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//************* What Even is Ethics? - September 9th, 2019 ******************//
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- Note to self: Walking across campus, in 90 degree weather, in a suit, results in sweat (in rather copious amounts)
- ...it's actually dripping onto my keyboard. Delightful.
- Still, body's working fine, the heat will pass, and life goes on
- "Alright, we're back in business!"
- Our first recitations start THIS FRIDAY! Double-check what section you're in and where you need to go
- Today, then, is going to be our crash-course introduction to ethics; Wednesday is when we'll start getting into ethical theories, and there'll be a READING QUIZ at the start of class!
- The reading will be posted after class; in general, if you can't make it to class for a legitimate reason, just give me a heads-up a week or two before and I'll let you make the quiz up
- We'll also, for a limited time only, be taking attendance! (We apparently must fulfill the university's mandatory whims)
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- So, what've we done so far?
- We did a crash-course introduction to philosophy, and talked a little bit about our textbook and the concept of "responsibility" in engineering
- Now, for the next few weeks, we'll start talking about high-level ethical theories
- So, what is ethics, anyway?
- Broadly speaking, ethics is the study of right and wrong
- What does it mean to be good? To be evil? Are there moral obligations we have to do? What are they? Are there good things that are "optional"? Should you sacrifice your own good for others? Are there exceptions? Why? Are there general moral principles at all? These are the sorts of question ethicists try to answer
- It seems that ethics are related - somehow - to NORMATIVITY
- A NORM is a thing we're supposed to do; it's not a description of how things "are," but how they OUGHT to be
- This doesn't have to be an ethical claim, per se; "you should change your oil after 5000 miles" is a rule that might make you a good car owner, but not a good/moral person
- Saying "you should take care of your car so you don't hurt other people," though, could be a moral claim!
- So, these claims are PRESCRIPTIVE, rather than DESCRIPTIVE
- This is an important (dare I say...test worthy?) distinction about norms
- It seems ethics are also related to FREEDOM
- After all, it seems that acting morally requires us to make free choice; if someone puts a gun to my head and says "Kick this puppy," I think we'd agree the gun-holder is the wrongdoer, not me (at least not as much)!
- In general, philosophers have said that moral culpability requires free choice, and that there can be different levels of responsibility
- We might not hold a drunk person as accountable as a sober person, but we'd still say they made the choice to drink)
- Sartre has something to say about this - which we will skip, because we're running behind!
- There are a couple common issues that come up in ethics
- RELATIVISM is the idea that morality is somehow human-defined, and can change from place to place
- CULTURAL RELATIVISM is where we say something like "well, we can't judge that country/religion/etc. for doing X, they have a totally different culture"
- Practically, many countries have different engineering codes - is that okay? Can I build something in Kenya I know wouldn't be safe in America?
- Similarly, in some countries taking bribes is a normal part of doing business - but that seems wrong to us! So, is it wrong?
- What about more extreme things, like old Viking cultures where violence was an important part of the culture? Can we judge that? Do we have a right to tell them that's wrong?
- INDIVIDUAL RELATIVISM is where we say "well, I can't judge that person, that person has a different code of values than me"
- CONSCIENCE is that voice in your head that tells you something "feels" wrong
- This is NOT the same thing as "conscious" - say the right word, people!
- At the same time, we all know we've felt things before and been wrong about it - so should we trust our conscience? How much?
- RELIGION and its relationship to ethics
- MANY people in the world base their ethics primarily on their religious beliefs
- Kierkegaard was a Christian philosopher who was extremely concerned about if God were to tell someone to do something we'd normally consider against conscience ("teleological suspension of the ethical"), as well as other religious issues
- By FAR, he wasn't
- We won't be talking about this too much in this class, but it's a VERY deep topic
- Some people will talk about EVOLUTIONARY or GAME THEORY as the origin of ethics
- Again, we won't talk about this too much in our course, but this is looking at stuff like the Prisoner's Dilemma and studying what the best possible outcome is, hypothesizing how ethics might be rooted in our biological development (if at all), etc.
- For the Prisoner's Dilemma, tit-for-tat (helping people who help you, hurting people who hurt you) seems to be the best strategy in almost all cases (even simulations and stuff)
- People have studied this and tried to extrapolate it to how society evolved
- Again, a HUGE field that we're going to be mostly ignoring
- So, what ethical theories ARE we looking at? There are gazillions, but we're looking at 4 big ones:
- UTILITARIANISM, promoted by Mill
- This is what the reading'll be for Wednesday (Chapter 2; ESPECIALLY focus on pages 6-12); you don't need to completely understand it, but at least be able to show you read it
- DEONTOLOGY, promoted by Kant
- VIRTUE ETHICS, promoted by Aristotle
- CARE ETHICS, promoted by Held
- There's also a reading on Friday about the "Ford Pinto Case" in your textbook; make sure to do it for your recitation!
- This is directly connected to utilitarianism, so make sure to do it!
- Alright, there we go! Make sure to do the reading (remember, there's a quiz!), and welcome back to classes!