From the podcast, Dr. Bezio discussed assumptions and some of the causes and effects. Assumptions are certainly something that is unavoidable regardless of who you are. I believe most people make assumptions to rationalized the actions of the people around them with. This is more specific to individual assumptions, but socially it’s more apparent. Cultures are a lot more concrete than people, meaning the qualities that make up a society are easier to point out than individual people. We make assumptions based upon our own experience in our own culture and compare it to the actions of another. For Americans, a majority of our cultural practices are directly tied to Western European nations which strongly derives from Judeo-Christian values. Our opinions are completely derived from subjectivity which I believe correlates back to the reading we did on ethics.

In the first reading we did, we went over the concepts of cognitivists and noncognitivists. Cognitivitsts believe there are moral arguments and noncognitivists believe that there are no moral arguments. The noncognitivist line of thinking I believe correspondence directly to the idea of assumptions. We make assumptions based upon our culture. Culture can derive many different levels from a national identity to a small social group. Nevertheless, we can’t necessarily say that one culture’s practices are right or wrong. We may disagree with them, but we cannot morally argue that they or right or wrong because it’s based on subjectivity. Therefore, assumptions are subjective in nature and cannot have any moral truth.

While listening to the podcast, I started to think about the specific cultures that affect me. Culture is not something that I ever put an extreme amount of thought into because it is something that I was always surrounded by. I grew up in a multi-cultural household speaking multiple languages. I traveled abroad when I was extremely young and was constantly exposed to different cultures. Biases on different religions, ethnicities, or races are not something I thought about in-depth till I got to Richmond. Until last year, diversity is something I took for granted. I went to the “white” public high school in my area, which was only 50% white. Even then, street culture dominates in Fairfax County, and everyone’s mannerism and slang are extremely similar regardless of ethnic background. Almost everyone I knew went to a public school and the few that went to private went so because they were extremely religious. When comparing that experience to here, it’s a different world. I remember times in my freshmen year where I honestly felt like a foreigner on this campus. It’s ridiculous.

The part that stood out for me the most in the podcast was when Dr. Bezio mentioned the importance of cultural exposure and the impact it plays in deterring bias. I can’t speak on the impact of deterring other’s biases because it is not something that I believe I can speak for. However, the importance of culture exposure is. Exposure to other cultures is not only important for detering bias but for diversification of thought. From LDST 102, we learned that diversification of thought brings forth the best solutions. Interacting with other cultures is vital in seeing different perspectives which leads to new ideas. Another approach of diversification, is something I learned in my current Political Science class where we are discussing Democracy in America by Toqueville. In this book, Toqueville writes that Americans dismiss ideas that do not allign with their own beliefs, and will only to listen foriegners or those with hightened levels of experience. This correlates with diversification because it points out the inherit biases that we dont typically see in ourselves. It takes a point of view from someone completely different to ourselves to see these qualities. In order to see these qualities, we must broaden our own exposure to different cultures and then look at ourselves realisitcally in a differently light. Diversification is not only important for societal outlook, but also for personal growth.

So I took the IAT for the association for American with European American and Foreign with Asian American. Originally, I thought I was going to associate American with European American heavily. Although I’m mixed race, my father is a white American, while my mom is a Japanese foreigner; so for me, I was expecting heavy favoritism. However, I was proven wrong with this test. I only had a slight automatic association for American with European American and Foreign with Asian American. I was honestly surprised about my results and was not expecting them at all. I grew up in an extremely diverse area and was raised in a very diverse manner, so although I wasn’t expecting a slight association it doesn’t seem out of the question to me.

From the CTAA reading, I was mostly intrigued by the differences between Cognitivists and Non-Cognitivists. To me, I am more inclined to agree with Non-Congittivists more than Cognitivists in terms of a philosophical way of thinking. Simply put, the culture that we are immersed with inflicts certain values on us. Depending on where we are from, we have different attitudes towards different topics that affect our way of thinking about morality. Meaning that morality is completely subjective. Therefore, there is no way we can dignify whether something is good or bad if it is subjective. Because of the subjectivity of morality, I am more inclined to believe Non-Cognitivists more than Congnitivists. Now, the argument against my claim is that there are principles that all people value therefore there must be morality. Basic principles that can be argued would stem from a list similar to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, I would argue that even subjects that would seem universally agreed upon, like the killing of innocence during times of war, can have opposition. It would only take one opposing opinion to make the idea subjective.

Additionally, the above idea is also important when considering universalism. I think it would be easy to assume that by the Non-Cognitivist way of thinking you cant have universalism because morality is neither good nor bad. Meaning that if nothing is considered right or wrong, how can there be a consensus on what is morality? I would say that Universalism is more intended to protect the ability that you can consider something good or bad; in other words, universalism protects the ability to consider morality. By giving all things equal importance, you are giving equal weight to what is considered good morality or bad morality. We are not considering one is correct over the other, we are instead allowing all possible options as viable. Therefore morality can be neither good nor bad but still be universal.

Overall, the theories of thinking that are mentioned in the reading were all interesting. In one way or another, they all overlap each other and can explain how people make decisions. Critical thinking, to me, is simply the method of reasoning behind actions. And by understanding the way people think, you can make reasonable predictions on how people will behave.