ipl-logo

Moral Compass In Hal Herzog's Animals Like Us

976 Words4 Pages

Since human beings are born, people always try to find a general standard to judge our morality and behaviors. We call this standard as moral compass, people expect that a stable moral compass can become the rules of all human behaviors. In Hal Herzog’s essay “Animals Like Us”, he points out that people have a very contradictory mentality when they face relationship between human and animals becuause people have their own ideas and attitudes about different animals. That is why people do not have a stable moral compass when they face different animals. The same moral issues also exist when people deal with the influences about the new genetic technologies. In Tenzin Gyatso’s “Ethics and the New Genetics”, he talks about the developments …show more content…

In modern society, more and more people keep pets as their family members, they enjoy the happiness brought by their pets and take good care of them, many people believe that pets are the indispensable parts of their lives, but they only notice the positive aspect of keeping pets. Herzog mentions the investigation data that “in a typical year, 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs, and two dozen people, mostly children, are killed by them”(Herzog 246). Since many people think dogs are the best companions in their lives, the group of dog-keepers is growing steadily. However, dogs are the main late-night noise resources, and there are also many people afraid of dogs. They disturb people’s normal life and bring fear to the society. While adopting a dog, people did not think about the consequences they would bring to their neighborhood, they only think about their future happy life. Meanwhile, because people can not predict the long term impact of keeping a dog, they can not encourage this behavior. People should take fully consideration before taking action and think about the long-term consequences, and do not define the behavior to be right or not. For instance, Dalai mentions that “In medicine, for instance, the drug thalidomide was found to be excellent for the treatment of morning sickness in pregnant women, but its long-term

Show More
Related
201 Words | 1 Pages

A Prejudiced Opinion In the article, “No, I Do Not Want To Pet Your Dog,” the writer, Farhad Manjoo, paints a vivid picture about the issues that dogs cause in our community. In this article, he claims there is “a cultural assumption that everyone must love dogs” (10). I disagree. He paints a world where dogs run rampant through the streets causing trouble and mayhem where ever they go.

Read More
259 Words | 2 Pages

Danger can bring about the feelings of fear and vulnerability to the reader. The author’s love for animals brings about the feeling of concern. Having experienced a deep bond with an animal, they are worried about the overall safety of

Read More
1008 Words | 5 Pages

As technology improves, so do human capabilities of altering nature, which in turn creates increased responsibility. This directly relates to genetic engineering, which is beginning to morph into a reality. There are advocates for both sides that convey their personal opinions about the hypothetical results, but neither is clearly superior since both arguments speculate upon an unknown future. Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, outlines this topic in his essay “The Future of Happiness,” which focuses on the history of selective breeding and compares the goal of happiness with genetic engineering. Csikszentmihalyi alternates between viewpoints regarding genetic engineering but presents a perspective dominated by warning.

Read More
1831 Words | 8 Pages

Chapter 1: How and why eugenics became popular before Nazism "Science would provide an even firmer foundation for morality than religion had"-Ernst Haeckel- Uber die heutige Entwickelungslehre im verhaltnisse zur Gesamtwissenschaft Eugenics is one of the oldest practices our world has, from Pre-Galtonian philosophies famously presented by Plato, to the Nazi regime. The book "The Origin of Species" shock the world with it publication in November 1859 with the famous doctrine of evolution- though this theory had been well known long before this point. Darwin’s theory had led the way to a "radical departure from the traditional ways of grounding morality” (Weikart, (2004) P21) and therefore human nature had been called into question. In the Metaphysics of evolution

Read More
700 Words | 3 Pages

Research Paper Rough Draft- Eugenics The amazing thing about the world today is the rapidly changing society, and the contemporary technology. Something that scientist have been working to perfect for many years is the modernization of eugenics. It is changing the way people are born by selecting specific traits for an individual to be smarter, stronger, more attractive and many other traits. Many parents of the new generation are willing to try the science of eugenics for their child to be customized to them.

