Matt Bushnell's Blog

      In Darby's article, "Reparations and Racial Inequality", he states in his argument that for so many years Americans have been subject to racial inequality and injustice. Darby argues that the root cause of this is often unclear. On one hand, people may trace back to slavery and on the other people may say that there are many different factors that lead to racial bias. This leads to the inherent problem about racial reparations for African Americans. For example, monetary means may be insufficient for making amends for the centuries of racial inequality. Simply insuring an apology as Barack Obama did may not be enough. The question lingers, will any form of tangible reparations be  sufficient.      I agree with Darby's argument because I do not think there is any tangible things we can do to make up for centuries of injustice. In other words, I believe we should always keep fighting for equality there is not a lump sum amount of money, statue, formal apology, etc

       Simon Caney proposes a strong argument aiming on how certain environmental injustices relate to moral implications of global climate change. Caney opens his argument by referring to the issues that occur with climate change such as higher temperatures which gives way to malaria, cholera, heat stress, and dengue fever. Equally as important, climate change can increase rainfall causing significant flooding all having a dramatic effect on our environment. The question that should be raised during this oppressing issue is who should be held responsible?      Part of this process behind finding out who is responsible for such terms, Caney uses two accounts Causal and Beneficiary. In terms of climate change, the Causal account can be referred to as, "...those who caused the pollution are morally responsible for it and the duty to rectify this situation or compensate the victims therefore rests with them" (Caney 467). In other words, this account can be touched on as those wh

 Eran Tal begins his article, Making Time: A Study in the Epistemology of Measurement , by stating the epistemology of measurement has a direct relationship between measurement and knowledge. The reason this is such a key factor to our question, how is the second defined? and What do standard clocks measure? Is that by understanding the epistemology of measurement, we can understand how knowledge is produced and how it is preconceived as trustworthy. Tal believes that is is critically important that we are able to ensure reproducibility within our standardizations of units. This means that a second for me should be the same second as someone halfway across the globe, but to do this yields an endless loophole. We cannot agree upon a unit if there is no standard already, which leads to the two different viewpoints of conventionalism and a model-based account of measurement. Conventionalism is the idea that we can all just agree upon a random unit and use that across the globe, which mean

     The relativity of simultaneity refers to the events that happen at the same time, also occur at different times from a moving perspective. In other words, events that occurred at the same place or time, become out of sequence when you look at if from a moving perspective. In Norton's first article, Special Relativity: Relativity of Simultaneity , an example is put into our frame of mind when we put someone on a long platform with endpoints A and B. In the first example, when the conductor of the experiment stands on the platform still and a light flashes from both points, it will reach the observer at the same time. Now what were to happen if we put an observer on a moving platform? Since our observer has a different midpoint, it is no longer synchronized since the points will now take longer to reach the observer.      What the  relativity of simultaneity is not is what he calls the appearance of simultaneity, which Norton explains accounts for the discrepancies in our percep

       How does time affect you? My whole life I have had this preconceived idea on time as something that ages. When I ruminate about my childhood, so much has differed because of the change in time.  Therefore, time only exists if there is some sort of change in the present. In other words, McTaggart refers to this as the A-series, "...  the series of positions running from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present to the, near future and the far future...". In other words, the A series has distinct properties such as past, present and future.  To me, time has some sort of beginning to end, just like when you wake up in the morning and go to bed at nighttime has changed throughout the day.        When McTaggart refers to the "unreality of time", he refers to the B and C series. These series are similar in the sense that there is no particular order between time unlike the A series. The B series refers to time in a sense that on

  I believe that it is our responsibility to protect future generations from the effects of climate change. We live in a world, with a population of over 7 billion people, each and everyone with their own unique story. In the media today we see events such as the fires in California that are pumping climate warming carbon dioxide into the air, worrying Americans about rising temperatures. Incidents like these, affect climate change that can have a dramatic effect on the environment.