MCTS0041: Advanced Module - Ethics & Responsibility: Society, Technology and Environment
Discussions about ethics – about what we ought to do – can be found everywhere. These discussions range from dull to sensational, from abstract to vivid. In this course, we explore some of the main approaches to ethics, starting with more systematic philosophical accounts, and then looking at ethical issues in the context of the environment and technology. These issues cross the boundaries of philosophy, sciences, and humanities, and raise questions about our roles as humans in the universe we inhabit.
Questions we will discuss include: can we use abstract theories to help us decide what to do? Is it possible or desirable to be ethically consistent? Do we have a moral obligation to non-human or non-living things? How important are co-operation and competition in human lives, and in nature more broadly? Is technology ethically neutral? What are the ethical risks of emerging technologies? What is the relationship between ethics and science? Is the internet dead? How much control do we and should we have over our own attention span?
- Dozent: Elis Jones