Read More
966 Words | 4 Pages

Negative perceptions that individuals form surrounding dogs can have many different negative consequences. These consequences can affect both the dog’s wellbeing as well as their owners. While different breeds are displayed in a negative light, this can lead to their owners being seen in a negative light. Such as when it comes to Pitbull owners, they are often shown as being white thugs or poor urban blacks or Latinos (Twining, Arluke, & Patronek, 2000). The behavior of a dog has a lot to do with the way in which they are raised, they are not born as dangerous dogs.

Read More
1004 Words | 5 Pages

In the article “Dog Ban Only Solution to Attacks”, the author expresses his opinion of banning certain types of dog breeds in America. The author opens his article by talking about the educational programs many schools have to teach children how to work with animals. He then makes the point that although it is important to teach children how to act around animals, that won’t keep dog attacks from happening. He supports this point by following it with a story of a zookeeper with twenty years of experience who was killed by a tiger.

Read More
562 Words | 3 Pages

We could use the novel, Frankenstein, as an argument against scientific technology that creates life forms or argue that it is not technology itself but the use to which it is put that presents an ethical problem. What is Shelley’s position? What is your position? Are we currently using or abusing nature for our benefit? Can we develop a “symbiotic” relationship with nature?

Read More
781 Words | 4 Pages

The author of the work “Genetic Engineering” is Francis Fukuyama. The work details some of the advances that genetic engineering has made, along with the advances genetic engineering could make. Fukuyama in the writing “Genetic Engineering” states the advances genetic engineering has made, the several different methods of genetic engineering, the obstacles that obstruct the progress of genetic engineering, and considerations to make about genetic engineering. Finally, Fukuyama concludes with two major points about genetic engineering.

Read More
702 Words | 3 Pages

Many pet owners around the world are abusing dogs, but some people disagree and think it’s not harming them. There are laws that were put in place to protect them. There are many dogs that fall through the cracks and who are left roaming streets in search of food and shelter. Some citizens don’t know that Veterinarians can also report animal abuse. “Even veterinarians who are well aware of the implications of animal abuse are discouraged from intervening because the system just doesn’t support them” (Adams).

Read More
1189 Words | 5 Pages

In the beginnings, eugenics was the scientific attempts to create genetically perfect plants. Scholars such Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and Gregory Mendel focused on mapping out traits that caused variation in animals, humans, and plants, that affected their survivability and adaptability. Inspired by these theories a new ideology of how to improve human race was cultivated, which was based upon the belief that genetically inherited traits were responsible for social stratification. Coined by the European theorist Francis Galton, “Eugenics is the study the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population’s genetic composition. This paper discusses the medicalization

Read More
1152 Words | 5 Pages

But let me tell you a story. When asking experimenters why they experiment on animals, the answer is “because the animals are like us”. But when asking experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, the answer is “because the animals are not like us”. (relate to audience) II. So whether animals are like humans or not?

Read More
2146 Words | 9 Pages

The “It’s Not Normal Argument” against transhumanism stresses the difference between therapy and enhancement. Genetic therapy is ethically acceptable because it tries to reestablish “normal” species functioning, whereas enhancement is ethically wrong because it exceeds the “normal” function of the human species. However, what is considered normal changes over time. If one was living five hundred years ago, it is most likely that one would not experience a single societal-shifting technology in one’s lifetime.

Read More
922 Words | 4 Pages

So many animals roam the streets. These poor creatures stroll around alone, cold, hungry, and petrified.

Read More
957 Words | 4 Pages

New technologies that people had never imagined a decade, or even some decades ago, are now expanding and changing all our lives. Taking smartphones as an example, people in old time had never imagined that small, tiny box could enable people to bring smart computer to everywhere. Yet, smartphones are now completely embedded into our lives and changed how we communicate. Technology lets us live simply, more conveniently, and more easily, but at the same time, it creates complex debates and controversies of ethical problems. In this world, where humans cannot live without the benefits of technology, it is impossible to ignore ethical problems.

Read More

More about Moral Compass In Hal Herzog's Animals Like Us

Open Document