Case Analysis Essay
Write a 1 to 1.5 page essay dealing with the case Robot Druggie
WARNING: this case is not simple! It is not about punishing robots.
In your answer, you should follow this short outline here:
1. In a sentence, state what is the important ethical problem in this case.
2. In a few sentences, state a solution or a way to reach a solution to this problem.
3. State which one ethical theory you think best fits this ethical problem & its possible solution. (there are 7 ethical theories to choose from, pick one).
4. Explain why you think this ethical theory fits best (argument)
Dont define the ethical theory in your answer: Dont summarize the case details before giving your argument. Only include details to explain how the theory fits.
The argument should be about a page, single spaced, longer is okay, shorter & you lose points.
NOTES TO ALL ETHICAL THEORIES
RIGHTS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
RIGHTS (ARGUMENT Section of OUTLINE) ……………………………………………………………………….. 11
UTILITARIANISM ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
UTILITARIAN (ARGUMENT section of OUTLINE) ………………………………………………………………. 18
KANTIAN ETHICS ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19
KANTIAN CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE …………………………………………………………………………… 20
OUTLINE FOR KANTIAN ARGUMENTS …………………………………………………………………………….. 24
JUSTICE …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 25
7 JUSTICE CRITERIA ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 28
OUTLINE FOR JUSTICE ARGUMENT. ……………………………………………………………………………….. 28
JOHN RAWLS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 28
OUTLINE FOR RAWLS ARGUMENT ………………………………………………………………………………….. 31
VIRTUE ETHICS …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 32
Some virtues ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 33
Aristotle ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 33
SOME VICES …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 34
OUTLINE FOR VIRTUES ARGUMENT ………………………………………………………………………………. 35
CARING ETHICS ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 36
WEAK CARING ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 36
STRONG CARING ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 37
ARGUMENT OUTLINE FOR CARING THEORY …………………………………………………………………. 40
RIGHTS
RIGHTS are a justified claim to a certain kind of treatment from others, to
help from others or to be left alone by others.
We begin our understanding of ethical theories by first looking at RIGHTS
THEORY. Early rights theory was written as philosophers sought political and
legal rights for everyone. Philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke proposed
that we find in the natural state of man, some conditions or traits that can be
used to justify rights in the ethical sense. With that ethical justification, it would
be possible to argue for legal rights for everyone. Today, we so clearly believe
in rights that we seek no justification. we just have rights.
So, to begin, we look at Hobbes and Locke who tried to imagine what human
beings would be like in a state of nature, before governments and civilization,
and we note how this early philosophy guided rights theory embodied in
American thinking. We then look at more recent views on rights.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
One of the earliest thinkers to discuss rights. Hobbes was a political
philosopher. He was mostly concerned with governments and the relationship of
governments to society. Being a political philosopher was most relevant at his
time because Europe was then only beginning to realize that monarchy was not
the only form of government, and Hobbes had a great hand in bringing about
this realization. Under the monarchial system that prevailed in Europe, kings
were presumed to have ethical divine rights, rights given to kings by God. The
concept of ordinary people having individual rights was strongly advocated by
Hobbes.
In Leviathan, published in 1651, Hobbes maintained that
Man in a state of nature has the right to do what is necessary to protect
himself and to get what he can get however he can get it, everyman for
himself.
Imagine a primitive man living on a tropical island with fellow island natives.
Every day is a fight for existence, to get just a decent coconut for supper. In this
state of nature the strongest or the most devious gets the coconuts. But this is
not a desirable life for most, so men give up their natural right to those
[governments.] who contract [promise] to bring peace and protection.
DO NOT USE OR QUOTE HOBBES ON CASE STUDIES. Students read
Hobbes and misunderstand. Hobbes is saying that once upon a time in the days
of cavemen, before civilization, it was every man for himself. But we do not live
in a state of nature. We are not cavemen. We live in civilized society, we have
given up this everyman for himself rights scenario as soon as we are born in
society. Everyman for himself only applies to a world with complete disorder.
John Locke (1632-1704)
Locke disagreed with Hobbes about the conditions of primitive humans. Locke
maintained that there was never such a state of nature where every man is for
himself alone. Instead, Locke emphasizes that humans are social animals. The
most primitive man is part of a cooperating society. Such cooperation is how
humans as animals survived in nature. Quoting Locke in his 1690 Second
Treatise of Civil Government :
In a natural state all were equal and independent, and none had a right to
harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
Notice how this view is opposed to the Hobbesian state of nature. Also, for
Locke, Government does not over-ride society or individual rights, government
must be accountable.
