I found it interesting to reflect on how as I read “Moral Arguments” and listened to the podcast, emotion easily influenced my judgement of the different theories and approaches to moral arguments. Rainbolt and Dwyer discuss the concept of standardization, and how this helps to remove emotional force from an argument, but cannot do so entirely. Even though the examples given to explain these approaches and were, to my understanding, not intended to influence the reader’s opinion on the approach itself, I found myself having to check in with myself as I was reading and listening ask whether or not I was focusing the examples to determine my opinion about the different kinds of moral arguments, or if I was focusing on how the moral arguments approached the topic used for the example. 

Considering how ingrained the idea of morality tends to be, it makes sense that I would align more or appreciate the discussion of certain concepts more, such as universalism from the reading and cultural relativism from the podcast, and how other approaches, such as egoism, I was immediately judgemental of and strongly opposed to this perspective. However, it was interesting to see how I had such a notable reaction to the explanation of certain approaches, and at times it was difficult to determine if these reactions were due to my pre-existing beliefs about morality, my stances on the example topics, or a combination of the two. 

One concept that I did not have such an immediate reaction to was that of universalizability and Kant’s test. This concept was one of the ones that I was most uncertain about my opinion on. On the one had, being able to apply something universally seems like a very unifying approach to moral arguments, however, I think it could struggle with understanding the social and cultural context of a situation. As I had less knowledge about this concept, and struggled more to understand it, it made it easier to approach that particular concept from a somewhat more neutral perspective. For me this brought up the tension between how the more we learn and conditioned by the world around us, the more we take in information with preconceived notions and opinions. I think this has both benefits and weaknesses, but poses an interesting take on learning, knowledge, and our judgements and biases. I recognize that this was not directly related to the homework, but I found it important to observe my own biases and reactions to the information presented, or my lack of response on topics I knew minimal about.