PHI 208 Ashford University CH3 Utilitarian Ethics Symposium Discussion Prompt Week 2 Symposium [WLOs: 2, 3] [CLOs: 3, 4, 5]< If you are having trouble st

PHI 208 Ashford University CH3 Utilitarian Ethics Symposium Discussion Prompt Week 2 Symposium [WLOs: 2, 3] [CLOs: 3, 4, 5]< If you are having trouble starting this video, please access it here (Links to an external site.). Video transcript can be accessed here.(attach below is the script of the video) In the Ancient Greek world (the world of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, often regarded as the birthplace of philosophy) a “symposium” was a banquet held after a meal, an “after party” of sorts that usually included drinking, dancing, recitals, and engaging conversations on the topics of the day. For our purposes in this course, the Symposium discussions will not involve dancing, recitals, or a banquet, but they will provide food for thought on current ethical issues and direct application of the ethical theory discussed in each of these weeks. It is almost impossible these days to turn on the news or log onto social media without encountering a controversy that cries out for ethical discussion. For these Symposium discussions, your instructor will choose a topic of current ethical interest and a resource associated with it for you to read or watch. Your task is to consider how the ethical theory of the week might be used to examine, understand, or evaluate the issue. This week, you will consider how utilitarianism applies to a controversy, dilemma, event, or scenario selected by your instructor. It is a chance for you to discuss together the ethical issues and questions that it raises, your own response to those, and whether that aligns with or does not align with a utilitarian approach. The aim is not to simply assert your own view or to denigrate other views, but to identify, evaluate, and discuss the moral reasoning involved in addressing the chosen issue. Your posts should remain focused on the ethical considerations, and at some point in your contribution you must specifically address the way a utilitarian would approach this issue by explaining and evaluating that approach. If you have a position, you should strive to provide reasons in defense of that position. additional requirements: Symposium Discussion Prompt Please read the description above and/or watch the video explaining the symposium and its requirements. 1. This symposium is a chance for us to discuss ethical issues in a more informal way. For this discussion, make an initial post on an example of your own choosing that represents utilitarian ethics in action. This idea can be drawn from places such as films, books, Internet sources, or your personal experience. For full credit, be sure to sufficiently describe the situation you are referring to in your post, and include a link if possible. 2. In your post, describe the utilitarian thinking that is involved, and show how the ethical point of view reflects your understanding of Utilitarianism. Remember, Utilitarianism is the ethical theory that states laws and actions should be judged as good and bad based on their utility, that is, the RESULTS they produce (the consequences). For a utilitarian, the best actions or laws are those that produce the greatest good for the most people and the least amount of pain. In your reply to a classmate, determine whether or not you agree with the utilitarian approach put forth in their post, and offer reasons why/why not. *****See my example post below these instructions for a more detailed view of what is required!***** A current example of the use of utilitarian ethics can be found in the technology of self-driving cars. The ethical problem involved in self-driving cars (and very reminiscent of the famous ‘trolley problem’ in ethics) revolves around the car’s computer being forced into a situation where it must choose to save the life of the driver or the life of pedestrians. In the article (Links to an external site.) I have linked, the example features three pedestrians wandering absentmindedly into a crosswalk, creating a situation where the autonomous vehicle must choose to hit and kill the people in the crosswalk or swerve off the road and kill the driver in the crash. Surveys (such as the one mentioned in the article and more recent versions) demonstrate that people desire for the car to be programmed with Utilitarianism in mind: a majority of people strongly feel that the car should sacrifice its passenger for the greater good. This reflects Bentham and Mill’s understanding that Utilitarianism seeks to maximize the most happiness for the most people, and thus prioritizes the group over the individual. The dilemma, however, is that when the question is posed as to whether a person would themselves own a car that is programmed with utilitarian ethics (defaults to saving the lives of the most people) or with egoism as its default (programmed to save the driver/passenger at all costs), the selfish programming is preferred. One way to frame this ethical dilemma is to realize that what is problematic is not necessarily the distinction between Utilitarianism/Egoism, but the word that they share in common in this situation: programming. No matter how much machine learning or how many simulations have trained the AI algorithms that decide who lives and dies in this situation, maybe the real problem is that the comparative value of life and death has already been made long before the decisive emergency moment. In this sense, maybe the utilitarian approach is just as good an ethical approach as any other. Perhaps what bothers us is that the life-and-death decision in this hypothetical emergency was made in a laboratory in advance and far-removed from that fateful drive—unlike the reflex-like reaction of a human driver, which, while scarcely qualifying as a decision, could nevertheless be interpreted as split-second Utilitarianism.