Carson Hooker Debate

Carson Hooker Debate

  • Submitted By: sumachi03
  • Date Submitted: 06/09/2010 11:05 PM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 2586
  • Page: 11
  • Views: 492

Samuel Umachi
PHL 320 Sec 01
Prof. Leever
April 14, 2009

Carson - Hooker
Every morning that I wake, whether I realize it or not, I am subject to rules and regulations that guide my life. For instance, if I don’t want to be late, I have to arise at a certain time. If I wish to have clean clothes to wear, I have to wash and prepare them well in advance. We all, at some level or another, conform to rules to achieve a desired end or so we think. Morality in this case is really no different. To achieve certain moral ends, we have to adhere to certain means to get there. But is there a difference between simply achieving what is morally desired and the rules that we use to achieve such ends? Is following a set of rules more important than the act of the means, and how are these set rules determined. These are all questions that I intend to answer with guidance from the Brad Hooker perspective, with respect to his demandingness objection.
Are rules more important than the desired ends themselves? Brad Hooker would seem to think so. He posits that an act is morally right if and only if it is called for by the set of rules that would lead to everyone working toward the best consequences via the rules. This seems at first glance to make plenty of sense. We follow rules in our everyday life because we want certain desired ends – ends we believe will maximize the most good for every party involved, provided that they, themselves follow these rules too. If you ask me, the perfect example of this would be traffic laws. People get follow traffic laws, because they believe others follow traffic laws as well. These laws add order to what would otherwise be a disorderly affair, because everyone would have trouble assuming whose needs are more pressing, and would probably bring their own calculations into the matter.
Laws help us to remove a personal affiliation from our desired ends. In the case of traffic laws, if someone were to be asked why they ran a...

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