Hale Ethics Series, 2008-09
Sponsored by the Hale Chair in Applied Ethics
Fall
Thursday, September 18th, 4-5:30, Carlson Auditorium (76-1125)
Teaching Ethics via Sympathy
Dr. Deborah Mower (Youngstown State University)
I recently had an opportunity to teach an ethics course to inmates at the Mahoning County Juvenile Justice Center in Youngstown, Ohio. The motivation for the course was not only to provide the juveniles in the Center with additional programming and educational opportunities, but also to teach them some traditional moral theories in the hope that they would evaluate their past and future actions accordingly. Although the goal of the course was to teach the students traditional moral theories and their application, traditional approaches to teaching ethics are not appropriate given the students’ unique educational, sociological, and psychological factors. Consequently, I developed a course to teach them moral concepts and reasoning without high level theorizing, by trying to develop a natural Humean sympathy as the basis for moral deliberation and action. In this paper, I explain 1) how the course developed the students’ natural sympathy, 2) how sympathy can serve as a heuristic for more complicated moral reasoning in traditional ethical theories, and 3) some interesting implications for public policy regarding moral education and recidivism, as well as for teaching ethics courses generally.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Criminal Justice
Thursday, October 2nd, 4-5:30, Carlson Auditorium (76-1125)
Visiting Low-Income People – Education or Exploitation?
Dr. Kevin Outterson (Boston University School of Law)
Professor Otterson explores ethical critiques against educational tourism in developing countries and poorer communities in wealthy countries. Should US college students visit impoverished communities as part of an educational experience? Or are these programs inherently exploitive and voyeuristic?
Thursday, October 16th, 4-5:30, Carlson Auditorium (76-1125)
E-Voting: How to count 110% of the vote or more! Technological determinism and the limits of professional responsibility
Dr. Don Gotterbarn (East Tennesee State University)
Professionals frequently get lost in the intricacies of their profession and miss the broader responsibilities of their work. Electronic voting is examined as an example of the significant consequences of the failure of professional responsibility. Techniques to help identify these broader responsibilities and reduce significant professional errors, particularly in computer applications, will also be presented.
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Computer Science
and Software Engineering
Thursday, October 30th, 4-5:30, Carlson Auditorium (76-1125)
The Struggle for Regimes of Truth: Power, Artistic Expression and Leadership
Scott Boylston (Savannah College of Art and Design)
A carefully packaged idea can rarely be resisted by those too lazy to think for themselves, and in the right hands such an idea can be elevated to the status of cultural truth. Leaders and would-be leaders, in political, civic and commercial realms, strive to control the levers of power by crafting irresistible truths. Graphic designers use the power of visual persuasion to define these truths as either socially redemptive or corrosive, depending on their own intuitions. If, as Foucault has claimed, modern power owes its strength to the effects it produces at the levels of desire and knowledge, than those with access to and control of the mechanisms that influence modern desire must act in ways that are morally astute and ethically sound.
It has been said that leaders must become designers, and designers leaders. Such a statement must be followed by a strong questioning of what is at stake when effective performance in both of these arenas has no implicit relation to ethical motivations and behavior. This talk will consider frameworks of leadership studies and ethics as a means of exploring the dynamic interplay between leadership, power and artistic expression, and will use examples of visual resistance as its centerpiece.
These presentations are free
and open to all.
If you need interpreting services, contact Cassandra
Shellman as early as you can at 585.475.2057 or via e-mail.
Presentations for previous years