Aewr

Theodore Marzorati

PHIL 2650

Report 1

V. Kooy

Hastings Campus

Challenging Thoughts

The concepts inside the book The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics are not only factual but they can also challenge the way one may think about themselves, how they think about others, and life itself. Some concepts in chapters one through four affected me greater than others, some did not affect me at all, and some concepts made me think about my belief systems. It is rare for me to be greatly affected by anything I am reading in a book, learning about in class, or even watching through television. I learn through life experiences. I learn through succeeding and failing. Just reading concepts through a book does not paint a very detailed picture for me but surprisingly, a few concepts in this book stood out to me.

Furthermore, the concept that seemed to be the most critical towards the readers was in chapter four. Chapter four discussed that people are not always by nature selfish but there is always something to gain in everything a person does. Psychological egoism claims that people are not always selfish by nature but they do act in selfish ways to benefit out of the acts in some way. There were a few examples give in the book, Abraham Lincoln said he would save drowning pigs only because if he did not he would feel guilty. Lincoln only saved the pigs to benefit from it. His benefits were not feeling guilty about the pigs later in the day. Another example is Thomas Hobbes’s theory involving the saving of the animals after hurricane Katrina. The people who saved all these animals were benefiting in some way by getting satisfaction and not feeling guilty for not helping these animals and the owners of said animals. People can be generous to others and other creatures but people always act on self-interest, they are indirectly helping themselves. This concept in the book did make me think twice about life and how people live throughout it. I also thought...