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Tyler Paul Jacobs

Teresa Welch
Philosophy 1000

Philosophical Commonalities It Seems: Group Discussion

When I was told about this the first time in class, I thought I would be the bane of my
group, the person who didnt seem to match with the rest of the worlds view, cause to me my
views always seemed old fashion for the most part. When we finally sat down, I told myself, if
they hate me, if they dont like me or my views, not take it personally, everyone is entitled to
their opinion, that the difference in all of us is what makes this world unique. Our challenges, our
bundle of perceptions and our will to power fighting other's will to power, its all that makes this
world worth living. When we finally hashed out the questions, the ones we all hated, I was
surprised on what was said and what we said about each others views. I knew my answer but
theirs I loved to discuss, and theirs some wished to keep theirs to themselves and let us discuss.
Question 1: Do we have any ethical duties regarding what we do with our money?
As people, we have the ethical duty to take care of ourselves first and thats what needs to
be done with our money first. Peter singer says we should donate everything above thirty
thousand dollars to charities, the man uses this mainly as a point to get people talking, as he
doesnt even follow any of it. This life is our own and others can take care of themselves, but it
doesnt mean we have to let them be that way, on their own. Most capitalist would argue that
giving takes away from them, or that it makes the poor lazy, but giving only to ourselves is
meaningless. We should give to help others because it builds a better community. Kant wanted us
to do good things with the right intentions, we should donate our money with those intentions

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because it can bring about the good in others, it is better to risk that laziness of the poor than to
have governments forcing it upon us. None of like to be told to anything, we should learn why
we can.
My group, I suspected to hear about the need to give that everyone should give, but
coming from a bunch of college hardworking kids who all going to school, it should have been
suspected their views to be conservative views with liberal intentions. We all recognized that our
money is earned and ours, but its dull just to hoard it all, it brings no meaning to our lives. We
were all agreement here.
Question 2: Is it unethical to eat meat? Do we have an ethical duty to be a
vegetarian? Why or why not?
I am the will to power, you can probably see my love for the man that said it, at least the
love of his ideas. No we dont have an ethical duty to be a vegetarian if we dont have to. My
will to power either divinely given to me or gained through the struggle of survival of the fittest
has made me an omnivore. I eat both meat and vegetables. I have an ethical duty to keep myself
alive, not things below me in the food chain. Eating meat is not wrong, treating animals with ill
intent and not giving them the light of day is wrong.
Vegans argue that its abuse to an animal to eat them, some vegans, not all vegans, some
are in it for the health of things, but evolutionary speaking or God given right, animals eat other
animals, its the way of life, suffering teaches us to be stronger, or it filters out the genes that
shouldnt be passed on. Besides that, animals dont feel the way we do, theyre not able to
comprehend to the point we all, sure some are intelligent, but that doesnt mean eating meat is
wrong. We do however shouldnt miss treat them because they are in fact, lesser cognitively
speaking. We do have a duty to do that. We all agreed on that point the same.

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Question 3: What is truth? How do we know if we have arrived at the truth? Are the
skeptics correct that we cannot ever have knowledge of the truth? Is truth relative? Why or
why not?
Hume says that there is nothing we can no unless we experienced it. Descartes says
things are inherit, we just dont know it yet. I came to the conclusion long ago that everything
already exists, we just need to find it. We come to this world not knowing a thing and we
discover it, experience it, but it did exist before us. Im under the impression like Plato that there
are forms and particulars, but we just dont know it, we have to experience it and then shape it
into something we can understand, its like the Tao. Never able to reach it but always reaching
for it. Skeptics would call it bunk, but I call it searching, just because I cant experience
everything, doesnt mean I can deduce or even come to a logical reason. Just because my reason
is based on my experience as a hole doesnt shape it any less.
With the group, we all had our own ideas of what truth was. Some of us didnt see it as
something that could ever be discovered that it was something that needed to be concluded by
common things around us, that truth was, in fact, a perception of those who had filtered their
lives to find their own truth. At first, I was against it but understood why they went that way and
reworded what I meant.
Truth is out there, some truths are more true than others, and some truths are based on
your own personal experiences, to me truth is what produces the least amount of chaos or what
produces the most amount of chaos, things filtered that way are what is best for us.
After discussion of the topic we came to agreement that truths as subjected as they are
can be different, I agreed to that but still pushed for the fact that some things are true to matter
the person.

