Thalasar Ventures

Solely four men survived the ship wrecked Mignonette in 1884, floating for 3 weeks in the Atlantic in a lifeboat. On the nineteenth day the captain Thomas Dudley suggested they drew lots to determine who would be killed and eaten, but one man objected. On the 20th day Dudley told the others to appear away, offered a prayer and cut the throat of the cabin boy, aged seventeen, who was sick from drinking seawater. They ate his body. Four days later they were rescued by another ship and the three survivors were charged with murder in the law case The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens.

It’s important that murder and cannibalism might be argued to be cheap in this case. On utilitarian grounds the actions of Dudley are justified as a result of they promote the best happiness of the best number. However, using deontological moral theories, murder is wrong in itself, irrespective of the results for others. If cannibalism is disgusting and our emotional response is that what happened is intuitively wrong, we may raise is our disgust cheap? Would we tend to have done otherwise? Or might the case be put that Dudley acted rationally?

In TOK ethics, it’s tempting to conclude that because there’s no agreement concerning standards of right and wrong, it follows that there is no data in ethics. Once all, individuals and cultures do not have the identical moral standards. But, our ethical judgements are simply that – judgements. We tend to can make better or worse judgements in ethics and our task in TOK is to grasp the difference. Paul Grobstein stated that: “there’s no such factor as ‘right’, the terribly concept needs to get replaced with ‘progressively less wrong.’ ” So although sure knowledge in ethics is hard to search out, we can make progress by arriving at moral judgements that are considered. Therefore in your response to the case above, ask yourself ‘why do I think that?’

In ethics we tend to are addressing a plurality of truths. It’s going to be value questioning the idea there would possibly be for ethical truth across cultures. What are good reasons for holding our ethical beliefs? Pay close attention to the words used to precise moral viewpoints; we have a tendency to recognize that within the language or war, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’, and within the on top of case, ‘one man’s cannibalistic murderer is another man’s hero with superior survival instincts.’

Maybe the challenge in TOK ethics is to look for what ethical information cultures may have in common. Even the notion of right and wrong is shared across cultures, whether or not the quality which that approximates to differs. The concept of shared values is embodied in the thought of universal declaration of human rights (1948).

More Information Theory Articles