Modern transparencies and unwanted-exposures Essay Example for Free

Modern transparencies and unwanted-exposures Essay Human beings have been constructing shelters to serve different purposes since the beginnings of civilization. How a building was constructed depended on three qualities set out by Vitruvius, the Roman architect in his treatise De Architectura †¢ Durability †¢ Utility †¢ Beauty Across the ages, one of these three criteria has been more important than the other. The precept of modern architecture is ‘form follows function’. The function of the building determines its structure. But built into this precept are many other modern and post-modern conceptions of notions such as privacy, publicity, sexuality, art, etc. Some of the key components of design are space, volume, mass, texture, shadow, light, materials, structure, etc. Each of these components has been given varied importance in the different times. Modernist architecture has been influenced heavily by the Austrian architect Adolf Loos who believed that ‘ornament is crime. ’ He said, The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects. He believed that the influence of culture on ornamentation would change with changing culture and therefore ornamentation itself would become obsolete. Adolf Loos said, â€Å"Does it follow that the house has nothing in common with art and is architecture not to be included in the arts? Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that fulfils a function is to be excluded from the domain of art. † Ornamentation is tantamount to art, which Loos completely discredits by saying, â€Å"The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not. † He differentiates designing a house and depicting art in these words, â€Å"The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The house satisfies a requirement. The work of art is responsible to none; the house is responsible to everyone. The work of art wants to draw people out of their state of comfort. † Loos echoes the philosophy of Deleuze when he says, â€Å"The work of art shows people new directions and thinks of the future. The house thinks of the present. † According to Deleuze, art is supposed to provide signs reading which a person is supposed come out of the rote of daily quotidian life and move towards creativity. Entailed in this function of art is deep discomfort which is why a house is not supposed to perform the function of art. Entailed in the notion of a house is a feeling of comfort in the present. â€Å"The house has to please everyone, contrary to the work of art which does not. The work is a private matter for the artist. The house is not. † â€Å"The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative. † Adolf Loos strived to strip culture of ‘art’ and ‘ornament’ and bring to it pragmatism, functionality and rationalism. Each of these qualities is attributed to the male. They are in stark contrast to the Jugendstil artists from the Wagner school. According to Susan Henderson, â€Å"Loos maintained that strict gender distinctions were basic to the ordered logic of modern society, and he decried the ambiguous gender roles that had invaded art and culture. Jugendstil decadence lay in its unrealistic attitude towards the capitalist economy, its regressive fascination for a dying aristocratic tradition, and a benighted love of ornament that sapped the productive energies from Viennese culture. His call for cultural reclamation through a reinvigorated rhetoric set the stage for embedding a new masculinism in the language of early modernism and the reassertion of middle-class values after a generation of retreat from the productive enterprise. † There exists an in-built contradiction between notion of perfect space that the architect harbours and the real mess of daily life. In both cases the woman is positioned as hidden and within and is always object subject to the male gaze. The domestic space of the Josephine Baker is converted into an erotic space. Josephine is present ‘in absentia’. The architecture is incorporated into the body of Josephine Baker and the body is entrenched in the architecture. â€Å"This is a wide-ranging and multifaceted notion of circulation, which includes passages, traversals, transitions, transitory states erotic circulations. † (Bruno, 1992) Given this understanding of Loos’ psychology it is a little complicated to learn the aesthetics of the Josephine Baker villa in Paris. This villa stands in contrast to many other designs of Loos. Feres el-DahDah says, â€Å"It is an epistolary attempt to detail her image in ‘various points’ through a kind of writing that stretches a third skin between the body of the architect and that of the dancer. The house is an apparatus†¦through which one can somehow rub against, or trap, a dancer’s exoticized body. It is a building designed as a tactical enterprise, as the imaginary ‘prose’ of an amorous conquest in between whose lines (in between the stripes of its facades and the distribution of its rooms) one is to decode a longing to signify desire. In other words, this house corroborates someone’s yearning to touch the absent body of Josephine. † This ‘present absence’ of Josephine Baker is called by Adolf Loos, ‘modern distinction’. The intense longing for the absent object brings to life that objects giving it a surreal physical manifestation. The elevations of the Baker house support this Freudian argument. The empty spaces represent Loos’ phallocentric desired for the absent object. If the Josephine Baker house is a modern depiction of sexuality that uses large unwanted space as a representation of desire for the body of Josephine Baker, large space is also used to represent violence and inspire fear through the designs of panopticons. Panopticon is a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth century English Philosopher. The function of a panoticon is to watch the prisons without the prisoners themselves being aware either of the observer or of the process of observation. Jeremy Bentham called it ‘sentiment of an invisible omniscience. ’ â€Å"the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose †¦ of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so. This point, you will immediately see, is most completely secured by my brothers plan; and, I think, it will appear equally manifest, that it cannot be compassed by any other, or to speak more properly, that if it be compassed by any other, it can only be in proportion as such other may approach to this. † The fundamental structure of a panopticon consists of a circular building. The rooms of the prisoners are present in the circumference of the building. Iron grating is present on the inner circumference. But this grating is virtually invisible to the prisoner. Such a grating traps the prisoner between the feelings of freedom and imprisonment. The prisoner knows that there is a grating but he cannot see it. It places him a limbo between privacy and publicity. Violation of private space is violence nonetheless. The room of the inspector is at the centre of the building. The windows of the prisoners’ room ‘radiate’ through the centre of the inspector’s room such that the inspector has a direct view into the rooms of all the prisoners. The windows would be covered by blinds till the eye level of the prisoners. This function of a window is opposed to that perceived by Adolf Loos, â€Å"to let the light in; not to let the gaze pass through†. Of course, the context of the windows in both cases is very different. In a panopticon, light is allowed to pass through only to the extent that allows the inspector to see the inside of the cell. In a house, light must be let in to brighten the house and make it comfortable to the inhabitants.