One of the most important elements of Lockean rights is his view on property
and labor. Locke maintained:
When we mix our labor with the natural world, we blend part of ourselves with
that labor. That is how we come to own property, ethically. So, labor accounts
for most of the property value of an object, but these rights are limited by our
ability to consume & our ability to produce goods–to prevent goods from being
spoiled, or wasted. If we can labor to own more than we can use, then we no
longer have a right to that property. We cannot just let what we have go to
waste while other people do without because they cannot produce. But goods of
greater durability can be exchanged for those that spoil. Money is durable, so
we can exchange money for spoilable goods.
But once we begin to work earnestly and ethically accumulate more of these
valuable durable goods (money) than our neighbors, then we must have some
means of protecting these surplus durable goods so that others wont take them.
Government arises as a means to protect the durable goods that you have
exchanged for the fruits of your labor. In other words, once money comes into
use, government becomes necessary to protect property. Before money and
other such valuable durable goods (jewels, precious art, etc.) man kept what he
could use and no more. Because government arises to protect property of
governed, then:
Property precedes government and government cannot dispose of the
estates of the subjects arbitrarily.
UNITED STATES DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In 1776, we find a formulation of rights borrowed from philosophers such as
Hobbes and Locke, in our own Declaration Of Independence. This document
specifies:
INALIENABLE RIGHTS to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Inalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away or ignored. They are
rights you cannot give up. Inalienable rights are a cornerstone of Lockean rights
and prove very important to rights today.
Be aware, rights specified in the U.S. Constitution are legal rights. These rights
were originally formulated on the basis of ethical rights. You cannot use legal
rights to justify ethical rights. Instead, ethical rights are used to justify legal
rights. Using our constitutional rights to justify ethical rights is an unethical
perspective. If you want to say we should have a right because it is written in
our U.S. constitution, this is like saying that people outside of the U.S. do not get
or should not also get those rights. Indeed our constitution is irrelevant. When
discussing rights be careful not to confuse ethical rights with legal rights. A legal
right is not an ethical right. Ethical rights are the reasons for legal rights. Legal
rights are not reasons for ethical judgments about rights.
Human Rights
Human rights are the rights internationally recognized by the United Nations.
According to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, all human beings
have some basic moral rights, some of which are:
right not to be killed
the right not to be harmed
the right to liberty (freedom of movement and benign action.)
In this course, we will not use this language of human rights. Instead, rights are
human rights, unless you look at animal rights. Animal rights rarely come up in
relation to computers, so we just will refer to rights.
NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE RIGHTS
In contemporary ethics of rights, a distinction is made between negative
and positive rights.
NEGATIVE RIGHTS
Negative rights are rights to not be interfered with. Negative here refers to being
left alone, taking no action against us. Negative rights are rights to do what we
want or what we need to do, and nobody should stop us in doing what we need
to do as long as we do not interfere with the negative rights of others. These are
our freedom rights, such as:
right to practice religion we choose
right to move about from place to place
right to protect ourselves from danger
right to privacy
right to free speech
right to make our own sexual choices
right to seek work to provide for ourselves and our dependents.
right to seek information
right to buy, sell, trade
right to offer services
POSITIVE RIGHTS
Positive rights are rights to help from others (almost always the government) so
that we can reasonably survive, such as:
right to food, clothing, and shelter
right to safety
right to medical treatment
right to information
It is important to recognize that these positive rights do not supersede our
negative rights. Government does not automatically provide us with food or
clothing. These are provided when we cannot get them for ourselves. Positive
here refers to getting something added to our lives, something that we cannot
add for ourselves for whatever reasons. In a perfect world, we would all be able
to always get the things we need for ourselves. In a perfect world, we would
only have negative rights. But things happen that require government to step in
and provide for us, thus our positive rights arise. After a hurricane, flood,
wildfire, earthquake or tornado, people lose their homes and most of their
property. They are given temporary shelter, food, etc until they can recover from
the disaster and build their lives again. A change of clothes, a place to bathe:
we desperately need these in times of disaster and at those times government
should provide them for us. This is our positive right. Clothing is one of the few
durable goods that are usually considered our personal property yet serve also
as a positive right. Property is otherwise not a positive right.
