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//********* Textbook Ethics and Exam 1 Review - October 2nd, 2019 ***********//
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- Alright; today I have a little bit more to teach, and then I'll talk about your exam on MONDAY
- Let's talk about the exam now:
- The exam will have 10-15 multiple choice answers, and 5-10 short answer questions (as in 1-3 sentences)
- Example short answer questions would be along the lines of "Here's a concept X: what does the book say X is?"
- It should hopefully take 30 min to complete
- To study, I'd recommend looking through your notes, checking definitions, and so on
- All of the questions should come from stuff we talked about in-class; there may
- Also, BRING A PEN! Pencils can smear; you can scribble out incorrect stuff if you need
- Here's a (hopefully) pretty complete list of stuff we talked about, although you may need to recall stuff from the readings as well:
- Professionalism (what is it?)
- Social contract account / sociological account
- Engineers and licenses
- Prohibitive, preventative, aspirational ethics
- It will NOT be about people, but concepts; I won't ask you questions about Jeremy Bentham, but you SHOULD know the authors we read in case I ask about them
- Branches of philosophy: metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, etc.
- Responsibility
- Standard of care
- Kinds of intent: intent to harm, recklessness, negligence, etc.
- Kansas City Hyatt Regency case
- Citycorp Center case
- Columbia accident investigation board
- Ethics (some stuff from today)
- Facts, concepts, "paradigmatic cases"
- "Creative middle way" solutions
- Norms, relativism
- Four types of judgement: permissible, impermissible, obligatory, superogatory (look in Chapter 2)
- Heidelberg University crash simulations (used dead corpses as crash test dummies)
- Utilitarianism (what is it?)
- John Stuart Mill
- Greatest happiness principle
- Consequentialism
- Act vs rule utilitarianism
- Deontology (what is it?)
- Immanuel Kant
- Reason, duties
- Categorical imperative
- "Do NOT be misled by the shortness of this slide; deontology is an important topic"
- The book's "respect for persons" is a dumbed-down version of deontology's idea that we should respect persons as ends in themselves
- Care Ethics
- Focus on familial relationships (parent/child, family/elderly, etc.)
- Focus on dependence, inequality
- Virginia Held, care & justice
- Virtue Ethics (what is it?)
- Aristotle
- Virtues, character, how to acquire them
- NOT about individual choices (why?)
- "Doctrine of the mean"
- SCOT (what is it?)
- Social Reconstruction of Technology
- What are the main claims?
- Pinch and Bijker "Social Construction of Facts/Artifacts" (bicycle)
- Interpretive flexibility
- Bicycle/Moog/oral contraceptives example
- Actor-Network Theory (what is it?)
- What can count as an "actor?"
- Difference between ANT and SCOT?
- Bruno Latour's "Technology is Society Made Durable"
- Key chain and speed bump examples
- Case Studies
- Pinto case
- Automated cars
- Military virtue
- Trolling cases (recitation this Friday)
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- So, after a semester thus far of talking about right and wrong, the book takes a very practical approach to this stuff as a "toolkit" to consult if we ever run into sticky situations
- The book really doesn't care about which theories are "right" or "wrong;" it just takes a very pragmatic approach to things, which is kinda "meh" for professional philosophers
- However, it DOES have some pretty good advice!
- Many of these moral theories assume we have reasonable information about the problem, but "many moral disagreements turn out to be disagreements over the relevant facts"
- For instance, you might be arguing with a coworker over whether or not to run some tests on your car, and they might think the tests take 6 months while YOU know they'll only take 2-3 weeks
- The book basically says "genuine moral disagreements happen, but they happen WAY less often"
- "Some of the best advice I've ever gotten was similar to this; I got offered a great postdoc opportunity after graduation, but I wasn't comfortable with the research topic. I went to one of my mentors, and he was like 'hey, maybe you don't have to make a moral decision here; just slow down and think things through.' And as it turned out, Professor Rosenberg ended up getting another, equally good opportunity from that lab that wasn't as controversial."
- The book also tells us to be clear about concepts and what they mean within our team: what exactly do we mean by "conflict of interest," "public safety," "taking bribes", etc.
- For instance, an engineer might say "oh, we can't worry about making something safe," and before you go on a tirade about engineering's duty to the public and blahblahblah you ask him "Hey, what do you mean by SAFE?" "Oh, I just meant we can't ever make something 100% safe - of course we're going to run the standard tests and such!"
- So, make sure you're on the same page; you guys might actually agree about something, but be using terms in different ways
- Another piece of advice is to try and think of "paradigmatic cases:" if the situation we're in is morally gray, we can try and think of a really clear example of what's going on instead
- For instance, let's say you're working at a consulting company, and they're telling your bosses we should use Product X - and Product X's HR people then give them stuff in return. Does that count as a bribe? We're not sure!
- "So, what DEFINITELY counts as a bribe? A giant bag with a dollar sign on it - if these HR people handed him THAT, it must be bad! And what definitely DOESN'T count as a bribe?"
- So, comparing that to our case, we can try and compare them: how big is the bribe? Does our company get a cut? Who knows about this? Is their advice genuine?
- Occasionally, we'll run into cases when 2 different rules in our organization's code conflict
- Sometimes, the choice between the 2 is clear (minimizing cost vs "the health and safety of the public")
- Often we can think of a solution that sidesteps the entire issue - "okay, if I can't convince my boss testing this is the right thing to do, maybe I can convince them the PR backlash isn't worth it, or that it'll save us money in the long run"
- Finally, for PR stuff, it's important to lay out what conditions you're using
- There was some stuff I asked you to look at in Chapter 2 last week; I'd recommend looking at some of that stuff for the exam
- Okay, for Friday read the news articles about Trolling on Canvas - good luck studying, and see you next week!