WEEK 3: THE DEATH PENALTY

Each week, you may use the threads to draft your current work, interact with your peers, document the progress you have made as a result of your team collaborations, and address course content using the topics below. Please refer to the threaded discussion rubric, so that you are in full compliance.

Topic

First, here is a word of caution. With this discussion comes a tasking to discuss the death penalty in two ways: first, as an expression of the social contract, where one person has killed another in a violation of that other person’s right to peace and safety, and second, as a rules-based function of the justice system being applied to a difficult situation.

What do you see going on that is a violation of the Hobbes/Locke social contract idea?
And you might also connect it with any of the Three Schools, plus Aristotle, that you have read in past weeks—and especially with the rules-based ethics model.

Here’s the situation: In Manatee County, Florida, a judge sentenced a man to death—the first time this had happened in the county for over 19 years. Sentenced to death was a 25-year-old man for the January 7, 2004, murder of both of his parents by bludgeoning them to death in their bed with a baseball bat.

Now, with your social contract ethicist hats on, tell us what you make of this quote by the judge at the sentencing, quoted from the front page of the November 17, 2007 Bradenton Herald: “You have not only forfeited your right to live among us, but under the laws of the state of Florida, you have forfeited the right to live at all.”

Have at it, good folks. But, rather than running off with reactions and opinions about the death penalty in general, please do keep it in the context of our social contract discussion for this week and also connected with ethics of justice.

   

EEK 3: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

2 Social Contract theorists say that morality consists of a set of rules governing how people should treat one another that rational beings will agree to accept for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others agree to follow these rules as well.

Hobbes runs the logic like this in the form of a logical syllogism:

1. We are all self-interested,
2. Each of us needs to have a peaceful and cooperative social order to pursue our interests,
3. We need moral rules in order to establish and maintain a cooperative social order,

Therefore, self-interest motivates us to establish moral rules.

Thomas Hobbes looked to the past to observe a primitive “State of Nature” in which there is no such thing as morality, and that this self-interested human nature was “nasty, brutish, and short” — a kind of perpetual state of warfare 

John Locke disagreed, and set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the right—and sometimes the duty—to withdraw their support and even to rebel. Listen to Locke’s audio in this week’s lesson and read his lecturette to be able to answer this thread.

Locke addressed Hobbes’s claim that the state of nature was the state of war, though he attribute this claim to “some men” not to Hobbes. He refuted it by pointing to existing and real historical examples of people in a state of nature. For this purpose he regarded any people who are not subject to a common judge to resolve disputes, people who may legitimately take action to themselves punish wrong doers, as in a state of nature.

Which philosophy do you espouse?

In coming to grips with the two and considering your experience of society as it is today, think out loud about what you experiences as the State of Nature, and tell us what you would be willing to give up in exchange for civil order and personal security?  

You might consider what you have already given up in exchange for security as well as what might be required in coming days.

WEEK 3: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

 

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WEEK 3: THE DEATH PENALT

Each week, you may use the threads to draft your current work, interact with your peers, document the progress you have made as a result of your team collaborations, and address course content using the topics below. Please refer to the threaded discussion rubric, so that you are in full compliance.

1.  Describe the health beliefs of the African American and Amish people and how they are differ

2.  Mention the difference between the African American and the Amish communities regarding health care.

3.  If there any similarity between the African American and the Amish population.

As always and stated in the syllabus present your assignment in an APA format word document attached to the threat in the discussion tab of the blackboard under week 3 discussion questions.  Assignment must be presented in an Arial 12 font with at least 3 evidence based references.  Two replies sustained with references are required.  A minimum of 500 words are required.