For example, in the USA victims of natural disasters are given FEMA trailers to
live in when their homes are destroyed. The FEMA trailers provide shelter. The
government supplied shelter because this is a basic positive right. But once
homes are rebuilt, they have to call FEMA to pick up the trailers because the
government did not give them property, just shelter. We do not have a positive
right to own a home. Property rights are negative rights or privileges. Property
rights are not positive rights. We have the negative right to get shelter, and have
that shelter be as permanent as we can get. This would be a kind of negative
right to try to get property. But actually getting property is a privilege of your
circumstance of being able to manage to get property without violating rights of
anyone else. Simply put, government does not owe you a home to keep.
Property is something we want, but we do not necessarily need to own to
survive.
For Locke, property is an important negative right. But by this he means, if you
work to get property, nobody should just decide to take it away from you, not if
you are innocent in how you got that property. In other words, if you got
property by doing actions that did not violate rights of others, then nobody
should be able to just take your property.
Ethically speaking, we do not have the right to make a profit.
Profit is a privilege, not a right. We do not have a negative right to not be
interfered with so that we can make a profit. We do not have a positive right to
help from the government so that we can make a profit. We have the negative
right to buy and sell, and, ethically speaking we might go as far as saying we
have the negative right to break even, but not to maximize profit.
In most countries, people have the legal right to keep profit. But when
discussing rights be careful not to confuse ethical rights with legal rights. A legal
right is not an ethical right. But just because we have no right to make a
profit, does not mean if we seek profit we are losing rights.
Many of the things we need to do to make profit are well within our ethical rights.
In almost all circumstances we have the right to offer goods for sale, to price
those goods, etc. There is nothing inherently unethical about profit. Profit is just
like a Christmas Bonus. You get that bonus in part if you merit it, but also in part
if you are lucky. You do not have a moral right to a bonus. But that does not
mean there is anything wrong with getting a bonus, it just means it is not much
relevant to ethics of rights. Please, just do not mention profit when doing
rights analyses. Profit is not relevant to rights. Do not say that we have no
right to make a profit. This is not relevant. Profit is a motivation for buying and
selling and offering services. You have a right to buy, sell, and offer services as
long as when you do, you do not violate rights of others. Your motivation for
doing business is not relevant.
IMPORTANT: MORE ON DISTINCTION BETWEEN NEGATIVE RIGHTS &
POSITIVE RIGHTS
So we understand that negative rights are rights to do what we want or what we
need to do. These are fairly clear. The right to privacy, right to free speech, right
to protect ourselves, right to make our own sexual choices, right to work to
provide food clothing & shelter for ourselves and our dependents.
Then how do we distinguish these negative rights from positive rights? When
our negative rights are very important, they may need assistance from
governments. This was the point of the social contract theories of Hobbes &
Locke. Governments help us by providing our rights when we cannot or they
help us by making it easier for all of us to see our rights are met. Any positive
right also has a negative right that mirrors it. The difference between negative
and positive rights is that for the positive rights governments help us.
EXAMPLE:
We have the right to information.
This means that we have the negative right to seek information we need, and
nobody should interfere with our attempts to gather correct information. But as
we all know, there are many people who try to distort the facts, and try to make
it very difficult for us to get correct information. Right to information is such an
important right that it often is a positive right too. This means that it is the duty of
government to provide correct information to citizens, and to punish those who
gravely violate our right to correct information. Notice that this right can conflict
with our right to free speech. Is it okay for people to lie and distort the truth? Do
we violate their right to free speech when we punish them? These are important
considerations.
RIGHTS ENTAIL DUTIES. NO DUTY, NO RIGHT.
Usually philosophers explain the link between rights and duties in a
reciprocating sense. If you have the right to free speech then you have the DUTY
to reciprocate that right to other people and let them speak freely to you.
But the relationship between rights and duties is actually more basic than
reciprocation. The best way to see this is to look at rights as a natural gift, and
gifts should not be treated like they are nothing. We have all of us gone through
the processes of getting gifts of Freedom and understand it in this basic sense.
We all grew up. As a child you had most of the positive rights: rights to food,
clothing, shelter, freedom from harm. But your negative rights were almost nil.
