Free Essays on Utilitarian

Mill's Utilitarianism: Sacrifice the innocent for the common good? When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies the appropriate considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather the necessary information to make the required calculations. This lack of information is a problem both in evaluating the welfare issues and in evaluating the consequentialist issues which utilitarianism requires be weighed when making moral decisions. Utilitarianism attempts to solve both of these difficulties by appealing to experience; however, no method of reconciling an individual decision with the rules of experience is suggested, and no relative weights are assigned to the various considerations. In deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who has planted a bomb in New York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the overall welfare of the people involved or effected by the action taken, and the consequences of the action taken. To calculate the welfare of the people involved in or effected by an action, utilitarianism requires that all individuals be considered equally. Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure and pain which would be caused by the bomb exploding against the pleasure and pain that would be caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the amounts would be summed and compared. The problem with this method is that it is impossible to know beforehand how much pain would be caused by the bomb exploding or how much pain would be caused by the torture. Utilitarianism offers no practical way to make the interpersonal comparison of utility necessary to compare the pains. In the case of the bomb exploding, it at least seems highly probable that a greater amount of pain would be caused, at least in the present, by the bomb exploding. This probability suffices for a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not account for the consequences, which create an entirely di... Free Essays on Utilitarian Free Essays on Utilitarian Mill's Utilitarianism: Sacrifice the innocent for the common good? When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies the appropriate considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather the necessary information to make the required calculations. This lack of information is a problem both in evaluating the welfare issues and in evaluating the consequentialist issues which utilitarianism requires be weighed when making moral decisions. Utilitarianism attempts to solve both of these difficulties by appealing to experience; however, no method of reconciling an individual decision with the rules of experience is suggested, and no relative weights are assigned to the various considerations. In deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who has planted a bomb in New York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the overall welfare of the people involved or effected by the action taken, and the consequences of the action taken. To calculate the welfare of the people involved in or effected by an action, utilitarianism requires that all individuals be considered equally. Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure and pain which would be caused by the bomb exploding against the pleasure and pain that would be caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the amounts would be summed and compared. The problem with this method is that it is impossible to know beforehand how much pain would be caused by the bomb exploding or how much pain would be caused by the torture. Utilitarianism offers no practical way to make the interpersonal comparison of utility necessary to compare the pains. In the case of the bomb exploding, it at least seems highly probable that a greater amount of pain would be caused, at least in the present, by the bomb exploding. This probability suffices for a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not account for the consequences, which create an entirely di...