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Question 4: How is good behavior vs. bad behavior determined? Do the
consequences of ones actions define whether an action is good or bad, or is it the
motivations or intentions of the actor that matters?
The Categorical Imperative. Ask it once question any question and if you can will that all
other people can do it any time that it be right. Kant had the idea that the intentions and this
question determined what was right and what was wrong. Intentions are everything and action
are too. Actions arent the bigger point of the equation to me, theyre more of the add-on that can
turn it quickly. Kill one person to get gain over others, to make me rich. Bad. Kill one person to
save the people I work with because hes carrying a gun. Good. To me, the intention is the
heavier part of the equation because it determines what you want, and want to me is everything.
The action is the less weighty part. Killing isnt always bad, defending people from the Nazis
during War World II, was good, sitting back and letting the Nazis kill people is bad.
People would tell me that the ends dont justify the means, that youre good and bad is
subjective. Im not saying that we should go out and kill all criminals to reduce our crime. Youre
action their spoils youre intent needless killing. I do recognize each scenario is going to be
subjective.
Subjective scenarios, thats where our group had an issue, because it brought us back to
the truths question. We argued truths again for a little bit and hated that fact that all the questions
were to similar but we did conclude and agree that intent did matter, but still despite the lack of
intent doing good despite not wanting to do it, didnt spoil the action completely.
Question 5: If we do the right action for the wrong reason, is it less moral?
This is where we were starting to get a little tired of the slight variation and speed in the
discussion started to pick up. If I give to charity just because it lowers my taxes does it make that

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action any less right. Yes, to me it does. I think if youre intention behind the action is any less
that the deed it does ruin it. I do have to agree with Kant here on that action, but I would have to
amend it, its better that you do good than not do good at all. I say it does ruin the intent because
it can make you less likely do to good if youre forced into it. It has to be wanted.
People against altruism would say that men need that hook to do good, that all intentions
no matter how good they are, are for the individual to increase their self in some form or another.
Thats nit-picking it, everyone does things for themselves, I dont believe in 100% altruism,
thats some godly trait humans cant mimic, but they can be 98% altruistic. Trying their best to
do things for others.
After discussion we agreed that it was best to want to do good but that doesnt lessen the
action at all, but we were aware that intent to murder, could affect actions of ill intent. Seconddegree murder versus manslaughter could muddle things up, but with action like that we were
done with discussing the answer, basically agreeing that things considered truthfully bad their
intent could muddle our thought process a little, so we moved on because of the headache.
Question 6: Are bad actions that are completed with good intent less moral?
And the snowballing of similarities continues. I think our biggest problem with these
questions is we barely glances over them before we went to this discussion, some of us not at all,
good thing we were filled with opinions that day.
Stated before I think that bad intention for good actions can lessen the act. The intention
not to do bad but bad is done, I think also lessens the action too. Having thought we could have
moved on from having to discuss the intent of second-degree this and manslaughter this, we were
back at it because like previously stated we didnt know the questions by heart.

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My argument of the intent still holding more weight than the action, I still stood here
strong. The intent is everything, there are good Samaritan laws in place to help prevent people
from not helping. They are in place to prevent any harm dealt to a person while assisting from
coming back on the assistor. If your intent was to cause good but harm resulted out of it, thats
good enough for me. I would rather people try to do good then not do good at all because enough
people arent doing it.
Even now I hate writing this as my mind constantly attacks what Ive said. Those
attacking what Ive said would say it doesnt matter that results are better. All the good intent in
the world still causes bad actions. Like manslaughter could have ended the aides life but that
doesnt mean I tried to kill the person, but those arguing against dont realize discourage good
behavior because of results would lessen our resolve to do that. We would be less willing to help,
we would have never gone to war with Hitler if we kept thinking we might kill someone
innocent, we as people recognize that its better to have a good intent and still help even if
something bad may derive from it. Of course, we dont want people running around making
things worse just because they wanted to help, but that intent is bad because theyre running
around not thinking about what harm theyre causing.
At this point, we settled on the answer we had, had before on question 5. Actions are
good, but the intent should be as good as possible too.
Question 7: What does living the good life consist of?
The good life is trying to make sure youre well off and that youre with people who care
to have you well off and if people need help try to help them. Altruism would say that people
would like to help other because its right, for the most part I believe this, from time to time they

