ETHICS INSTRUCTIONS!

 
1. Go to K:\Staff_To_Students\IB Subjects\Core\TOK\Trolleyology and find the audio podcast entitled "Trolleyology 1". Listen to this podcast carefully, making some notes as you go along.
 
2. Go to the blog site and look for the thread corresponding to your particular TOK teacher. Read the contribution made by your teacher (and those made by other students who may have got there before you). Participate by adding your own contributions.
 
3. When your teacher gives you the go ahead, go back to to find the podcast "Trolleyology 2" and listen to that. Discussion will continue on the same threads on the blog - continue to make your contributions.
 
Although you may well wish to make contributions that add a new direction to the interaction, please remember that it is a "conversation" that we want - in other words, you should try to take what other people have written and move the discussion onward - by agreeing, disagreeing, developing, etc., always with justifications.
 
At the end of this event, you will be required to compose a blog tracker like the ones you made last year, and your quantity and quality of involvement will be assessed.
 
We are very excited by the possibilities of this event. Let's work hard to make them real. Good luck to us all.

Mr. Oduro

Is denying someone medicine that might save their life because the drugs are very expensive and the person is old the same as killing him or her? If not, what is the difference? 

a conviction in malawi

We will shortly be turning our attention in this course to the field of ethics, and we will need to examine how people should and do employ reason to arrive at moral judgements. Here is a story that is "breaking news" today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/africa/10121618.stm

The judge convicted the couple on the grounds that what they were doing was "against the order of nature". Leaving aside for now what he might have meant by that, consider the following:

What OTHER moral claims could be made that would (a) support the conviction, or (b) help to overturn it? In more general terms, what grounds are there for condemning or accepting the actions of a couple such as this?

Each reply to this thread should include at least one example of each please! I don't want your personal judgement on the matter; I want you to identify the grounds that could be invoked on either side. We want to get beyond instant opinions in order to access the premises and assumptions that lie at their roots.

can you hurt a chimpanzee's feelings?

Reading the following article made me think about the origins of our ways of knowing and how this might affect our ethical stance with regard to other animals:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/30/chimpanzees-emotions-ethics

Here are some TOK-related questions to which you may want to respond:

1) How can we know if animals experience feelings that correspond to the emotions we as humans possess?

2) If certain animals (such as chimpanzees) are indeed receptive to the kinds of emotional experiences with which we are familiar, would that obligate us to treat those animals ethically?

3) Would such an ethical treatment extend to recognizing that animals have rights? Can anyone or anything have rights without responsibilities?

4) Why might we make the existence of feelings or emotions the deciding factor in our ethical attitudes to animals? Why not the ability to construct or use language, or to reason effectively? Or, for that matter, to perceive?

orlando figes's reviews

Hi Everyone,

Here are a couple of links to an academic scandal that has emerged in the last few days:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/23/historian-orlando-figes-amazon-reviews-rivals

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/The-historian-the-savage-reviews-and-the-literary-whodunnit.htm

A hitherto well-respected and prominent historian admits to writing anonymous bad reviews of the work of other historians on the Amazon site, and nice ones about his own work! When suspicion is aroused, he first of all says it was his wife that wrote them, then eventually admits that he did.

What might this tell us about the world in which historians work? Before the WWW age, it would be very difficult to broadcast views so easily and so anonymously - do you think this raises any ethical issues and, if so, how should they be addressed?

milgram experiment updated

Hi everyone,

Take a look at:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100317/tod-torture-game-show-draws-nazi-compari-870a197.html

Does this simply replicate the original psychology experiments on obedience by Stanley Milgram, or are there important differences?

In Milgram's work, authority was represented by a "scientist" figure. Who or what represents authority in this instance?

Does this "game show" tell us more about the power of individuals in positions of authority (Milgram's primary focus) or the power of institutions as a whole to mould our behaviour?

Do you think the reported "Nazi comparisons" could be justified? Is it OK for "lay people" to make such comparisons on the basis of this "game show" but not OK for a professional psychologist like Stanley Milgram to make similar comparisons?

If Milgram's findings on human behaviour are valid, what should be done in order to avoid the negative consequences that seem to stem from them? Are we drawn to the conclusion that society must somehow be "engineered" in ways that prevent certain circumstances from arising?

"the island"

Dear Everyone,

I hope you are settling back into the school routine after such a busy weekend. We all hope that you found a satisfactory combination of work and enjoyment (and the intersection between).

Let us turn to our Saturday afternoon activity (before the storm). In effect, we had 5 "worldviews" interacting - liberal, religious conservative, capitalist, xenophobe and eco-pantheist! These might have been caricatures of more nuanced positions, but I think the principle is valid and leads us to the following questions:

Despite our differences as humans, are there some core values that we can all accept? Many of you expressed your response to the activity as a set of rules, but those rules surely arise out of underlying values. What were some of those values on which you think we can all agree?

How difficult was it to identify these common values, and what are the implications of your answer to this question? If it was extremely difficult, does this mean that our efforts in the modern world to create functioning multicultural societies are doomed? Is all this "international-mindedness" a grave error, an impossible dream? Or is there some way of nudging people towards acceptable compromise - perhaps through legal or political means?

What would be the consequences of believing that our sense of morality arises from abstract principles such as fairness and the avoidance of harm, or from an external authority such as a god, or perhaps from our feelings and conscience? How did these alternatives affect your group's work?

Let's explore the issues here and see where they lead...