The obligation to obey the law the normative

The obligation to obey the law the normative The obligation to obey the law the normative phenomenon in jurisprudence. Introduction: This dissertation aims to provide a general discourse into the normative jurisprudential phenomenon of political obligation. The debate surrounding the issue of whether or not there exists a general obligation to obey the law shall be defined and described, and the arguments of the different positions within this debate shall then be summarised at length, and critically analysed. The author shall then engage with this debate and provide his own opinions as to the correct approach to take when tackling the important question of whether or not there is an obligation to obey the law. Defining the scope of the debate: Before we attempt to define the scope of this debate, it is important to first understand the nature of the obligation in question, and also the characteristics of the duty arising from that obligation. The nature of the obligation: A moral or legal obligation? Jurists are not often concerned with the legal duty to obey the law, after all, such a notion is circular and meaningless; of course the law imposes a legal duty on its citizens to obey it. As Alexy[1] notes, â€Å"†¦ in the praxis of any system of dominion there is an implicit claim to correctness, which must be redeemed to anybody. A normative system which does not raise a claim to correctness explicitly or implicitly is not a legal system.† Neither can the law provide ultimate reasons for action, just as a parent will be unable to explain to their perpetually inquisitive child why they must not steal without recourse to the underlying morality of the actions involved in such a crime. As Nino[2] notes, â€Å"Legal norms do not by themselves constitutive reasons for justifying actions and decisions (like those of judges), unless they are conceived as deriving from moral judgments; normative propositions that exhibit the distinctive traits of autonomy, justificatory finality, universalisability, generality, supervinience and finality†. Therefore, rather than an assessment of the legal obligations to obey the law, most[3] jurists are instead concerned with the moral aspect of this obligation; are we always morally obliged to obey the law, and if not, in which situations may such a moral duty be deemed non-existent? The characteristics of the duty arising from this obligation: An absolute duty, or merely a prima facie one? To argue that there is an absolute duty to obey the law is to simultaneously suggest that in the case of every law, the moral reasons for obeying such law could never be outweighed by moral reasons pointing to disobedience. Such a position seems to pay no regard to notions of individual autonomy. As Menendez[4] writes, â€Å"if we consider it as providing an absolute reason, then we cannot any longer see it as part and parcel of the exercise of our practical reason, but as an alternative to it.† On the other hand, if we are to argue that the only duty that exists is a prima facie one, i.e. that a duty can be said to exist until it is rebutted by an assessment of the moral content of the law, then we are in essence suggesting that the law will only impose an obligation upon us where we as individuals are able to agree with the morality underlying the law in question. Such a position seems to pay little regard to the need of a legal system to be generally obeyed in order for it to successfully perform its roles of conflict solving and social co-ordination. As Raz[5] writes: â€Å"legal norms are reasons for acting, and not merely statements to the effect that there are reasons for acting.† The actual characteristics of the duty in question must lie somewhere between these two positions; the law must respect the processes of individual reasoning, but at the same time must impose obligations upon its citizens, at least to the extent that the system is able to retain social order and manage social conflict. As we shall observe later in this essay, different jurists have their own opinions of where the balance should be perceived to lie, although as we shall also see, this position tends to be nearer a notion of a prima facie duty, than that of an absolute duty. With these considerations in mind, let us now briefly attempt to define the scope of this jurisprudential debate. Defining the scope of the debate There is a divide amongst legal philosophers over the fundamental question of whether or not there is an obligation to obey the law. Some jurists, such as Rawls[6], Finnis[7] and Honorà ©[8], argue that the law always has prima facie authority over its citizens, i.e. that before the content of a law is assessed, it is morally right to comply- albeit that it may later be qualified. For the sake of later discussion, let us refer to this position as position 1. Other legal philosophers such as Smith[9], have rejected this position arguing that whether or not there is such a duty to obey the law depends entirely upon which law in question is being obeyed/disobeyed i.e. that only sometimes will there be a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law [Position 2]. Between these two positions lie the opinions of jurists such as Raz[10], who argues for a more or less general prima facie obligation to obey the law, and Greenawalt[11], who, as mentioned earlier, offers an interesting alternative view which tries to show how there could be legitimate authority without a moral obligation to obey the law, a theory which is co ntrary to the working assumption of this paper that the nature of the obligation in question must be a moral one. At this point in my dissertation I would like to make some more general points about the issue of whether or not there is a duty to obey the law, in particular to make some remarks about the irreconcilability of this question with the basic tenets of legal positivism. Critics of positivism have often voiced their concerns over this very point; they argue that if the claims which positivism makes are correct about the separation of laws and morals, then there can never be a moral obligation to obey the law which arises because of the law. In other words, they cannot suggest that the law must be obeyed without resorting to some other authority other than the law itself. Lon Fuller, a natural lawyer, is one of these critics, as is Feinberg[12], who argues that: â€Å"The positivist account of legal validity is hard to reconcile with the claim that valid law as such, no matter what its content, deserves our respect and general fidelity. Even if valid law is bad law, we have some obligation to obey it simply because it is law. But how can this be so if a law's validity has nothing to do with its content?† In many respects this is an argument that is hard to dispel. Certain contemporary positivists have even accepted, such as Himma[13], that positivism is irreconcilable with a notion of a duty to obey the law arising from the mere fact that it is the law. He argues that a citizen has a moral obligation to obey laws which contain norms worthy of moral obedience, such as those law prohibiting theft, murder, and even laws which are necessary to retain certain levels of human control, such as driving offences, but admits that a law creates no moral duty of obedience simply on the basis that it is the law. The result of this admission is as follows; positivists have been forced to seek out justifications for a prima facie obligation to obey the law, and have done so, quite unsuccessfully [as we shall now see], through reference to arguments based on gratitude, fairness, social contract via implied consent and utilitarian arguments pertaining to the common good. Let us now discuss the intricacies of these position 1 arguments in more detail, and critically analyse some of the justifications that have been offered by these leading jurists in support of their position. Defending position [1]: there is a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law. Four concepts have been advanced as giving rise to this duty[14]; 1] Gratitude; 2] Promise-Keeping; 3] Fairness, and; 4] Promotion of the Common Good. Let us assess each