How much moral philosophy?
The goals I bring to the class, as described above, are not the only goals possible. When Earl Barr taught this class he aimed to raise the level beyond the kind of discussions one hears between friends at a coffee shop. He would like to see our discussion of ethics-and-technology as a small increment in the unending dialectic that characterizes philosophical ethics. So when I taught the course jointly with Earl, about a third of the class was taken on readings in moral philosophy, and in latter parts of the class students were expected to frame their analyses according to the schools of philosophy we had discussed. For example, one considers a question like piracy by trying to understand what the utilitarian point of view might be towards it, a deontological view, a rights-based view, or a virtue-based one. (One school of thought that Earl prohibits the students from invoking is ethical relativism, since Earl believes, and I concur, that it does not engender good discussions or insigh
