From the Archives: Rational Basis for Morality

Another Installment of "Blast From The Past". This paper comes from April, 2008.

Eliyahu N. Kassorla

Human Nature and the Social Order II

Dr. Orme

Rational Basis for Morality

            ”וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים, אֵת כָּל-הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר“…

“And God spoke all these words, saying…”[1] That is how we all remember reading about how the Ten Commandments were given. The divine revelation, with all of the Israelites circled around Mount Sinai, and the basis for Judeo-Christian morality, spoken by God himself as a rule of law, an idealistic vision of how we should behave. Then the Israelites made a golden calf to worship, and smiting ensued. The central question is whether our morality comes from divine law or whether humans do these anyways.

“Thou shalt not commit homicide,” reads the sixth commandment. It is a very specific statement against intentional, premeditated, cold-blooded, savage killing. Is it the reason that we do not kill and murder? Frankly, early civilizations with complex religious structures had similar judicial codes forbidding the same practices that many of the Ten Commandments also prohibit. So the Judeo-Christian view that morality comes from the revelation is untenable. Further, considering that the Old Testament contains a total of six hundred and thirteen laws, and people are not overly concerned with Jubilee years or the prohibition against harvesting the corners of their fields, the fact that a law comes from on high is coincidental at best.

There's plenty here for everyone!

This semester I took 3 academic classes.

Global Social Problems
Abnormal Psychology
and
Philosophy and Star Trek

Since Philosophy and Star Trek was a 100-level throw-away class, intended to round out my schedule after two years out of school, I won't be uploading those papers.

Included here, though, are the papers I am most proud of, mostly psych and political science.

Enjoy!

Twelve Angry Men, and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony

The assignment: Watch the movie "Twelve Angry Men" and talk about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, citing specific examples


Eliyahu N Kassorla
Twelve Angry Men

The right to a jury trial is guaranteed in the sixth amendment. The framers believed that the right was so valuable that there needed to be a guarantee against its infringement. Eyewitness testimony, however, is much older than that. In our modern time, far too much reliability is entrusted with eyewitness accounts and their accuracy, and we are far too trusting of a jury of our peers.

Eyewitness testimony is very powerful. In many cases eyewitness testimony is often the deciding factor. Juries and judges alike are far too quick to accept an eyewitness at face value. Eyewitnesses may have ulterior motives such as immunity from prosecution if they are involved, for example. They may also have either indirectly witnessed an event and later “filled-in” the details using cognitive heuristics or utilized the constructive nature of memory to add details. Mental heuristics may have filled in large blocks of details, which the brain uses for filling in information.