of these concepts in turn: Gratitude: The basic concept underlying this justification for a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law is as follows: In light of the great benefits which the law has conferred upon its citizens, those citizens should obey those laws, unless there is a good reason not to in a particular case. Promise-Keeping: This concept suggests that any citizen who enjoys the benefits and protections of the law commits him or herself to a social contract, which states that in return for such benefits they will obey the law. In this way a citizen is morally obliged to obey the law unless they have good reasons to the contrary. John Rawls[15] was a strong proponent of this thesis, although his formulation was somewhat more sophisticated than the reasoning above: He asserted that a society is just if it is governed by principles which people would have agreed to in a state of ignorance about their own particular position in society. He went on to argue that a natural consequence of this ‘veil of ignorance’ is a natural duty to obey the law; where the society is just (or nearly just), then there is a ‘natural duty’ of all citizens to support and further just institutions, because they would be collectively labelled right by the very people that are governed by them. Under Rawls’ theory, the duty exists independently from the promise to obey that which is required of them by an institution in a just society, because behind their ‘veil of ignorance,’ people would have agreed to it. In this way Rawls manages to justify the existence of a duty to obey, even where a pa rticular law is not particularly just, provided the basic structure of the society is reasonably just. Rawls does not advocate an absolute duty however; he argues that where a particular law exceeds certain limits of injustice, conscientious refusal is warranted, or even civil disobedience, should the injustice reach blatant levels. 3] Fairness This argument is twofold; firstly, in light of all the benefits that the law confers on its citizens, it would be unfair for a citizen not to obey them, and; secondly, a citizen has a duty to obey the law, not because that citizen owes anything to the government, but because he or she owes something to his or her fellow citizens; if everyone else complies with the law, then it is not fair for one citizen not to, whilst at the same time still receiving the benefit which that law confers. In essence therefore, under this concept, there are two tests that must be satisfied before it can be said that a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law has been established on the grounds of fairness. Firstly, the law must have generally beneficial effects; and secondly, most citizens must obey the law, so that a citizen would be taking an unfair advantage should he or she decide not to. The latter part of this test is identical to the argument offered by Dworkin[16] in justification of his general moral duty to obey the law; Dworkin asserts that a man is under a moral duty to obey the law for reasons of fairness, as outlined above, but at the same time, that same man may also be under conflicting duties other than those he owes to the state, such as to God and his own conscience; if these further duties conflict with his duties to the state, then Dworkin argues that such a man is entitled to do what he judges to be right. 4] Promotion of the Common Good: This ground for the existence of a prima facie duty is grounded in the ideals of utilitarianism; if citizens break the law then the collective welfare of society will diminish: therefore citizens are morally obliged to obey the law. The disadvantage suffered by one citizen through giving to obey the law should, under this reasoning, be balanced against the benefit conferred to society as a whole by his compliance. Finnis[17] is one of the main proponents of this theory, although his reasoning does go somewhat further than the simple utilitarian approaches offered above. Finnis argues that fulfilling legal obligations is necessary for the common good, simply because the common good is the good of individuals. Having described and understood all of the possible justifications promoted for the existence of a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law [position 1], let us now return to each of them and offer some critical analysis: Defeating Position [1]: no prima facie moral duty to obey the law can be justified via the concepts of gratitude, promise-keeping, fairness or the promotion of the common good: 1] Gratitude: Whilst gratitude in its normal everyday meaning might indeed lead to certain moral obligations, never has it been suggested that as a direct result of gratitude one should do everything that is asked of you. It is for this reason that this ground is weak, and does not adequately justify a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law. 2] Promise-Keeping: It is instantly obvious that no general prima facie duty could ever be said to exist by virtue of the basic promise-keeping rationale; unlike a party to a contract, a citizen has no real choice as to which country he or she belongs, and therefore even though that citizen may indeed receive benefits, be given the chance to vote, and be subjected to a just social structure, there is nothing embedded in the process of receiving these benefits which would lead one to automatically assume the imposition of a promise to obey. Therefore, I do not agree that a general prima facie obligation to obey the law can be derived by way of this rationale. 3] Fairness: This justification for a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law relies heavily upon an idea that all law confers benefits; an anarchist however may argue that the state produces no such benefits. Also, it is difficult to the concept of ‘fairness’ to a legal constraint which actually does no-one any good: if this type of case is frequently occurring, then the analysis of fairness as day to day co-operative transactions will break down. 4] Promotion of the Common Good: Whichever brand of utilitarianism one chooses to apply to this concept, the same conclusion results; ‘promotion of the common good’ cannot be used to justify the existence of a prima facie duty to obey the law: Act-Utilitarianism: The very mechanics of act-utilitarianism require a balancing act of all the positive and negative attributes of a certain action before deciding which course would be in the interests of the common good; to decide whether or not a duty to obey the law exists will therefore depend upon which particular law is in question. As such, there can be no prima facie obligation to obey the law via this concept. Rule-Utilitarianism: The very mechanics of rule-utilitarianism suggest that an action is right if it is required by a rule where general observance of that rule would have the best consequences. Following on from this, it makes sense that a rule requiring one to obey (with certain exceptions) would probably have better consequences than a rule requiring one always to obey. The process of formulating a comprehensive list of such exceptions would in effect require an assessment using the same mechanisms as relevant to act-utilitarianism, and as such, the same criticisms to a prima facie duty will apply. It should be noted that these criticisms do no necessarily serve to destroy the arguments of Finnis; Finnis argues that that fulfilling legal obligations is necessary for the common good, simply because the common good is the good of individuals. This is a theory that I will address in more detail at a later point in this dissertation. For now, we should simply be satisfied that any justifications based upon act- or rule- utilitarianism cannot be successful in establishing the existence of a general prima facie duty to obey the law. In essence, the criticisms of act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism do not preclude there ever being a duty to obey the law, merely that the existence of such a duty can only be determined with reference to each particular law. This leads us back to our earlier discussion of ‘position 2’ jurists, those such as Smith[18], who argue