TOK T3W1 Assignment

Further exploration:
● To what extent are we influenced by circumstances when making moral decisions?

Circumstances influence our decisions to a large extent. Regardless of our moral compass,
if the conditions of the circumstances demand that we can take a certain course of action,
we will go ahead with it. I believe that because the way humans react to situations are more
circumstantial rather than black and white. The element of authority in the circumstance
also makes the moral compass less influential in our decisions since usually obedience to
authority takes precedence over moral compass. However, there are those groups of
people who do have a strict moral compass who will act morally regardless of the
circumstance and these are the people who we hail as gods and good people.
Nevertheless, in reality, we are highly influenced by the circumstances when it comes to
moral decisions.

● Are the terms ‘evil’ and ‘good’ useful to us as we explore human science issues?

Personally, evil and good creates too much of a black and white kind of categorization
which might not be the case in the true reality of human science. An evil person can be
good in one circumstance and a good can be evil when exposed to another circumstance.
Therefore, it does not make sense to have such strict categorization. But I do recognize
they need categorization in this field. Perhaps, the definition of these labels can be
loosened a bit more to make it more relevant.

● To what extent do we act independently of the situation and society in which we are
based?

Being social creatures, the extent to which we independently react is pretty low because we
are constantly considering how our actions impact others and how their reactions might
impact us in return. Moreover, depending on the society we are based in, there is the
element of authority or the central power in the society that might be quite well versed
(depending on the society) in pulling the strings and preventing us from reacting
independently and purely based on our moral compass.

● Can war be waged ‘ethically’?

The idea of war is known as the “armed conflict between different countries or different
groups within a country” and more generally conflict between communities. The reason for
war might be ethical such as defending sovereignty or protecting their citizens from harm.
However, means of the war might be unethical such as killing of people and bombing of
infrastructure. War is between people who are sworn to defend their country and must be
between them only. Any form of harm that is done on anyone or anything other than the
military is considered unethical already. Harm on the soldiers itself is not considered
unethical because the people in the military are willing to sacrifice their life for the defence
of their nation. So, to answer the questions, yes I do believe that war can be waged
ethically given they only harm soldiers and nothing else (infrastructure, innocent citizens,
etc. ). However looking at the humanity’s past history with wars, it is clear that it impossible
to stick to this strictly and one might even argue killing soldiers who are humans can also
be unethical. In that case, it might be unethical.