Nielsen Argues That Our Lives Just Go Better If We

question 55

Essay

Nielsen argues that our lives just go better if we live morally with one another-for example, giving one another respect. But is this version of secular morality sufficient in hard cases, when what is moral may seem unwise, or when what is moral may seem hard to discern? Why or why not?

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Definitions:

Standard Deviation

An indicator of the degree of spread or divergence from the average in a collection of data, showing the extent to which the data points vary from their average value.

Sample Mean

The average value of the observations in a sample, used as an estimate of the population mean, calculated by summing all observations and dividing by the number of observations.

Normal Curve

A symmetric, bell-shaped curve that represents the distribution of many types of data; most scores are near the average, and frequencies decrease as you move away from the center.

Binomial Random Variable

A type of random variable that arises from a binomial experiment, representing the number of successes in a fixed number of independent Bernoulli trials.