 1941 - January 7, 2013), was a professor of political
science at the University of Miami. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1941 and graduated with
a doctorates degree from Howard University in 1967. Hanes grew up during the era of MLK and
wrote The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, JR. in 1971 going into depth about the
mind and thought process of MLK. Sadly, Hanes passed away in January of 2013 at the age of
72.
Hanes first goes into detail about the life of MLK and how as a child, experienced the
mistreatment of his fellow kinsman throughout his life. The King was very religious and a proud
Christian above all else. I have passed spots where Negroes had been savagely lynched and had
watched the Ku Klux Klan on its rides at night. I had seen police brutality with my own eyes and
watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustices in the courts. (41). It was there that King
began a serious intellectual quest to eliminate racism in American Society. King grew up in
Atlanta, Georgia the same as Hanes. He proceeded to work on a Theological degree at Crozier
Theological Seminary.

Realizing that violence only leads to more violence, King went towards the nature of love
and kindness to spread his word and movement. The turn the other cheek philosophy and the
love your enemies philosophy are only valid, I felt, when individuals are in conflict with other
individuals; when racial groups and nations are in conflict, a more realistic approach is
necessary. (42). King attended a sermon by Dr. Mordecai Johnson and while listing to the
doctor talk, he spoke of the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
The Gandhian concept of Satyagraha had a strong influence on King. Satyagraha means
love force which is a nonviolent approach. Along the lines of Satyagraha, King was also using
the teachings of the Bible and followed the Christian way to spread his message. In sum, God,
for King, is the central truth of man. (51). His nonviolence approach, though tough at first,
seemed to ease into the hearts of millions. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a
weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It
is a sword that heals. Both a practical and a moral answer to the Negros cry for justice,
nonviolent direct action proved that it could win victories without losing wars. (65).

(Annotated Bib 6)

Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1977. Print.

Alan Donagan, (1925-1991), was a well-known philosopher and wrote books and articles about
his take on the theory and history of morality. His most famous book is of course The Theory of
Morality in which he makes a case of how common morality reflects to the hebrew-christians.

Alan Donagan, compares the morals of society and traditions to faith, in particular, the
Christian faith. Religion has been around for as long as history itself. Ancient biblical figures and
expos have been discovered and translated to the native human language. Many philosophers
such as Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. have used or mention religion at some point or another in
their teachings. Some worshiped Gods and Goddesses and others worshiped a God. We, as a
society have grown to accept a Universal Morality in which some actions are universally good
while others are universally bad. No matter what, these things will remain as such because we as
a society have grown to accept them. One theory that Alan quotes is a theory called Universal
Prescriptivism. Theorized by R.M. Hare, All moral judgements are advanced as either being or
presupposing universal prescriptions that is, prescriptions which can be formulated without
referring to individual persons or things except by descriptions. (215). He gives the example of
how Montagues are to raise their hats to all Venetians they meet. (216). This is not universal
because it refers implicitly both to the individual city of Venice as well as the individual person
who founded the Montagues. A universal prescription would be more general and not leaning
towards one person or race, i.e. a majority of people that have a certain trait etc. Hare, according
to Alan, believes that many judgements that are moral are incompatible with each other. Many
people tend to misinterpret what is morally good judgement and what is bad. For example,
someone might be wanting a commendation for something that they did. While it may be
acceptable and looked up upon in some areas, it may be frowned upon in other areas. This comes
with cultural differences that cannot be helped, however it's the misconception of the belief that
all universally good actions are good throughout any portion of the world that such a thing ever
occurs. Hares procedure is familiar or reflects that of the Hebrew-Christian tradition.
Reflection

This was a tough article to handle, however I believe that I have gotten the key points. Hares
theory on Universal Prescriptions, I believe are correct. We do tend to misinterpret moral actions
and often believe that what we do here is acceptable somewhere else. There is one example
where it is acceptable to slurp in Japanese restaurants for it tells the cooks that the meal is good
but over somewhere in Europe, people tend to look at that action as bad manners. Even still, I
believe this book has the potential in making a clear point in which we as a society tend to focus
down on religious traits and teachings and misinterpret them into thinking that they are the best
ideas for the world.

(Annotated Bib 7)
Langer, Susanne K. "Ethics without Morality." Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed
From Philosophy in a New Key. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953. N. pag. Print.
Suzanne K. Langer, (1895-1985), was an American philosopher of mind and of art. She was one
of the first women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first woman to be
recognized as an American Philosopher. Langer is making a point that even though if you want

to be ethical you need to have a sense of morality, ethics in general does not need to have
morality. She begins to describe the hero-coward distinction in which sometimes morality plays a
role in creating a false hero while humiliating the other as a coward. Humans always want to
be the best that they can be and overcome as many challenges as possible. The ethics that is
here envisaged is in a sense the fulfillment of one strand in the classical ethical tradition. (291).
upon this quote, she goes into detail about how Socrates identifies the nature of virtue with
knowledge. Socrates must not be interpreted as a way to deny emotions but to redirect them.
Spinoza, another philosopher, unravels the determinants of human action. To hate no one, to
despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no one, and to envy no one. (291). Spinoza
redirects his emotions to not be angry but to indicate an understanding of the effective action.

Reflection
Langer clearly demonstrates her point of view on how morality is generally used ethically. To
feed a superego, to only do good actions not because they are good but because they are looked
up upon making the person better perceived in a community. Ethics without morality is certainly
applicable. We do things the way that they are because it should be ethically right not because we
look better and play on the peoples emotions. By redirecting emotions, we get rid of the
superego and expect nothing less from ideal citizens. I think this conclusion, is helpful in
determining a bad way to use morality and possible fixes to this problem.