You did not have the right to freedom of movement. Everywhere you went you
had to have adult supervision. You had no rights to have sex or speak your
mind freely. Your positive right to information was also greatly curtailed. There
were just some things your parents did not want you to know about. But along
with being a virtual prisoner of your parents and teachers, you had very few
duties (responsibilities). Lack of responsibility is the special gift of childhood. As
you grew up, you were given rights: right to drink beer, right to have sex, etc.
But along with these rights came the responsibilities. You can drink now, but
should be responsible enough to handle that alcohol. You can have sex, but
must be responsible for having safe sex or have to deal with all the
consequences of unsafe sex. RIGHTS BRING DUTIES.
Positive Rights of Children
Children are very limited in their negative rights. They are so limited because
they are not yet able to reasonably and freely choose in many areas of consent.
Children do not have the negative right to all information. They do not have most
negative rights of sexual freedom. BUT, children have the most positive rights of
all humans. It is our duty to protect children, to keep them safe from sexual
coercion, to provide them with health care, education, a safe home, etc. It is not
only government that has a duty to provide children with positive rights, it is a
duty of parents, relatives, teachers, and all of us.
Robert Nozick (1938-2002)Twentieth Century Rights
Robert Nozick is an extreme libertarian. Extreme libertarians hold that no one
has positive rights. We only have the basic negative right to freedom from
coercion which is the right not to be forced to do things against our will. Only
time we can rightfully be forced to do something against our will is when we are
forced to stop coercing others.
But this extreme libertarianism fails to see that, given so much freedom for
everyone, then Hobbes state of nature would seem to follow–one person
exercising freedom often restricts freedom of someone else. Such conflict of
rights are discussed in terms of prima facie rights.
PRIMA FACIE RIGHTS
In legal discourse, rights are distinguished in terms of overriding rights and
Prima Facie Rights. Some rights contradict, given certain circumstances, and
when this arises, some rights become secondary and are then obviated
(cancelled). The rights which are weaker are called Prima Facie Rights. Prima
means first and facie means face. Prima facie literally means first face, as in
superficial, just outward appearance. Prima facie rights are rights that appear at
first to be important until some more important right stands in its way, then the
prima facie does not seem so important. Although Prima Facie Rights are
mostly discussed in legal literature, they are indeed based on the notion of
Prima Facie Ethical Rights.
My negative right to whatever is often, (sometimes very) likely to interfere with
your right. For example, I have the right to listen to music. But if I play music
loud enough, this can interfere with your right to peace and quiet. Which right
wins out? We could decide by which right is more necessary to our basic needs.
Do I need to listen to music? Do I need peace and quiet? Well, most everyone
agrees, we need peace and quiet for well being. Music is an extra, not a need.
But making this decision is not necessarily so simple. Back home (New Orleans
area) music is considered necessary to life, like breathing. It is difficult to get
people to buy into the peace and quiet line. Notice that I have switched from
talking about ethics as what is right and wrong for everyone regardless of what
their culture believes, to looking at what people agree about, and that can vary.
This switch is okay because once we start talking about needs we are talking
about FACTS, not just ethics. If ethics relates to facts then we start looking for
facts about needs that we agree are not subjective and not just cultural. In the
case of the right to listen to music, weighed against the right to peace and quiet,
we find a need involved that is definite: we need to sleep. Everyone has a right
to sleep at night. So if you play music at night and disturb sleep of your
neighbors, you have violated their more important right to sleep at night, even in
Louisiana, except during Mardi Gras, Christmas Eve, and countless town
festivals.
Doing ethical rights analysis of cases is often a matter of weighing conflicting
rights, like music v. sleep.
Negative rights almost always trump positive rights. The philosophical concept
that best explains why is the difference between doing nothing and taking
action. Governments, in doing nothing, might not completely fulfill their duty to
provide positive rights, but in taking action that violates negative rights
governments put themselves in the unethical position of violating rights of
innocent people. You cannot provide positive rights if it means performing
actions that violate the rights of innocent people. This applies almost universally
in rights theory. Every positive right is based on a negative right that a person
cannot meet on their own. It is the negative right that “grounds” the ethical
imperative of positive rights. It is because we have the negative right to try to get
our own food, clothing, and shelter that we extend that right to positive rights,
making the ethical case that when we cannot get them, someone has to give
them to us. You have negative rights, and only in very special circumstances
should positive rights kick in. Your negative rights arise as you reach the age of
consent: adulthood that signifies you can make logical choices about your own
life and your own needs.