that whether or not there is such a duty to obey the law depends entirely upon which law in question is being obeyed/disobeyed i.e. that only sometimes will there be a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law. Before we go on to discuss the rationales that have been offered in support of position 2, let us first take a brief look at the work of George Klosko[19], and his multiple principle theory of political obligation: George Klosko’s multiple principle theory of political obligation; combining the failing justifications of Natural Duty, Fairness and the Promotion of the Common Good, into a comprehensive justification for the existence of a general moral obligation to obey the law: George Klosko employs three concepts in order to combine the principles of Natural Duty, fairness and the promotion of the common good into a single comprehensive unifying theory. He labels these three concepts as cumulation, mutual support and overlap. He describes these three principles in the following way: ‘First is what we call cumulation. Different principles can cover different services provided by the state, and so by combining principles, a larger range of state services can be accounted for. Second is what can be referred to as mutual support. In regard to certain state functions, if a given principle on its own cannot justify compliance, the problem might possibly be overcome by more than one principle working in tandem. The third way is simple overlap. The intuition here is that, while requirements to obey given laws could be relatively weak, these can be strengthened by support of additional principles.[20]’ These three concepts admit that individually arguments of Natural duty, fairness and those argument pertaining to the common good must fail in their task of explaining and identifying a general moral duty to obey the law, but using these three principles as described above, he purports to show how these failing arguments can be combined to successfully address those limitations. The principle of culmination serves to suggest that the main limitation of these theories is their applicability to a limited area of state function, i.e. the services that the state provides to its citizens. Mutual support deals with the limitations of these individual arguments in relation to their attempt to justify a general moral obligation to obey the law, and the overlap principle deals with the respective weaknesses of each of these individual arguments, very much in the same way as we have done earlier in this essay. Klosko argues that a theory that only purports to account for one type of state function cannot be said to lead to a general duty to obey the law. He argues that state functions are social facts, and as such the failure of theorists to account for the variety of these functions in their theories is a factual failure in their arguments, a factual failure which must therefore lead to conclusions which are non-comprehensive and cannot therefore be said to give rise to the general moral duty to obey the law which they purport to do. Whilst prima facie I can see the point that Klosko is making; each of these theories do work to a certain extent, the problem being that we are always able to find many situations which exist where the theories fail to hold up to scrutiny. What Klosko has therefore tried to do is to incorporate these theories together, so that when one of them fails, another justification can step in to uphold our position of there being a general moral duty to obey the law. Whilst at first this may seem somewhat artificial, at least Klosko has tried to justify the fusion of these very different arguments by reference to state function. One cant help however feeling that some of the failures of the very individual justifications that he is using, rather than being simply due to their limited scope [by virtue of differing state functions], are so fundamental as to render any fusion of them inappropriate. By the end of this essay I shall hopefully have demonstrated that the best analysis of the question of whether or not there is a general moral duty to obey the law does not result from any of these individual arguments, neither from the fusion of them, but rather from a wholly new conceptualization of the character of the obligation and duty itself. Let us now turn to the position 2 theorists, and see if we can find some compelling arguments amongst their writing: Defending Position [2]; there may be a prima facie obligation to obey some laws, but such a duty cannot be a general one: M.B.E. Smith is commonly known as an advocate of this position. In his earlier work, ‘Is There a Prima Facie Obligation to Obey the Law?’ he performs an analysis of all the arguments which purport to support the existence of a ‘position [1]’ duty to obey the law, providing successful counter arguments for each, and finally concluding as a result these analyses that the true answer to the question of whether or not there is a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law must reside at ‘position [2];’ whether or not there is such a duty to obey the law depends entirely upon which law in question is being obeyed/disobeyed i.e. there will only sometimes be a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law. Defeating Position [2]; Simply because we cannot find adequate justification for the existence of a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law does not mean that we must, by default, resort to the conclusion that the most accurate description of this normative phenomenon is that of there only sometimes being a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law: Simply because we cannot find adequate justification for the existence of a general prima facie moral duty to obey the law does not mean that we must, by default, resort to the simplistic conclusion that the most accurate description of this normative phenomenon is that of there only sometimes being a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law. Joseph Raz, in his ‘Theory of Justice’ (1971) argues this point exactly. He does not understand why theorists have not ventured to reach a compromise between position [1] and position [2], especially in light of the fact that it seems so clear that the true answer must lie somewhere between these two extreme positions. Raz therefore proposed such a theory. The compromise between position [1] and position [2]; J. Raz, in search of a new characterisation: Earlier in this essay we discussed the character of the duty in question. We argued that whilst the duty will never be an absolute one, neither is it realistic to suggest that such a duty will be generally prima facie in character. To reiterate those arguments, for the duty to be absolute is to deny a place for individual reasoning and autonomy in a society; if every law must be obeyed regardless of any extraneous personal beliefs or opinions, then personal practical morality is denied. Likewise, if the duty was prima facie in character, the ability of the law to retain social order and manage social conflicts may come into question; Raz therefore decided that an alternative characterisation of the obligation was required, and so was born the notion of an ‘absolute reason’, or, as it has become known by certain other jurists[21], ‘the exclusionary reason.’ Let us now consider exactly what Raz understands by it: Raz’s new characterisation of the obligation to obey the law: Raz introduces the idea of there being two orders of practical reason; first-order reasons and second order reasons. These reasons are ‘practical’ in that they are the kind of reasons that may feature in an individual’s decision process when that individual is attempting to decide upon a particular course of action, i.e. reasons to act or to refrain from acting for a reason. Second order reasons are higher in priority that first-order reasons, and as such, if two such reasons should come into conflict, it will be the second-order reason that shall prevail. Second-order reasons however might themselves be trumped by what Raz describes as ‘cancelling-reasons’, reasons which might exist within the context of the particular decision process at hand which could render the secondary-reasons void. The jurisdiction of a ‘cancelling-reason’, i.e. its scope within the context of a particular decision, will be affected by what Raz calls ‘scope -affecting reasons.’ Exclusionary reasons are second-order reasons of a special kind; whereas all the other types of reasons may be distinguished by their ground, exclusionary reasons have a special normative role to play in the whole practical deliberative process, and it is this normative role by which exclusionary reasons should be distinguished. In effect therefore, ‘A second-order reason is any reason to act or to refrain from acting for a reason, whereas an exclusionary reason is a second-order reason to refrain from acting for some reason.[22]’ Exclusionary reasons exclude other secondary reasons from playing their normal role in the deliberative process, in effect cancelling these otherwise valid reasons from the decision making process. To best understand the nature of these exclusionary reasons, and how they operate within the practical decision making process, let us follow through Raz’s very argument for the existence of these special secondary reasons: Raz commences his argument with an analysis of a couple of examples of the decision-making process. The first example scenario involves an agent who refuses to accept a business deal on the basis that he is too tired to think about whether or not the deal could be advantageous to him. Raz explains how the decision making process in this example did not involve the processing of the actual fact pertaining to the deal in question, but rather on the basis that she realised that she was too tired to perform a thorough assessment, and as such decided to play safe and decline. In this case, the first order reasons would be the facts relating to the deal, and these are trumped by the second-order reason of tiredness. Raz then proposes the situation where a colleague of the agent, another like-minded agent of similar financial status, decides to accept an identical deal; this may prove to be an adequate reason for the agent, despite her tiredness and inability to assess all the intricacies o f the deal, to accept the deal. In such a case, we could say that the fact that the other agent accepted the deal serves as a reason for her to accept it herself. This reason does not outweigh the tiredness reason, nor does it undermine it, but it does result in a different outcome to her decision-making process. The second example scenario offered by Raz is as follows: ‘While serving in the army Jeremy is ordered by his commanding officer to appropriate and use a van belonging to a certain tradesman. Therefore he has reason to appropriate the van. His friend urges him to disobey the order pointing to weighty reasons for doing so. Jeremy does not deny that his friend may have a case. But, he claims, it does not matter whether he is right or not. Orders are orders and should be obeyed even if wrong, even if no harm will come from disobeying them. That is what it means to be a subordinate’[23]. According to Raz, the order given to Jeremy by his commanding officer should be regarded as an exclusionary reason in that it excludes the reasons offered to him by his friend, from featuring in his practical deliberative process, despite the fact that these reasons were sound in nature. This is what Raz means by ‘exclusionary reasons.’ As stated above, these reasons are disting uishable by virtue of their normative role, a role which Raz describes as â€Å"†¦reasons for performing certain actions, and, other things being equal, the fact that they are excluded by an exclusionary reason merely means that they should not be complied with, not that they should not be conformed to. The best course is if they are indirectly obeyed, i.e. if the action they indicate is performed for some other, independent, reason.[24]’ Let us now apply this characterization to our general duty to obey the law. The first thing which becomes evident is that the duty to obey the law can itself be described as an exclusionary reason; when we state that someone is under a duty to obey the law, we are effectively stating that in the decision process of that person, reliance on extra-legal considerations in the formulation of the decision of whether or not to act in such a way has no actual place in that process. Such extra-legal considerations are thus excluded from the practical decision making process by the very existence of a duty to obey the law. One might argue here that an analysis of the duty in this way yields no different results to that of the characterization of the duty as an absolute one. In fact, whilst the result may very well be the same, the description of the duty as an exclusionary reason does give respect to the existence of a balancing decision making process, in a way which an absolute conception would not; as Menendez[25] writes, â€Å"the duty to obey the law, when conceptualized as an exclusionary reason, precludes direct weighting and balancing, but it does not rule out a margin of exercise of practical reason. This is enough to render compatible the obligation with individual autonomy.† Raz’s picture of the duty to obey the law is certainly the most convincing to date; although somewhat contrived, it does manage to reconcile legal and moral duty in a way which allows the law to retain a legitimate authority, whilst respecting the fact that human beings are essentially autonomous in their decision making. Let us now see if we can find any criticisms of Raz’s

Comparing the Enthalpy Changes of Combustion of Different Alcohols :: Enthalpy

Comparing the Enthalpy Changes of Combustion of Different Alcohols Aim: I will find the enthalpy change of combustion of a number of alcohols so that I can investigate how and why enthalpy change is affected by molecular structure of the alcohol. Outline: I will use Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol and Butanol in the experiment. I will use these four because they should give me clear results, and they range from short chained to long-chained hydrocarbons, so patterns should be easy to spot in the conclusion. Variables: My independent variables are - The type of alcohol (I will use ethanol, methanol, propanol and butanol) My dependant variables are - the specific heating capacity of water - Mass of water in grams - Change in temperature of water My control variables are - The change in temperature of water- 20..C - The mass of water. If this were changed then all the results would be wrong, because it would take different amounts of energy to heat different volumes of water - The distance from the bottom of the calorimeter to the top of the wick. Otherwise different amounts of energy could escape each time making it an unfair test. Plan: From carrying out the follow experiment I will be able to find out the enthalpy change of each fuel I am testing. The enthalpy change of combustion of a fuel is the measure of energy transferred when one mole of fuel burns completely. I will use the fact that 42 Joules of energy are required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 C. Enthalpy change varies according to the following conditions – temperature, pressure and concentration of solutions. Therefore I will use a standard pressure of I atmosphere, a standard concentration of 1 mol dm†¦.3 and finally a specified temperature of†¦. I will use the equation enthalpy change = cm†¦..T c- Specific heating capacity of water m- Mass of water in grams †¦T- Change in temperature of water I will then compare the enthalpy changes and the types of molecular structures and so I will able to out why enthalpy change is affected by the molecular structure of the alcohol Prediction: I predict that as the number of carbons in the alcohol is increased, the enthalpy of combustion also increases. The enthalpy change of combustion of alcohols increases as the length of the chain increases. This can be explained if we compare one alcohol with the next in the series. The chain length increases with an addition of a CH2 group. When the alcohol is combusted what actually happens is the covalent bonds are broken, and new bond are formed.

