Blog 3

The Aurora shooting, the Newtown massacre, and the naval yard tragedy, among several other recent public attacks, raise serious concerns among U.S. citizens. Such acts of violence baffle essentially everyone, which makes the task of understanding the cause of them very confusing. Because of the difficulty of identifying the reason for such acts, deciding how to prevent them also raises much debate. Commonly, people rush to brash opinions on preventing such acts. For many, a seemingly easy route of prevention is to simply take away guns from citizens. The popular stance seems to be that if the government took away guns from the people, either by directly doing so or by increasing the difficultly of acquiring them, these acts would stop happening. I disagree with such a claim. Increasing gun control would have no impact on the frequency or severity of these acts.

I think that it is rather naïve to believe that if the government tried to increased gun control, difficulty of acquiring guns, and so on, that these acts would stop happening. United States citizens have owned guns since the founding of the country. We all know the 2nd amendment gives us this right. Yet such attacks did not occur with the frequency and severity as they do today.

What seems to have changed in recent years is an increase in mental health issues. I am no psychologist nor expert on mental health, but from a laymen's prospective, this seems evident. Taking for example the naval yard shooting, it seems that Alexis' extreme mental health concerns and the inability of those around him to recognize and act on his issues more directly led the attack,  than his ability to acquire a gun. I would argue he would have found a way to act violently regardless of how strict gun laws were. Whether he would have illegally acquired a gun or simply used one of the many other possible modes of conflicting harm on people. I do not believe there is  a streamline way for the government to take away the ability of a citizen to harm other citizens, much more than what policies are already  in place (background checks for guns, building security, etc.). What needs to improve is the ability of citizens to recognize when an individual has mental health issues, and  what measures need to be taken to address them.

Blog 2

If you don't already know, the conflict in Syria poses quite a dilemma to the United States, and the world. A civil war rages on, fueled by attempts of majority sects to over throw a minority sect who govern the country, lead by president Bashar al-Assad. It also appears that Assad has used chemical weapons on thousands of rebels, including innocent children, a direct violation of global laws, to fend off the attempts to overthrow him.  For years their have been public demands for Assad's resignation from office and the resulting civil war has lead to around 100,000 lost lives and millions of fleeing refugees. The Syrian economy has been crippled and many of their cities are destroyed war zones.

This situation leads to many questions, "What must done?", " Can anything be done?", and "Should anything be done at all?". All valid questions and several valid answers exist for each. Many would argue, including Barack Obama, that the U.S. must militarily strike down Assad's rule to bring about order and peace in the nation, save innocent lives, and to enforce U.N. laws. The strike would destroy chemical weapons, remove the tyrannical, unpopular leader, and allow the rebels to set up a government that is in the interest of the public. Others would say, that a military strike would be ineffective, create more violence, and enrage the Syrian and various other governments, such as Russia. Then there's the isolationist view that the conflict in Syria is not U.S. business, cannot be helped or mended by our actions, therefore the U.S. should leave it alone, the last thing the country needs is another military conflict or enrage a dangerous government. Clearly, the answers to the above questions depend on one's views of morality.

Recent developments have resulted in what appears to be a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The Syrian government has recently agreed to a plan that would require them to destroy their chemical weapons by 2014. While this sounds like a solution, many remain skeptical. The agreement does not address the tyrannical Assad, who many would say is the root of all the issues, he remains in power and seemingly without punishment. Will removing the chemical weapons really solve what the actual problem, will it stop the  refugee crisis, will stop the civil war, will it save the economy. Or must more blunt action be taken. I don't mean to suggest any answers, as I don't think I have one, but I think it is important for people to ask themselves these sorts of questions and to consider the moral dilemmas that result in the various options.

Blog 1

   This blog post will consist of my interpretations and thoughts on “Section V: Concerning our Reasoning…” by Francis Hutcheson. This essay took me quite some time to drudge through, as the 18^th century writing style was often cryptic. However, after some time and several re-readings of paragraphs, I was able to gather what seemed to me to be Hutcheson’s main notion. This notion being that humans’ share a sense of beauty, an appreciation for regularity, uniformity, and consistency, of which can never come to existence by randomness but by a designer. One sentence that somewhat summarizes this notion sits in the third paragraph when Hutcheson proclaims,” that wherever there is any Regularity in the disposition of a System capable of many other , there must have been Design in the Cause; and the Force of this Evidence increases, according to the Multiplicity of Parts imploy’d”(Hutcheson, Concerning).
   Hutcheson’s thesis presents a very interesting but dated argument. He uses the majority of the writing to defend his thesis through legitimate mathematical reasoning, however his conclusion many would debate. To summarize, Hutcheson claims that the regularity or “beauty” we see in the natural world is extremely mathematically improbable, therefore, this regularity could not come to existence by chance, but by design.  Today, most scientific thinkers would of course agree that the natural world’s regularity and beauty was not brought about by chance at all, but through a selective process called evolution. In fairness to Hutcheson, he presented a very logical argument at the time he made it, as the theory of evolution did not come to presence until after Hutcheson’s death.
   I think Hutcheson makes a very respectable claim, given the knowledge of the world he had at the time, as there seemed to be little alternatives. In terms of his work refuting or clashing with Mandeville’s, Fable of the Bees, I think some disagreements occur. To summarize, I think Mandeville gives mankind little credit and faith, whereas Hutcheson would argue that man naturally possesses an innate ability to see beauty and reason. One could then assume that Hutcheson would argue that this natural sense lead humanity to organizing itself into a civil society as it would be the reasonable action to take.