Would we want government to provide everything for us? Most of us would
prefer to make our own choices about how we get basic necessities because we
get a sense of fulfillment and worth from doing things for ourselves (exercising
our negative rights) instead of having government give these to us. Free choice
is the basis of rights theory. Rational adults should make their own choices.
GOVERNMENT DUTIES, INNOCENT PEOPLE, & CONFLICTING RIGHTS
Governments have no rights. Governments are not people. Government staff
are people, and as private citizens, off duty, they have rights. But as staff of
government in their role as government, they have no rights. Governments only
have duties: duty to serve the people they represent. This role of duty applies to
police, teachers, NSA, TSA, elected officials, monarchs, and appointed officials,
etc. The only right preserved even while functioning as government staff, is right
to free speech, but even free speech may have limits when you are working for
government.
Given rights theory, government has 2 basic duties:
1. protect negative rights
2. provide positive rights.
The role of government in terms of conflicting rights is especially important to
computer ethics and negative rights. While it is true that rights often conflict, it is
also true that innocent people should not have their negative rights violated, not
if they do not violate rights of others.
This becomes most important in issues of privacy and government interference.
These days it almost seems that governments believe technology can and
should be used in the name of right to safety. But if you do not violate safety
your rights do not conflict with rights of others. Governments use prima facie
rights against us, and they do so often in the name of an ethics of rights. One
mistake students usually make is to assume that right to safety often conflicts
with your rights to privacy or free speech or information. But, if you are innocent,
you have no rights in conflict. Yes, government has the duty to provide you with
safety, but this positive right to safety cannot be used as an excuse for
government to violate your negative rights to privacy, not if you are innocent of
any violation of rights of others. If you are INNOCENT, you are just not a threat
to safety. If you are an innocent person, not going to hurt anyone, government
cannot shackle you, lock you up, scan you, pat you down, just to make sure
everyone is safe. They can only do this to those who threaten safety.
Human beings are individuals each with dignity & self-worth. We are not cattle
being horded onto trucks, we are not bits of straw in a collective haystack that
need to be prodded and inspected in order to weed out the needles in the
haystack. If you are not a threat, there is no conflict between your negative
rights and your safety or the safety of anyone else.
In order to violate your privacy government must have good reason to assume
your guilt. Government needs to have proof that you as an individual are a
threat to safety before they can start treating you like you might be a threat to
safety by scanning you, reading your mail, or whatever. This is rights theory.
But how then are they to know who is meaning to cause harm if they cannot
screen us first? Government does have a problem here. The solution is to find
non-invasive ways to screen us, etc. Government must find some other way to
provide you with safety, they cannot violate the rights of innocent people in
order to give you safety. At least they cannot do so in the name of an ethics of
rights.
RIGHTS (ARGUMENT Section of OUTLINE)
1. DEFINE RIGHTS: RIGHTS are a justified claim to a certain kind of treatment from
others, to help from others or to be left alone by others. (just copy and paste definition)
2. State very generally, in one sentence, if rights are violated
3. List ALL groups or individuals whose rights are or might be involved (a sentence)
4. Write a paragraph for each group (or each individual) explaining how their rights are
possibly involved. Explain the importance of that right.
5. Explain in a separate paragraph which rights are violated, if any.
6. Explain in a separate paragraph which rights conflict, if any do
7. If there are conflicting rights, weigh the conflicting rights of the groups: which are most
important?
UTILITARIANISM
UTILITARIANISM-promotes consequences that bring the greatest benefit AND
the least harm overall.
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory
Consequentialism examines the ethical results of an action, not the ethical
mindset that caused the action.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Bentham was the founder of utilitarianism. He states in An Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789):
The pleasure principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number is
the foundation of morals and legislation.
The ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, be the benchmark of how
we treat other beings.
Notice immediately that there is no distinction here between who is suffering,
and there is no distinction between one form of suffering and another. Suffering
is suffering. Animals count as much as people. There are no people who count
more than others.
EXAMPLE You must kill or severely harm a child who is in the line of fire of
someone who will kill hundreds of people if not stopped. Ethically, utilitarianism
would say you must sacrifice the child to save hundreds if you can clearly see
that the result would be savings so many lives.
Utilitarianism may seem at times outrageous, and through his calculus
Bentham sometimes seems heartless and cold. But unlike any and all other
philosophers we will look at, Bentham was active in trying to reform