Pros and Cons of Massive Open Online Courses

Pros and Cons of Massive Open Online Courses Post-secondary schools of all kinds- expensive, elite colleges, state universities, and community colleges- are flirting with the idea of MOOCs, massive open online courses, where tens of thousands of students can take the same class simultaneously. Is this the future of college? Nathan Heller wrote about the phenomenon in the May 20, 2013, issue of The New Yorker in Laptop U. I recommend you find a copy or subscribe online for the full article, but Ill share with you here what I gleaned as the pros and cons of MOOCs from Hellers article. What Is a MOOC? The short answer is that a MOOC is an online video of a college lecture. The M stands for massive because there is no limit to the number of students who can enroll from anywhere in the world. Anant Agarwal is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, and president of edX, a non-profit MOOC company owned jointly MIT and Harvard. In 2011, he launched a forerunner called MITx (Open Courseware), hoping to get 10 times the usual number of classroom students in his spring-semester circuits-and-electronics course, about 1,500. In the first few hours of posting the course, he told Heller, he had 10,000 students sign up from all over the world. The ultimate enrollment was 150,000. Massive. The Pros MOOCs are controversial. Some say they are the future of higher education. Others see them as the eventual downfall of it. Here are the pros Heller found in his research. MOOCs: Are free. Right now, most MOOCs are free or nearly free, a definite plus for the student. This is likely to change as universities look for ways to defray the high cost of creating MOOCs.Provide a solution to overcrowding. According to Heller, 85% of Californias community colleges have course waiting lists. A bill in the California Senate seeks to require the state’s public colleges to give credit for approved online courses.Force professors to improve lectures. Because the best MOOCs are short, usually an hour at the most, addressing a single topic, professors are forced to examine every bit of material as well as their teaching methods.Create a dynamic archive. Thats what Gregory Nagy, professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, calls it. Actors, musicians, and standup comedians record their best performances for broadcast and posterity, Heller writes; why shouldnt college teachers do the same? He cites Vladimir Nabokov as once suggesting that his lessons at Cornell be recorded and played each term, freeing him for other activities. Are designed to ensure that students keep up. MOOCs are real college courses, complete with tests and grades. They are filled with multiple choice questions and discussions that test comprehension. Nagy sees these questions as almost as good as essays because, as Heller writes, the online testing mechanism explains the right response when students miss an answer, and it lets them see the reasoning behind the correct choice when theyre right.The online testing process helped Nagy redesign his classroom course. He told Heller, Our ambition is actually to make the Harvard experience now closer to the MOOC experience.Bring people together from all over the world. Heller quotes Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard president, regarding her thoughts on a new MOOC, Science Cooking, that teaches chemistry and physics in the kitchen, I just have the vision in my mind of people cooking all over the globe together. It’s kind of nice.Allow teachers to make the most of classroom time in blended clas ses. In what is called a flipped classroom, teachers send students home with assignments to listen to or watch a recorded lecture, or read it, and return to the classroom for more valuable discussion time or other interactive learning. Offer interesting business opportunities. Several new MOOC companies launched in 2012: edX  by Harvard and MIT; Coursera, a Standford company; and Udacity, which focuses on science and tech. The Cons The controversy surrounding MOOCs includes some pretty strong concerns about how they will shape the future of higher education. Here are some of the cons from Hellers research. MOOCs: Could cause teachers to become nothing more than glorified teaching assistants. Heller writes that Michael J. Sandel, a Harvard justice professor, wrote in a letter of protest, The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary.Make discussion a challenge. It’s impossible to facilitate meaningful conversation in a classroom with 150,000 students. There are electronic alternatives: message boards, forums, chat rooms, etc., but the intimacy of face-to-face communication is lost, emotions often misunderstood. This is a particular challenge for humanities courses. Heller writes, When three great scholars teach a poem in three ways, it isnt inefficiency. It is the premise on which all humanistic inquiry is based.Grading papers is impossible. Even with the help of graduate students, grading tens of thousands of essays or research papers is daunting, to say the least. Heller reports that edX is deve loping software to grade papers, software that gives students immediate feedback, allowing them to make revisions. Harvards Faust isnt completely on board. Heller quotes her as saying, I think they are ill-equipped to consider irony, elegance, and†¦I don’t know how you get a computer to decide if there’s something there it hasn’t been programmed to see. Make it easier for students to drop out. Heller reports that when MOOCs are strictly online, not a blended experience with some classroom time, dropout rates are typically more than 90%.Intellectual property and financial details are issues. Who owns an online course when the professor who creates it moves to another university? Who gets paid for teaching and/or creating online courses? These are issues that MOOC companies will need to work out in the upcoming years.Miss the magic. Peter J. Burgard is a professor of German at Harvard. He has decided not to participate in online courses because he believes the college experience comes from sitting in preferably small groups having genuine human interactions, really digging into and exploring a knotty topic- a difficult image, a fascinating text, whatever. Thats exciting. There’s a chemistry to it that simply cannot be replicated online.Will shrink faculties, eventually eliminating them. Heller writes that Burgard sees MOOCs as destroyers of traditional higher education. Who needs professors when a school can hire an adjunct to manage a MOOC class? Fewer professors will mean fewer Ph.D.s granted, smaller graduate programs, fewer fields, and subfields taught, the eventual death of entire bodies of knowledge. David W. Wills, professor of religious history at Amherst, agrees with Burgard. Heller writes that Wills worries about academia falling under hierarchical thrall to a few star professors. He quotes Wills, Its like higher education has discovered the megachurch. MOOCs will most definitely be the source of many conversations and debates in the near future. Watch for related articles coming soon.

Hate speech Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hate speech - Essay Example Hate speech has far-reaching impacts on the dignity, sense of security and social status for victims which are the main reasons for developing laws. Examples of hate speech include pictures published in newspapers showing the lynching of an African child and intimate gay men. Both incidences had underlying intimidation on the two groups of people. Hate speech is a real issue experienced in the society today and there is the need to control it due to the undesirable consequences on the victims. The modern world comprises of wide interactions of people from different backgrounds due to globalization and development of the internet, news media and other social interaction networks. Moreover, there are increased gadgets used by people to interact with others worldwide such as computers and mobile phones. Through these media, people express their freedom of speech provided for in many countries and share their views on issues in life (Weber, 2014). Some views are interesting, well intended and promote peace as well as people’s happiness. However, other views expressed could be undesirable for a group of people or individuals. As a result, these views may trigger harsh responses and action of law. Undesirable views expressed towards an individual or a group of people that could potentially cause harm would be regarded as hat ed speech. This essay will describe the concept of hate speech and then illustrate it using an example from the news media. According to Weber (2014) there is no a common definition of hate speech acceptable in all societies and different countries have varying description for the content regarded as hate speech. Nevertheless, almost all countries recognize the presence of hate speech among the residents and have formulated laws to curb the practice. One of the used definitions used was developed by the

Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 15

Art - Essay Example It would have been more natural if he had drawn soft boundaries with light pencil. Warhol has very nicely painted the nose giving shades of gray and white color very nicely. It is where he has kept his hand very light giving this feature a very original feel. The sketch is cool overall and the painter has no doubt drawn it with keen observation. I like the way the hair has been drawn and painted giving the man a sober look. The hair is not parted and is very cleverly hiding half of the ear. The collar covering the neck has also been nicely drawn giving a brief description of the man’s satire. Although, the picture is not colorful, yet the sketch is complete in itself and the color tones the painter has used seem enough for this piece of art. It is his great success that he has been able to show what age the man was, how he looked like, and his personality, using a few shades of two to three colors. In this picture, Raymond Johnson has put into abstract the sky and landscape of New Mexico and the picture tells more of his experience with the scene. Johnson was of the view that a masterpiece results from actual experience depicted in the form of painting and what counts is the internal significance of things which is an abstract quality. Something painted in abstract gives it the real life and soul. Johnson has always used two approaches to paint land. First, he would give a deep insight into his mood and experience that he had, and second, he would paint out in abstract everything giving special consideration to their forms and the manner in which they receive and emit light. The picture is a beautiful abstract form of landscape with black clouds hovering over it giving the feel of gloominess and pleasure at the same time. I like the green patches the painter has shown on the landscape and the shades of orange, pink, green and yellow give a very soothing look. The place the pai nter had in his mind must have been a piece of calm and cozy piece of land which

Hypothetical Company and Industry Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hypothetical Company and Industry - Term Paper Example The rent on the building for this business stands at $18,000 per month. While that figure might seem quite high, it is actually quite low given that rent is 3-4 times that in the downtown area. Because the manufacturing center needs no showroom, there is no reason to have it located in a high traffic area. Other fixed costs include the monthly payment on machinery at $8,000 total per month and labor at $12,000 per month Depending on the volume of demand for the product, there are certain costs that are variable and fluctuate from the month. As such, it is certainly quite difficult to put a dollar figure on such variable costs. These expenses include supply costs, utilities (based upon how many units are being produced determines electricity usage, for example), and transportation and delivery costs. This product is best marketed to household consumers. The business itself is catered to families with children or working professionals. By focusing on the domestic market, the business can tailor its marketing plan to reach the very people that the product is designed for. The automated robotic chef is for people who desire to eat a healthy nutritious meal at home, but the demands of their lifestyle preclude this from easily happening. By focusing on these specific individuals, the business can better capitalize on market potential. By its definition, this business will not form a monopoly. While the product design will certainly be proprietary in nature and will be patented, there is nothing to preclude competitors from developing their own version of the product. The possibility does exist, however, to reach distributorship agreements with various household department stores to make this product the only automated chef that they offer.

Project Management 7 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Project Management 7 - Essay Example This may leave the organization trying to look for different consumers, which may not be an easy task. The severity of such changes might be tremendous. Information about poor products might spill over to the target market as consumers choose to voice their concerns about products from that organization. The project’s parameters may be affected negatively in the sense that the scope may be reduced as the changes take time to reach the target market. The schedule for release and sale of the products may have to be moved forward as the changes cannot be mended overnight. If there was the option of making these changes, the quality of the product may be affected as willingness and focus may be missing factors in the final production of the products (Dodds, 2003). In such a case, there are at least three possible courses of action. One might be to ignore the problems relayed by the product engineer while hoping for the best in terms of customer satisfaction. The second action might be to delay or re-schedule the shipping of the product to a later date. This might give the company time to make the needed changes and save face in the midst of all the adversity. The third action might be to inform consumers of the changes in the product. This is to avoid any confusion that may arise upon opening of the package. Each course of action mentioned may have its ramifications. Delaying shipping may result in the cancelling of subscriptions for the product. Announcing the changes in the package may result in a few disgruntled consumers who might have loved the product because of the initial look it had. Ignoring the problem might result in loss of a tremendous amount of consumers, and a recovery might seem unlikely. I would recommend having a delay in shipment to allow the changes to take place. Even though, a few consumers might be annoyed, it will still give the organization room to retain some of the loyal

Summary of Articles Concerning Semiotic Pedagogy Annotated Bibliography

Summary of Articles Concerning Semiotic Pedagogy - Annotated Bibliography Example In the past, learning art only entailed being taught the history of art, art aesthetics, and art criticism. This approach relied on the concept of art being a disciplinary subject where signs and codes were disregarded. However, involving semiotics enables the development of this approach in order to perceive art as interdisciplinary. In other words, Smith argues that art also involves the coding and decoding of visual culture. This approach has largely depended on the current technological innovations, especially in the IT sector. Charles Pierce, in the nineteenth century, predicted this development in the literature by saying that further instructions in the process of teaching and learning will need to be included n the future as the world evolved. For instance, art teachers base their ideas on their own reflections, experiences, and interests. Understanding, thinking, and making connections between these factors enable their ideas to make sense. Moreover, Pierce argues that these factors describe the goals of contemporary semiotic pedagogy. The author tries to aid the location of the exact intersection points of semiotics and art education. Furthermore, other than find this point of intersection, Smith-Shank (2003), seeks to identify the signs backed by symbols in different cultures that contribute to the formation of art education. Therefore, this research aims at discovering the fine art and artifacts, inclusive of cultures that contributed to their formation and pinpointing their relevance in art education. On attainment of this relevance supported by the surrounding values, then it can be incorporated in art education for purposes of instilling knowledge or such. Moreover, for decades now, art serves the purpose of bridging the transmission of diverse cultures in different communities.