My Place by Sally Morgan, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Trans

The Journey as Depicted in My Place by Sally Morgan, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Transall Saga and Pay it Forward The inner journey is a concept that has always been debated, and so has its meaning. The word ‘inner’ has the alternative meaning of personal. Moreover, the word journey has an alternative meaning of movement. So, the concept of the inner journey, customarily, has the meaning of a personal movement. Inner journeys have often been described as the metaphor behind a physical journey. The statement ‘Journey is the reward’ and the idea of a personal movement are depicted in the texts, My Place by Sally Morgan, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Transall Saga and Pay it Forward. ‘My Place’ is the autobiographical story, in which Sally Morgan’s family refuses to accept their aboriginality. It was the persistent attitudes of the family which prompted Sally to commence on her journey of self discovery. The poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost also revolves around the theme of the inner journey. The poem is based of a manâ⠂¬â„¢s recollection of decision that he once made and its ramifications. The novel ‘The Transall Saga’ by Gary Paulson, is the fictional survival story about ‘Mark’ and his adventure after he was transported to a foreign world by a mysterious blue light. Finally, the film, ‘Pay It Forward’, is about a boy named Trevor McKinney and new found thoughts about the world after having been given a social studies assessment. This essay will highlight how all four texts portray the truth in the statement ‘The Journey is the reward.’ My Place is an autobiographical story by Sally Morgan. Sally was raised in an Aboriginal family which always denied their Aboriginality. Sally is the one who goes on a physical journey in order to discover her true family heritage and identity, which leads to a much more intricate inner journey. The road to enlightenment was not easy. She came across many obstacles and most of those came from her own family. Throughout the story the respondent is left wondering the reason behind the family’s silence towards each other. This statement only reinforces the idea that the core text, My Place, clearly depicts how the journey is the reward. Sally Morgan uses a wide range of different techniques to convey her physical and internal movement to disclose her family heritage and her own identity. The book it... ...which brought his family back together. In conclusion, My Place, The Road Not Taken, The Transall Saga and Pay It Forward, are all texts which connote the message that there is truth in the statement, ‘The journey is the reward’. My Place shows how Sally was able to discover her heritage, and more importantly, her identity. For Sally her journey payed of by meeting a whole new set of relatives and past family friends. The Road Not Taken, is a poem which vividly and subtly shows the respondent that all of lifes choices are important. The poem also tells us that he ‘should never come back’ to change his decision. Sally is under similar circumstances, for she cannot go back on some of her decisions. The Transall Saga told us how Mark changed his personal perspective on life and his physical appearance. The reward that Mark received while on his journey was meeting people, and then receiving respect from these ‘savages’. Pay it Forward, was the movie which enlightened the respondent into basic human nature, and to some extent what is wrong with the world. Trevor’s inner journey enabled him to discover that people can change and that the world may not be such a lost cause after all.

South African Power Groups Essay -- History, South Africas Revolution

Efforts to Address the Problem South Africa’s revolution was unique because it was neither an elite-imposed transition nor a classical revolution. Many analysts were surprised that a classical revolution hadn’t occurred sometime in the 1980s (Marx, 1997, 476-479). It is likely that there wasn’t a classical revolution because the military was still loyal to the dominant white group. Furthermore, whites controlled nearly all of the economic power, and as a result, blacks needed the white structure to stay in place to continue lest the economy crumble (p. 478). But, mounting pressure from citizens, a steadily weakening economy, and the international community caused the Afrikaners to reevaluate their position. An elite-imposed transition didn’t occur because the citizens of South Africa had mobilized to too great of an extent. The Afrikaners realized that a negotiated settlement was the only option if they didn’t want to face a thorough-going revolution (p. 478). This negotiation process wasn’t particularly effective though. It was initially assumed that such a tactic would result in peaceful negotiations similar to those of Brazil (p. 479-480). The ANC promised to end the guerrilla violence that was causing thousands of people to die each year once the negotiations started (p. 481-482). Unfortunately, the perception that violence could enhance negotiating positions quickly grew, and by 1992 South Africa had become, â€Å"one of the most violent countries in the world† (p. 483). This violence lead to a situation in which ‘winner take all’ amendments to the constitution were rejected as being too inflammatory (p. 483). Clearly, this slowed down the process of integration. There are simply some parts of Apartheid that needed to be elimin... ...stricts 87% of the population to just 13% of the land. Overcrowding and a lack of infrastructure remain problems (Mochaki, 1995). Nevertheless, this was one of the more successful programs of the post-apartheid era. It helped to include those groups that had traditionally been displaced by making them citizens of South Africa again. In addition, it gave millions of people voting rights allowed them to participate in a governing body for the first time in ages. If any change is going to be made, it must include, at the very least, input from the group it is trying to help. Not only did the abolition of homelands do that, but it allowed blacks and the other subjugated minorities access to governmental offices previously reserved for the white citizens of South Africa. Furthermore, abolishing homelands could become an important symbol for the anti-apartheid movement.

