Contrast and Compare

On the Ethics of Sex and on the Morality of Death Penalty

On the Morality of Sex

Alan Goldman in his essay Plain Sex posits two fundamental postulates first , Many ethical disagreements hinge upon disagreements about facts , not about moral principles , and second , Being a moral objectivist needn 't mean being morally conservative (Igor Primoratz 1999 . His first stance explains that the problem on the immorality of sex is not actually dependent of how it is done , but how the term was being conceptualized and the ideas that have been encapsulated to

it Thus , definition immorality of sex is plainly is the epicenter of the problem . To stress his point , Goldman impugns the axiom of Means-End Analysis , which explicates that sex should only be done in accordance to its nature that is reproduction . For Goldman , this is not the case because even if sex is a natural act , it does not have any consciousness , thus sex should not necessarily have to have purpose or be done for the sake of love only

Contrariwise , Scruton argues on the stance maintains the conservative view stating that parents /adults must educate the younger generation about the morality of sex in for an individual to acquire true happiness and to realize one 's own project , and most importantly , for the young generation to be more virtuous when it comes to sex . In his master argument , he counterattacks the libertarian view such as Goodman explaining that such view does not give importance to the rationality of man and to his practical reasoning , hence an individual cannot develop Thus for Scruton , one must know how practical reasoning operate so that the person should be a moral agent . In addition , educating younger generation about sex is our moral duty because such education will help in the strengthening of the society 's moral fiber , and will eventually leads to doing sex for its own sake

On Capital Punishment

Stephen Nathanson firmly asserts that just deserts or capital punishment is morally impermissible . As Nathanson puts it , determination of which just deserts should be cast upon a criminal is a Herculean task because no one can know exactly what is rightly due to the crime committed by the criminal . Even if a society established an institution for determining just deserts it is still futile because just deserts is too arbitrary in relation to the individual 's case outcome . Using his analogy of giving a grade of B- or A is an essay will be too arbitrary since the decision will be based on the bias of the teacher . On legal system , the judges are picked randomly , which is not a problem at all but the point here is the arbitrariness on how they will evaluate a certain case , especially on the case of death penalty . Nathanson concludes that we ought not feel confident that we can judge the precise degree of punishment that people morally deserve , and even if we could do this , we ought not feel confident that...