Section 2 Flashcards
(94 cards)
What are the objectives of normative ethics?
To establish standards or norms for ethical behavior.
What are the objectives of descriptive ethics?
To describe and analyze people’s beliefs about morality.
What are the key tensions present in ethical discussions?
- Limited resources
- Competing kinds of good
- Different ideas about what is good.
What are the two varieties of ethical statements?
- Normative statements
- Descriptive statements
What is a normative statement?
An assessment of how things should be rather than how they are.
What is an example of a normative statement?
‘Being kind is more important than being the most successful.’
What is the relationship between descriptive and normative judgments?
Descriptive judgments can reflect underlying normative judgments.
What is the significance of choosing details in descriptions?
It involves normative judgments about relevance and importance.
What is the challenge in making ethical judgments?
Determining which facts are most important and how to describe them.
What is participatory design?
A practice that emphasizes multidisciplinary reflection in design.
What is the purpose of studying different ethical frameworks?
To provide different ways of asking and answering questions about ethical challenges.
True or False: Ethical living requires individuals to sacrifice their own needs.
False.
What is a zero-sum situation?
A scenario where one person’s gain is another person’s loss.
What is the difference between ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’?
‘Morals’ refer to personal standards, while ‘ethics’ involves thoughtful reflection on those standards.
What are the three changes that have been brought about by the societal impacts of computer technologies?
- Reproducibility of information
- Information Flow (many-to-many communication)
- Identity Conditions: the ability to communicate anonymously but also have made individuals easier to track/identify in general
What are the two major professional societies within the computing fields?
- ACM (The Association for Computing Machinery)
- IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
What are the four major frameworks discussed in the textbook?
- Deontology
- Utilitarianism
- Virtue Ethics
- Communitarianism
Deontology
Emphasizes moral obligation and prescribes or describes moral principles that govern ethics
Virtue Ethics
Centers on the human character as the locus of moral activity and emphasizes how we develop and exercise good qualities.
Communitarianism
Focuses on the interdependence of human nature and how that shapes our possibilities for well-being and self-realization
Utilitarianism
Prioritizes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people and therefore focuses on the outcomes of actions.
Metaphysics
Our understanding of how the world works and the nature of reality, including what human beings are and are for.
This ethical framework emphasizes the rightness or wrongness of an action by reference to certain principles.
Deontology
What is a moral relativist?
Someone who believes that all moral judgements are based on individual viewpoints and that no one viewpoint ought to be privileged above any other