Failing to Love Essay

In her story â€Å"Never Marry a Mexican† Sandra Cisneros introduces the reader to the complex issues surrounding the racial and sexual identity of a Mexican-American woman living in the United States. The story is about a Chicana woman and how she seeks revenge on a white lover who has rejected her by becoming the sexual tutor of his teenage son. Cisneros give life to the protagonist Clemencia and paints her as a character in a modern day to demonstrate the pervasive negative impact on Mexican-American women, especially on Chicanas residing within the United States. Clemencia, the protagonist of the story, thinks â€Å"Drew, remember when you used to call me your Malinalli? It was a joke, a private game between us, because you looked like a Cortes with that beard of yours. My dark skin against yours†¦My Malinalli, Malinche, my courtesan, you said, and yanked my head back by the braid† (192). Clemencia is a painter, but she must support herself in other ways too. She sometimes acts as a translator; however for Clemencia Spanish is now the â€Å"native† language. In this discussion of her occupation, Clemencia pronounces â€Å"any way you look at it, what I do to make a living is a form of prostitution† (181). She feels as though when she is not painting she merely sells herself to make a living, much like La Malinche had to do in her relationship with Cortes. Clemencia constantly allows herself to fall in love with unavailable men who are always married and always white. This pattern results from her mother’s constant advice, â€Å"Never Marry a Mexican†. Clemencia’s mother, a lower-class Chicana woman from the United States who married an upper-class Mexican man, felt inescapable discrimination by both her husband’s upper-class family and mainstream U.S. society for her dark skin color. Her answer to this was to marry out, and supposedly up, by divorcing Clemencia’s father and marrying a white man. It is because of this example that Clemencia never sees Mexican men as potential lovers. She explains: â€Å"Mexican men, forget it. For a long time the men clearing off the tables or chopping meat behind the butcher counter or driving the buss I rode to school every day, those weren’t men. Not men I considered as potential lovers. Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chilean, Columbian, Panamanian, Salvadorean, Bolivian, Honduran, Argentine, Dominican, Venezuelan, Guatemalan, Ecuadorean, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Costa Rican, Paraguayan, Uruguayan, I don’t care. I never saw them. My mother did this to me†(179). Here Clemencia is adopting the racist Anglo discourse by lumping all Latinos into one, unified group. Her discussion of â€Å"Mexican† does not distinguish between class and race; to her â€Å"Mexican† means busboys, butchers, and bus drivers. Mexican is no longer the nationality of the people of Mexico, but rather a class of servers who happen to be brown. Here Cisneros demonstrates how the racism of dominant society in America is often internalized and serves to separate the people of disempowered groups. Cisneros makes a strong statement against internalized racism by showing how Clemencia’s rejection of men of her own race and obsession with white men ultimately leaves her lonely. Clemencia comes to the frustrating, yet enlightening realization that the white men in her life have, like her, adopted the mantra â€Å"never marry a Mexican† when she remembers the conversation Drew and she had the last night they spent together. Clemencia recalls in an inner dialogue, how â€Å"we had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldn’t I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadn’t I understood†¦responsibilities. You didn’t think? Never marry a Mexican. Never marry a Mexican. No of course. I see. I see† (186). Now Clemencia is now lost without a proper choice of lovers. Mexicans are out of bounds because she could never marry a Mexican, but she now realizes that white men are also out of bounds because they too could never marry a Mexican; they could never marry her. Cisneros is therefore demonstrating how internalized racism does not serve to differentiate certain ethnic Mexicans from others in the eyes of white society, and instead only serves to isolate such Mexican-Americans from the culture to which they are supposed to feel connected. By having Clemencia reject the roles of wife and mother and instead embrace the socially deviant mistress role, Cisneros demonstrates how women who refuse socially acceptable roles often must do so at the expense of other women. In an attempt to claim agency that she would otherwise be denied as a married Chicana in dominant, patriarchal society, Clemencia embraces the role of the mistress. The mistress, because of her strictly sexual nature, is traditionally regarded as a role that reinforces male dominance in heterosexual relationships. Through her role as mistress and her rejection of the role of wife or mother, she attempts to combat the patriarchal system of oppression and makes allowances for flexibility of gender-role expectations. However because the role of the mistress also depends upon there being another woman, the wife, who is betrayed by both her husband and the mistress, the mistress role does not combat the patriarchal system for all women. It does, in fact, reinforce patriarchal oppression of the wife/mother role. Clemencia seems to have little problem acknowledging her betrayal of other women. She candidly tells the reader â€Å"I’ve been accomplice, having caused deliberate pain to other women. I’m vindictive and cruel, and I’m capable of anything† (179). Therefore, in order to escape subscribed gender roles and claim agency in her sexual relationships, Clemencia hurts other women. Cisneros seems to be saying that â€Å"mujeres andariegas†, or daring women who reject the roles society expects of them, do not help to institutionally change society for all women but rather must betray other women in their search for personal freedom. Clemencia attempts to further com bat patriarchal gender roles in her sexual relationships the role of el chingà ³n. When describing sex with Drew, she says â€Å"I leapt inside you and split you like an apple. Opened for the other to look and not give back† (185). Here Clemencia not only takes on the man’s part by â€Å"leaping† inside, she also executes the violent actions attached to the verb chingar. Clemencia imagines that this sexual aggressiveness empowers her over Drew. She says â€Å"You were ashamed to be so naked†¦But I saw you for what you are, when you opened yourself for me† (185). To Clemencia, sexual relations are based on power dynamics, and in order to escape the passive feminine chingada role she must embrace the possessive, dominant, masculine chingà ³n role. Clemencia extends her embodiment of the chingà ³n role into her dealings with the wives, and even a son, of her lovers. More than once she had sex with a lover while his wife was in labor with his child. She confesses â€Å"it has given me a bit of crazy joy to be able to kill those women like that†¦To know I’ve had their husbands when they were anchored in blue hospital rooms, their guts yanked inside out†(184). Clemencia’s relationship with Drew’s son is another example of her fulfilling a sort of â€Å"vindictive sexual satisfaction†. She says of him â€Å"I sleep with this boy, their son. To make the boy love me the way I love his father. To make him want me the way I love his father†¦I can tell from the way he looks at me, I have him in my power†¦I let him nibble†¦Before I snap by teeth† (187). Therefore she seduces him not to satisfy the yearning of her body or hear, but rather to achieve sexual power of the son, which she perceives as giving her indirect power of his parents. Clemencia is ultimately left lonely without a lover, a connection to her culture, or meaningful female friendships. The reason for this lies in the world view Clemencia has inherited from her society. She perceives the world in black and white, in terms of inescapable binaries between which she must choose. She fails to become an acceptable marriage partner to Drew, she fails to escape being hurt by her lovers even as a mistress. Works Cited Never Marry a Mexican. Random House, Inc. and Vintage Books1991

Educating Special Needs Students Essay

