Assignment #5 Essays - Social Philosophy, Consequentialism

Assignment #5 Peter Singer puts forth the state of misery in Bengal due to poverty, cyclone, and a civil war, which can be avoided or mitigated by the aid of affluent countries. The main point or thesis of the writer here is that the affluent countries spend more on the jets and buildings rather than starving people. So the moral conceptual scheme needs to change. The writer argues about our obligation of prevention of misery without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance. He refutes the idea of preference of the geographically closest for help, or being the only one to help. The shrinking of the world in to a global village has ended the question of distance. In the same way our moral obligations do not change if others are not doing their part. We need to clarify the difference between charity and duty. Charity becomes the matter of choice involving no sense of obligation or guilt. The writer believes that curtailing our lavishness for the destitute should be considered a duty. The objection to the writers division of charity and duty is that the writer might be asking for a drastic and impractical change of moral attitude from a society with a self-interested and limited sense of morality, influenced by the expectations by the others. If thinking change the objections on the arguments will diminish. The strength of the writers argument is that he can assume and foresee the accusations against it and counter acts with valid reasons, standing fast on his ideas. He empowers them by philosophical and practical points. He refutes the first but false idea that private and unduly aid relaxes the government from its duty. He calls it an excuse for peoples escapist attitude towards their responsibility, though agreeing the importance of both public and private aid. The point that population explosion can never end but only postpone starvation is valid but not a strong reason to refrain from giving help. The writer explains that we ought to give to the sufferers as long as the level of marginal utility is not overstepped and the economy of the country does not suffer, as taking out too much from the countrys gross domestic product will slow down the overall growth of the donor economy which may lead to a situation where the nationals of the donor country may start getting jobless and the burden on the economy start increasing just because of their humane act. Peter singer considers famine to be a matter in which philosopher can also actively play their role as it is a matter of human suffering and means of minimizing it through aid and population control. But the vital thing is action; mere discussion sans action is futile. The philosopher who acts upon the writers ideals will sacrifice the luxuries but gain satisfaction of consummation of his believes. On a more realistic level the world food crisis remain serious due to vanquished grain results and expensive oil. But the recession has hit the developing countries harder than the western world as the poor of affluent country is better off than one in a poor nation, thus emphasizing the contrast between affluence and poverty. He gives a very cold but factual point that countries making tangible efforts to control their population deserve foreign aid more than those which are not. I, as a reader, agree with this point that population control requires not only aid in the form of contracepti ves and methods of sterilization but also giving agricultural assistance, social and financial security to people specially in old age so that they do not have to rely up on a big family for sense of security. Regarding moral significance peter Singer gives a strong principle and a weak principle as a fall back, but he personally prefers the strong principle as he inclines towards the utilitarian view. I feel his moral code is the cousin of utilitarianism as it is relax and flexible. He stresses on the need of impartiality and universalized ability for moral judgment. One weakness in his argument is the ambiguity he creates while defining strong and weak principles. His ideas tend to be overly demanding and in conflict with an individuals

Definition and Examples of Content (Lexical) Words

Definition and Examples of Content (Lexical) Words In English grammar and semantics, a  content word is a  word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word, lexical morpheme,  substantive category, or contentive.  Contrast with  function word  or grammatical word. In his book The Secret Life of Pronouns (2011), social psychologist James W. Pennebaker expands this definition: Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or action. . . . Content words are absolutely necessary to convey an idea to someone else. Content words- which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs- belong to open classes of words: that is, new members are readily added. The denotation of a content word, say  Kortmann and Loebner, is the category, or set, of all its potential referents (Understanding Semantics, 2014). Examples and Observations All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be understood fully in and of itself- {boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green}, {quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand- such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and {ly}- can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a sentence. (Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)Reverend Howard Thomas  was the presiding elder over a district in  Arkansas, which included  Stamps. (Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969)Most people with low self-esteem have earned it. (George Carlin, Napalm Silly Putty. Hyperion, 2001)The  odor  of fish hung thick in the air. (Jack Driscoll,  Wanting Only to Be Heard. University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center. (Jon Stewart) Function Words vs. Content Words Grammatical words [function words] tend to be short: they are normally of one syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes (I, he, do, on, or). Content words are longer and, with the exception of ox and American Englishs ax, are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This criterion of length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of words in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally de-emphasised in pronunciation. (Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997) All languages make some distinction between content words and function words.  Content words carry descriptive meaning; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are types of content word. Function words are typically little words, and they signal relations between parts of sentences, or something about the pragmatic import of a sentence, e.g. whether it is a question. Lewis Carrolls Jabberwocky poem illustrates the distinction well: Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe. In this poem all the made-up words are content words; all the others are function words. In English, function words include determiners, such as the, a, my, your, pronouns (e.g. I, me, you, she, them), various auxiliary verbs (e.g. have, is, can, will do), coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but), and subordinating conjunctions (e.g. if, when, as, because). Prepositions are a borderline case. They have some semantic content, but are a small closed class, allowing hardly any historical innovation. Some English prepositions serve a mainly grammatical function, like of (what is the meaning of of?) and others have clear descriptive  (and relational) content, like under.  New content words in a language can  be readily invented; new nouns, in particular, are continually being coined, and new verbs (e.g. Google, gazump) and adjectives (e.g. naff, grungy) also not infrequently come into use. The small set of function words in a language, by contrast, is much more fixed and relatively steady over centuries. (James R. Hurford, The  Origins of Language: A Slim Guide.  Oxford University Press, 2014) Content Words in Speech Typically, the prominent syllable in a tone unit will be a content word (e.g. a noun or verb) rather than a function word (e.g. a preposition or article), since content words carry more meaning than function words. Function words will only be stressed if prominence on them is contextually warranted. (Charles F. Meyer, Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge University  Press, 2010)