Harper PHI115 Homework 7 latest 2019 March Question # 00601584 Subject: Education Due on: 05/23/2019 Posted On: 05/23/2019 07:05 AM Tutorials: 1 Rating: 4.7/5

PHI115 ETHICS

Homework 7

Your
reading for this week is a selection from Gilligan’s “In A Different
Voice.” Part of what she is up to there is getting us to question what was
then, and to a large extent still is, a dominant hierarchy of moral thought.
That hierarchy was theorized by Lawrence Kohlberg. I reproduce it below (as it
appears in Wikipedia’s entry on Lawrence):

Level 1
(Pre-Conventional)

1.
Obedience and punishment orientation

( How can I
avoid punishment?)

2.
Self-interest orientation

( What’s in
it for me?)

( Paying for
a benefit)

Level 2
(Conventional)

3.
Interpersonal accord and conformity

( Social
norms)

( The good
boy/girl attitude)

4.
Authority and social-order maintaining orientation

( Law and
order morality)

Level 3
(Post-Conventional)

5. Social
contract orientation

6.
Universal ethical principles

(
Principled conscience)

This way of
rank-ordering different strategies for handling moral questions doesn’t appear
all that problematic at first glance. It doesn’t even mention women, people of
color, different socioeconomic classes, nothing. It’s simply saying what kinds
of reasoning are more sophisticated and developed that others.

But…

When combined with sexist attitudes about
women (or people of color, or…), then we run into problems. Why? Because
women’s answers to questions about moral dilemmas, seemed to suggest that they
were inferior to men in terms of moral reasoning (assuming the evidence was
gathered well and the interpretation of the data was solid, both of which are
big assumptions). At similar levels of physical/social development, females
seem to be lagging behind males, so the data suggested.

Enter Gilligan. Instead of questioning the
data, as many have, she questions the very structure used to interpret it. What
if Kohlberg is wrong? What if the ways females think is not inferior to the
ways males think about morality. What if they are different, but equal,
approaches, emphasizing different things?

Your task for this assignment is to answer
the Heinz dilemma from our own text in your own words. What would you do?
Second, where do you think your answer would rank on Kohlberg’s scale? Last, do
you agree? Why or why not?

I’m imagining these questions as a fun way
to apply the theory. I’m not worried so much about whether you answer the Heinz
dilemma ly or inly. That is beside the point. The idea is to try to evaluate
your own answer to it. So, be honest, but focus your efforts on applying the
scale and determining whether and why you agree or disagree with where you
ended up on it.

Specifics:

Write about
two to three solid paragraphs in standard written English.

Proofread
for typos, obvious grammatical errors (sentence fragments, etc.).

Do NOT
write in the comment field. Attach a file of the appropriate type or click
“Write Submission” and type there.

Submissions
will be analyzed using SafeAssign. No outside sources are allowed, beyond your
own reading and the Wiki entry on Kohlberg, if you so choose to look at it
(link below).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development