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will need a hook and thats okay, but mostly people for the most part just want to do good, but
you need to make sure that youre taking care of yourself.
With question 1 and a bit of question 2 and 5 and 6 mixed in there, we realized we had
pretty much answered the question there, having resolved any questions that had come our way.
We had discussed Mr. Singer asinine comment about the $30,000 is all you need, saying you
should have a little for yourself and give away what you can while still maintaining a healthy
nest for yourself. That with people not happy around you, you should try your best to help them
out but not hurt yourself in the process because you would no longer be happy.
There wasnt much discussion here as we had already come to a conclusion through the
previous questions, be happy, make sure you can maintain that happy, and help others be that and
surround yourself with that. Let that power your will.
Question 8: What are the qualities of the superior individual?
The superior man is probably where we had the most disagreement not because we didnt
know what the superior man was but how do you describe the superior man. One person in our
group wanted to list things down, so we could just break up the monotony of our discussions and
get this over with, most of us just discussed and continued the monotony of the questions.
The superior individual to me was a person who did his best to be his best and helped
other, brought up faith and how faith promotes, others agreed that it was a person who tried to be
their best and helped others be their best, but they argued more tangible things.
We agreed on that but found different ways around to it, but were on the same level.
Other may have argued that the will to power or altruism but because they saw that as a way to
better humanity but we argued it was simpler than that.

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Question 9: To what extent, if any, does happiness relate to living the good/moral
life? What is happiness?
This is probably the second most thing we disagreed on but generally came to understand
one another towards the end. We always seemed to disagree at first but as the discussions moved
on we found out that we more alike than we had first seen, we just had different ways about
getting to our answer.
For me, happiness was more that momentary pleasure, hedonist would argue life is all
about pleasures, instant or higher avoid pain. Im with Nietzsche on this looking to overcome the
pains in your life but slightly modified being content with what you have.
Pleasure seeking only goes so far, there is more to life than that. We need to be fulfilling
and outstanding on what we do and doing bad will make us feel bad. Thought the subjective
truths we argued earlier in the questions could affect that, we did realize it was a bit of choice
like the stoics had argued.
Question 10: To what extent, if any, does ones duties to society/other people relate to
living the morally good life?
Even if we had split this up into two sessions I think we would have still tried to end
sooner. We had gotten to the point where all the previous questions we had answered had pretty
much answered this one, that this one was only a slight variant of the past questions. Actions are
affected by their intent, altruist argue that we need to be all in favor of others, hedonist argue
pleasure over pain, that helping others may cause you pain, Nietzsche argued that underman tried
to pull down the overman. For me, we do have a duty to others, this life is not our own, we are
not alone from the moment we are brought into this word, we chose to be alone, we dont die
alone, in some form of another we have people with us. To die as an unfulfilled immoral person I

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believe is the close you can become to dying alone because it leaves you unfulfilled. Anyone
who says each man is on their own because its you verse the world is the problem.
We as a group agreed that greed was bad and that we needed to help one another because
we had a moral obligation to do so, that acting well helped promoted others into acting the same
way.
Conclusion
But when its all said and done, what were we doing just discussing. The biggest problem
with philosophy, discussion. This whole time we were talking about points we already pretty
much saw eye to eye on. I wish our group contained people I hated, at least with them our views
wouldnt have been to similar. The thing I learned from this as my opinion was too tried or
tested, is that there are some things out there that are just consistent no matter what, people, for
the most part, want to do good, want to be good, want to discuss good, but thats all it was want
and discuss, for the most part, and I realize that writing this paper. I may not have changed my
opinion, nor may have it been expounded on by the group, but I do realize with all these words
Ive learned throughout the semester I did learn I want to do more than just sit and talk about it.