Blum's Argument Of Moral Exem

I agree with Blum’s proposal that in some sense moral excellence is not within our control, or within our will. It is the dimension of morality that is not up to us; some refer to it as moral luck. Part of the purpose of her paper was to provide the readers an appropriate understanding of the supreme value of moral excellence and why it is worthy of our highest admiration. I don’t believe she claims that we cannot reasonably aim to be like heroes or saints, but if one does aim to become a moral exemplar, one may not always succeed. In the chapter Emulating Moral Exemplars she states that while one might naturally be inclined to wish to become a moral exemplar, it is important to accept that for most persons this could not be accomplished.

Blum referred to one’s psychological make-up as a factor for one’s moral excellence. She claims that one cannot simply acquire virtuous moral qualities by merely trying. The reason why I think Blum would encourage people to aim to become like moral exemplars is because one of the chapters she wrote she presented the concept of an idealist. Though we may not all become these moral exemplars, we can still adopted certain ideals. “While we cannot all be moral exemplars, what we all can be is better than we are.” I think it apt to use athletics as an example to support the claim that we may not all become moral exemplars but we nevertheless should admire them. Let’s say you are an NBA fan and a basketball fan, you may not be able to dunk from the free throw line like Jordan but you can still make a three pointer and participate in the game of basketball. But of course, ethics and moral philosophy is way more entertaining than basketball. I think similarly to basketball, while we should aim to be like the people who are best in terms of morality (moral exemplars) we might not

It does so by having the subjects all placed in the same environment with the same instructions. The subjects’ job is to shock the “learners” if they give out incorrect answers. The learners are actors implanted by the experimenters. The shocking increases the more answers they get wrong. Some of the “learners” being shocked are literally begging for the shocking to stop, some even faked death yet almost all of the subjects continued the shocking. Harman points out that thinking that this experiment actually proves peoples’ obedience to authority is committing the fundamental attribution error of overlooking the condition the subjects were placed