I found this reading really interesting as it covers dilemmas and issues, I’ve seen in previous classes such as Intro to International Relations and Leadership and Social Sciences. These dilemmas have been particularly problematic on the world stage, and during the Cold War led us to the brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, they do have one critical weakness: they rely on a lack of accountability and communication. Once you establish these two factors in the system, their power rapidly declines. For example, in the prisoner’s dilemma if they agree on backstories ahead of time, communicate through lawyers, and have someone on the outside who can punish either of them for talking, the effectiveness of the prisoner’s dilemma effectively disappears. This is one of the reasons international institutions like the UN are incredibly valuable, as they establish this accountability and communication on the world stage.

Reading this article was a very odd experience for me. Initially, I strongly disagreed with the conclusion Jessica Flanigan was arguing. I don’t think we should allow people to simply self-medicate, as that often leads to addiction and to making the problem worse. However, as the article went on, I began to realize I agreed with her premises and sub-conclusions. I certainly think people have the right to refuse treatment, however faulty I might view their justification, and I believe in the general principle that people have the right to do whatever they want to their own bodies as long as they don’t hurt others. However, despite agreeing with all of that, I still stubbornly disagreed with her overall conclusion. But why? Even while I’m writing this, I honestly don’t know. I will need to do some more thinking to ultimately decide where I fall on this issue, especially since it isn’t a topic I’ve really put any thought into before.

I took the implicit test on mental illness and found that I had moderate automatic association with mental illness and danger and physical illness and harmlessness. I was both surprised and not surprised by these results. On one hand, I was raised my whole life not to view mentally ill people as dangerous. My mom spent years volunteering at a mental health home and working with mentally ill patients, and the lessons and ideals she took from that she taught to me. On the other hand, I grew up in an era of mass shootings where the culprit was often mentally ill, which almost certainly influenced my implicit view of them. I do my best to continue my mom’s ideals, and I don’t automatically assume mentally ill people are dangerous or that its unsafe to be around them, but at the same time I wasn’t surprised by these results.

The Names study the authors tested in the reading was particularly interesting as it revealed how men’s names were more likely to be viewed as famous than women’s names. I actually watched a video about a month ago on directing movies, where they noted that while we can often list plenty of famous male directors with ease, even coming up with five famous female directors is a challenge for most people. This discrepancy is common across the board of many famous careers, though in the case of directos is a combination of stereotypes found in the study and the fact that there are less big name female directors.

Noncognitivists are incorrect in claiming that one can’t make moral arguments. Noncognitivists claim that since it is impossible to make a true or false moral claim, that therefore it is impossible to make a moral statement or argument. However, this isn’t a good argument. Their argument is based on the assumption that one can’t make a true or false moral statement. While that may be true in the absolute scientific sense, people still can absolutely believe that moral claims are true or false. And because they can believe that, they can make arguments for or against those moral claims. Whether that claim can be proven true or false in an absolute sense in irrelevant. Arguments about them can still be made.