ASSIGNMENT

Assignment



Assignment

Assignment 2

Individuals shape their own characters and create their moral careers by large and small moral decisions. We interpret our social worlds and select our own environments, as well as the other way around. (Cook, 1996) Yet at the same time, no individual is self-created de novo, nor can anyone live a moral life alone. The self is always partially constituted by a history of interpersonal relationships within a specific community and culture. This sociality is particularly influential during the formative period of infancy and childhood when an individual learns a language and the culture's rules. (Beauchamp, 2009)

One example where this can be illustrated, in the area of science, is the exploitation of our predictions based on evolution.  The idea of natural selection in the theory of evolution is that in a competition for survival, organisms with less advantageous traits die, and the fitter survive.  When applied to genetics, it means that harmful or less beneficial genes are weeded out so that future populations have the better, improved genotypes. (Denyer, 1992) In a biological perspective, every individual's goal is to better their species by keeping it alive through reproduction and producing healthy offspring that will carry on their beneficial genes to the next generation.  However, a twist in this natural process has occurred with scientific developments in medicine, technology, and treatment, for sustaining those with health problems, keeping them alive to pass on their flawed genes to future generations.  This is unreasonable according to evolution, because it defeats the natural purpose of strengthening a species.  It would be reasonable rather, not to keep people with harmful genes alive so as to eliminate them from the gene pool.  However, such a perspective has not been deemed as ethical because it does not agree with people's emotional instincts.  If there was someone ...