In the 1950s, when [the medical community] discovered that they were
involved in ethically thorny issues that were outside their domain of expertise,
they called in philosophers and theologians.
'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating
committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children
and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my
only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?"
And I don't know how to answer those questions.'
The trolley problem, the thought experiment I introduced today, was originally formulated by the philosopher Philippa Foot. It has undergone many variations over the years, including the simplified version I showed today, as well as more complex, morally challenging scenarios (and even a humorous one).
I heard there was some extra credit for posting on the blog. Here it is.
Greg Karabinos
Philosophy
The Matrix
October 24, 2009
Ethics
Throughout the Matrix, Neo is faced with many ethical issues. He must decide weather it is wrong to kill regular humans in the Matrix even if they are following the instructions of the machines. In addition to this he is faced with a choice: is sacrificing one to save the lives of many morally correct? Also, he has to choose between his race and the machines. Even though Neo does not contemplate ethics as much as what is real and unreal they are presented to the viewer as very distinct choices. Each time a moral decision is made in the movie, the viewer is guided to his own conclusion.
While walking through a simulation of the Matrix, Morpheus explains to Neo that the matrix is a system and that system is their enemy. He continues, explaining that in this system all the people that inhabit it, the people they are trying to free are their enemies as long as they are plugged into the Matrix. Ironically, Morpheus and his band cause more harm to the other humans in the Matrix than the machines. They kill countless innocents. Neo accepts this decision without hesitation and shows little remorse in killing and maiming these cogs in the Matrix. Even though it would be impossible for Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus to complete their objectives without this killing, the morality of this is still questionable. In modern wars, civilian casualties are strongly avoided. This is largely due to the fact that each country must answer to the public and other countries. However, Morpheus does not answer to anyone in the Matrix or the real world, during the entire movie he does not have contact with any humans superior to him in the real world. Because of this he is able to make his own decisions, even if they are immoral.
Morpheus helps Neo overlook the moral issues regarding to killing the humans in the Matrix, but Neo must make his own decision when the agents capture Morpheus. The agents are trying to coerce Morpheus into giving them the codes to Zion, the last human city. Neo, Trinity, and Tank are confronted with a choice. They have to decide weather it is morally correct to kill Morpheus for the greater good. They all know that Morpheus would rather die than give up the codes to Zion to the robots. But can they make that decision for him? This is a debated issue today in the modern world in the form of assisted suicide. Is it principled to assist someone’s suicide or is it merely murder? In the Matrix Neo comes up with an answer to this difficult decision. He creates a third option. Instead of letting Morpheus die or murdering him, Neo attempts a daring rescue. To the viewers, this is the most honorable option and it skirts the difficult questions resulting from the choice Neo would have had to make. Can one value a human life? Can a human life be defined by dollars, or is it measurable in other human lives? Are certain lives worth more than others? The Matrix presents the viewer with this question but moves on before the viewer can make a decision.
One of the most important questions of the movie is presented to Neo when he must choose between the Humans and the machines. Although he makes this choice early in the movie when he allies himself with Morpheus, we see that other humans were not as committed as he. Cipher, one of Morpheus’s band betrays them to the agents, computer programs designed to protect the Matrix. While Cipher’s choice is motivated by pure self-gain, it brings doubt to the viewer. Who is right, the machines or humans? Morpheus admits that the humans were the ones who scorched the sky and Agent Smith compares the humans to a virus consuming more and more territory and using up many natural resources. Even though the viewer is clearly intended to support the humans regardless of their past failures, it may not be as obvious choice. Once Neo joins with the humans the machines are bent on his destruction. This forces him to accept the humans as his allies despite his lack of facts.
A viewer of the Matrix is able to question the ethics displayed in the Matrix without the pressure the characters are under. With less resources and time the characters are forced to compromise their ethics occasionally to survive while a viewer has the luxury of principles. Even though the characters may seem to be mercenaries, they are in fact devout believers adhering strictly to their cause. Their enduring goal is to free the humans from the Matrix but their immediate goal is to merely survive. Thus they are compelled to make decisions with less thought to ethics than usual.
In this week's issue of Nature, scientists from Princeton University trained
mice to navigate around a virtual environment using a setup that resembles a
combination of a giant trackball and a mini-iMax theater displaying a virtual
world rendered using a modified version of the Quake 2 open source game
engine. (Here's the academic paper, subscription required.) They hold the
mouse's head still atop a giant trackball, which the mouse turns by running. The
scientists use the rotations to move the mouse around in the virtual
environment, and when he reaches certain places, he gets a reward. Because they
are able to hold the head still, they can stick microscopic glass electrodes
into individual neurons in the hippocampus of this mouse as it 'navigates.' They
find the neural activity that resembles activity during real life navigation,
and learned new things about the inputs and computations that are going on
inside these neurons, which weren't known before.
"While many students who major in philosophy may not become philosophy teachers, they certainly have a wide range of career perspectives and opportunities," says
Nnodim. "Some may pursue a career in law, business, management, as well as in
government, non-profit or international organizations. The skills they gain
studying philosophy complement most careers."
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After escaping the Nazis in Vienna, legendary psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund
Freud invites a young, little known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in
London. Lewis expects to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a
recent book but the dying Freud has a more significant agenda. On the day
England entered WW II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex
and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chose to take his
own.
From the Ars Technica blog:A recent study out of the University of Alberta says that kids who are well-versed in proper spelling are not only unaffected by the atrocities introduced by shortened words and text slang, they actually use complex structures when chatting with each other in addition to new words.
[...]boys who frequently used text speak and abbreviations were less likely to
be good spellers, while the opposite was true of girls—girls who used more
abbreviations tended to be better spellers than girls who did not. This could be
an indication that girls who use abbreviations have a better understanding of
the language and how it relates to "normal" spelling.
[t]he shrill chaos of a million tweets, blogs and call-in cable and radio
shows has entranced us with the sounds of our own voices and immersed us in the
white noise of narcissism.
Rational individuals (and states) will always benefit by being free riders
in the short term. If you do the right thing, you lose; you’re a sucker. Doing
the wrong thing at least keeps you even.
What do you think? Is there really such a thing as "a technological way of life"? By using tech so much, have we forgotten how to solve our problems...except with more technology?? And do back-to-the-earth eco-types represent a new (old) way of thinking?He argues that we are all enmeshed in a technological way of life — our
problems, activities, agendas and so on happen in a social world where
everything is regarded as a standing reserve, a stockpile. [...] We see our problems as technological problems, and our solutions are technological too. It’s all
we can see because we’re stuck in the world we’ve thought oursleves into.
He tells us that we can maybe get out again by reflection on the senses in which
we are enveloped by technology, instead of further attempts to save ourselves
from it with yet more of it. We can look to art, he says, and maybe build
an aesthetic outlook into our way of life. We can think of the mountain as
beautiful, not simply as a source of coal.
Carlin Romano writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education [06/26/2009], describing how President Obama's foreign policy positions are informed by a commitment to philosophical principles from pragmatism to Stoic cosmopolitanism. A selection:
At its core, his teaching was ethical and political, using the intellectual tools of logic to illuminate hypocrisy and contradiction.
Sounds like philosophy to me!