This essay is entitled Educating Special Needs Students, the author will discuss and several important issues, which will be the following; the defining of Mental Retardation a term the author despises, Autism, Severe Disabilities and Multiple Disabilities, also their causes, and the impact of these disabilities have on the education of students with Mental Retardation. In addition to the above mentioned, the essay will identify areas of curriculum, necessary for students with severe disabilities and will explain why. Addressed also will be the following; using the authors’ local school district, Las Vegas Nevada, an investigation into the policies, procedures, and programs for the education, of students with Mental Retardation, Autism, and or Severe Multiple Disabilities. Lastly, an explanation of how these policies, programs, and procedures, either address or ignore the area of curriculum, the author has listed within the content of the essay. According to the Association for Retarded Citizens or (AAMR), Mental Retardation is defined as; a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. Though its causes can be attributed to a variable amount of many things, here are just a few of known caused medical factors; Genetic conditions, which have been the results from abnormalities of genes inherited from one or both parents, errors when genes combine, or from other disorders of the genes caused during pregnancy by infections, overexposure to x-rays and other factors. Problems during pregnancy, some of these problems, in the opinion of the author, are definitely avoidable such as; the use of alcohol or drugs by the pregnant mother which can cause mental retardation. Other problems exist too such as, Malnutrition, rubella, glandular disorders and diabetes, and cytomegalovirus. Many of these types of illnesses can be traced back to the mother and often times in the early trimester of the pregnancy. Another of hese causes is Poverty and cultural deprivation, in which children in poor families may become mentally retarded because of malnutrition, disease-producing conditions, and inadequate medical care. This brings us to one of â€Å"the most† controversial topics of late; â€Å"Autism†. It is defined as; a mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by great difficulty in communicating and forming relationships, a mental condition in which fantasy dominates over reality, as a symptom of schizophrenia and other disorde rs. The causes of this disability are still up for debate however, the Autism Society of America (ASA) defines it as the following; â€Å"Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain, impacting development in the areas of social interaction and communication skills. The causes of this disability are attributed to the following; Depakote, also called Valproate, an anti-seizure medication, taken during pregnancy, Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder, Rett syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting only females, Tuberous sclerosis, a rare genetic disorder and Prader-Willi syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Lastly defined are Severe Disabilities and Multiple Disabilities, those who traditionally have been labeled, as having severe to profound cognitive impairments or intellectual disabilities. It is difficult to define this term precisely because, during the authors’ research, there is no one clear definition that; covers all the conditions that special educators and psychologists know about this disability. So, what is the impact of disabilities on the education of students with mental retardation? Well compared to their peers, most students with severe and multiple disabilities learn more slowly, forget more readily, and experience problems generalizing skills from situation to situation. This makes educating students with this particular disability more challenging and often times harder to manage. â€Å"The public education of these students must start early and continue at some level throughout life. Second, all students typically need speech and language intervention, while many others will need physical and occupational therapy. Students with sensory impairments may need interpreters and mobility trainers, while some with medical needs may require nursing services or supervision. Third, because the educational teams of students are often large, close collaboration between members is essential if their expertise is to result in improved student functioning. The benefits of integrating therapy into natural activities are now being widely accepted over the traditional practice of isolated, or pull-out, therapy. † The essay will now turn its focus to the attention of identifying areas of curriculum, necessary for students with severe disabilities and will explain why. To begin, the Handicapped Children’s Act of 1975, federal emphasis shifted from curriculum development to preparing and implementing individualized educational programs for students with disabilities (Meyen, 1996). Why, because in the opinion of the author, every student in every state deserves to have the best available education the Department of Education has out there also, with the use of modern technology there is no obstacle to hard to overcome. The following statement illustrates the authors’ point. Students with complex healthcare issues, significant developmental delays, and severe multiple disabilities require approaches that offer intensive levels of support. Students who are blind, deaf, deaf-blind, and autistic may in some cases require the same degree of support, but they also require more specialized curriculum and teaching approaches (in, for example, technology and literacy). Additionally, such students may require specialized resources from related service providers (such as orientation and mobility instructors or audiologists). the National Center on Accessible Instructional Material. In the conclusion of this essay, using the authors’ local school district, Las Vegas Nevada, an investigation into the policies, procedures, and programs for the education, of students with Mental Retardation, Autism, and or Severe Multiple Disabilities, and an explanation of how these policies, programs, and procedures, either address or ignore the area of curriculum, the author has listed within the content of the essay. According to Charlene Green, a teacher in the Nevada Clark County School district, she’s seen the number of children with autism spectrum disorders in her charge increase from 96 to more than 1,000. Green, the associate superintendent for student support services in the Las Vegas-area district, oversees those children’s education–an expensive, complicated task. Moreover she says, â€Å"The school system was at a nadir in dealing with the needs of its autistic children and their parents. We were being bombarded with due process requests,† she says, by parents who sought legal recourse against a school system they believed wasn’t providing the necessary education for their children, as schools are required to do under the 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). † Educating students with Mental Retardation; While the author has lived in the city of Las Vegas for over eight years now, there is no clear Policy, nor procedure in which the author could find to answer this question, to his surprise the list below was researched and readily available; Las Vegas, Nevada Courses – Regis University-Colorado college †¦ Special needs jobs in Las Vegas, NV | careerjet. com, Special education jobs in Las Vegas, NV | careerjet. com and this list just goes on from here. But under the Department of Education in Nevada it reads as follows; Nevada Department of Education Office of Special Education, Elementary and Secondary Education, and School Improvement Programs; Under federal and state law, each student with a disability is entitled to receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Special education programs in Nevada serve students with identified disabilities in one of the twelve categories established in Nevada Revised Statutes, Chapter 388. School districts must provide the services necessary to assure FAPE for all students with disabilities, without regard to the adequacy of state revenues to support the costs. In closing and in the opinion of the author, â€Å"we†, this means everyone who works in the educational industry as a Teacher, Principle, or Administrator, must focus on all available data to, not only include but, to educate every student no matter what the disability.