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Raven Caalim

Professor Keith Hess

Philosophy 102

18 September 2022

Homework #3

From reading the initial headline from the Washington Post, my view of the hunter is

negative based on the title phrasing him to have killed an endangered species. The title paints the

hunter to be a wealthy man who likes the thrills of being rich and powerful. After reading the

article, I understand that Knowlton, the hunter, had motivation to kill the rhino since the rhino

was aggressive and stopping others in its herd from breeding. The people that disagree with him

disagree, because the killing of an endangered animal would lower the amount of said

endangered animal in the world. If I was unable to look for further sources, and had to pick

between agreeing with the hunter and disagreeing, I would agree with the hunter because the

hunted animal was stunting the growth of the rhino population. Even though the rhino was part

of a herd, it was said to have killed other male rhinos from the herd, causing more damage than

good for the species. Knowlton had gone through the necessary channels to obtain a permit to

kill, and even waited three days to confirm he was killing the right rhino. Many with opposing

arguments may believe the hunter shouldn’t have killed the black rhino because it would kill a

member of the species. While the hunter does kill the black rhino, the death of the rhino will lead

to further growth within the herd, as the rhino shot dead was not fertile and often stopped the

mating within his herd. Not only does this act help to grow the population of the black rhino, but

the dead rhino’s remains were used in full. The meat was taken to a nearby village to provide
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food, and the horns, head and body were at the very least removed from the area. In my opinion,

the hunter’s actions were justified as it benefited the species as a whole.

I do not believe that the political left and right criticize each other fairly. Both sides tend

to use fallacies to point out wrongs in the opponents words. The most commonly used fallacies

in politics would have to be the combination of the “strawman” and the “argument of

incredulity”. Politicians will misrepresent the opposing political parties argument, by either not

understanding it, calling it false or knowingly changing what the opposing political party stands

for. Each political party does not seek to understand a position before judging it, disagree

reasonably and not disputatiously, and give reasons for an opinion rather than simply stating it.

Because of this, I do not believe that political parties follow Mortimer Adler’s rules for fair

criticism, as they do not seek to understand the opposing parties' arguments before disagreeing

by playing on emotions and not reason. After reading Dan Crenshaw’s article in the Washington

Post, I realized Crenshaw’s recommendations for understanding one another are similar to

Mortimer Adler’s recommendations. The similarities between the two is that they both ask the

reader to understand the argument at hand and one can disagree using reason. Dan Crenshaw

adds another recommendation when he says to ask, or grant, forgiveness when everything else

fails. Current political discourse calls for a back and forth argument which is meant to make you

pick a side instead of believing in some ideas from one party and some ideas from another. This

is in opposition to what Dan Crenshaw states, as he believes that ideas shouldn’t be held so

highly, as one could disagree with the idea without attacking the person behind the idea. He also

believes that labeling a person as an “-ism”, which many politicians tend to do, is just a form of

name-calling and does not disagree with the opponent's argument reasonably.