Symbolic logic and Venn diagrams are tools that can be used to remove the content of an argument and examine whether or not the argument itself makes sense. Using these tools, you will examine an exchange on social media using either Venn diagrams, symbolic logic, or both in your paper. Your paper should be 1500 words minimum.
Prompt
Debates about policy, philosophy, theology, and ethics abound in social media between family, friends, and strangers and these arguments can get very heated. For this assignment, summarize arguments from one of the following exchanges of letters and analyze the argument using symbolic logic.
Be sure to cite which letters you are summarizing and deconstructing using symbolic logic (e.g. Letter #3 and #4).
Deconstruct both arguments into symbolic statements
Use Venn diagrams and/or truth tables to examine the soundness of the arguments.
Discuss the results of your examination and the limitations of your analysis
Demonstrate how the same arguments would work with a different subject
Formatting & Sources
Please write your paper in APA format. You may refer to the course material for supporting evidence, but you must also use at least 3 sources and cite them using APA format. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. If you use any Study.com lessons as sources, please also cite them in APA (including the lesson title and instructor’s name).
Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as Computing Edge. You may use sources like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and IEEE.org to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)
If you’re unsure about how to use APA format to cite your sources, please see the following lessons
Is Circumcision Wrong?
BY BRIAN EARP & JOSH YUTER
8 Letters
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41 Subscribers
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5960 Reads
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Updated 29 Dec ’19
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Started 04 Sep ’19
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Discussion
Letter 1
BY BRIAN EARP
Created 04 Sep ’19
Dear Rabbi Yuter,
I understand that you might be interested in having a conversation about male circumcision. I am an admirer of your thoughtful, nuanced approach to many topics, so I expect it would be enlightening to discuss pretty much anything with you. That being said, I don’t actually know your views on this particular topic, so perhaps you could share some of your perspective to get us started? As I assume you are aware, I have argued in various lectures and papers that it wrongs a person, regardless of their sex or gender, to cut their genitals without their informed consent, unless there is a relevant medical emergency. What is your take?
Sincerely,
Brian
Letter 2
BY JOSH YUTER
Created 04 Sep ’19
Dear Brian,
Thank you very much for reaching out. I’ve seen some of your positions expressed on Twitter but I recognize that Twitter isn’t always the best forum for serious discussions. To answer your question directly, I don’t see circumcision as a moral wrong, though I appreciate why others would.
If I understand your position (based on your initial letter and other statements on Twitter), circumcision is a moral wrong because it violates body autonomy without consent. Unlike vaccinations which have demonstrable personal and societal benefits, there is no definitive scientific benefit to circumcision. (One point I have learned from you is the conflicting research on the health benefits of circumcision. I had remembered seeing some stories about its benefits but since medical science isn’t my field I’m not up on contradictory research or questionable design methods). The issue is not even necessarily if it causes long-term damage or pain. The essential moral wrong is violating a person’s bodily autonomy without their consent.
(I’m going to operate under this understanding. I apologize if I misstated or misunderstood your position and will adjust my response accordingly).
I think this discussion really gets into the Really Big Questions about morality: What is morality? How is it defined? Who gets to define it? What are the rules? etc. Something I’ve learned to appreciate from the moral psychologists is that that’s a huge difference between what morality *is* and what people *think it to be.*
Language here makes a huge difference. It’s one thing for me to have an opinion something is wrong, but quite another if I present my opinion using language of universal obligation (I think there’s some merit to the logicial positivists in terms of how people operate, if not the existence of morality altogether).
Language also makes a difference when it comes to circumcision. Circumcision is by itself a value neutral word for most of the world. On the other hand “female genital mutilation” is far more sinister. One could argue the reason for the distinction in language is due to the distinction in action. From all I have seen, FGM is far more destructive (if not punitive) and painful. None of this goes to your point re bodily autonomy as a moral principle, but it does help explain why one is far more socially acceptable than the other even if from one perspective, they’re similar.
Regardless, social acceptability is only relevant to morality if one defines morality by what is socially acceptably (or at least considers it part of the moral equation) so I’ll skip other reasons for why one is seen as less objectionable than the other.
The key issue is bodily autonomy overriding all other moral concerns. This of course will depend on one’s moral priors / moral system. Arguing from one system to another is usually going to unhelpful. If one person argues the Bible *defines* morality and another rejects that assumption, then the conversation is reduced to “yes it is” vs “no it isn’t” (it’s also why I’m intentionally avoiding arguments along the lines of circumcision being really important to Jews). I’m fine saying religion has its own morality which is distinct from contemporary morality.
The argument of consent is interesting because, as I understand it, all societies have limits on individual consent. There seems to me to be more a spectrum between consent and coercion when it comes to living within our community’s moral norms. This is particularly relevant when it comes to positive rights of obligation, as opposed to the negative rights of prevention. The question then becomes a matter of details.
The trouble is, these too will be subject to the aforementioned questions about the origins, sources, and understanding of morality.
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