Notes: The Moral Sphere was crafted by Michael Shermer, the sphere determines how much ethical consideration we give people and things. This is useful for engineers because it guides us with our motives, and helps us answer the question of who or what is deserving of ethical treatment and why.
Fact 1: Ethics is linked to science and engineering.
Fact 2: As people follow the moral sphere more as science progresses, ethics should also continue to increase.
1.Consider the moral spheres chart. Do you agree with its structure? Do you believe it is an accurate representation of contemporary moral spheres? Would you rearrange it or change it in any way? I agree with it mostly, however I do believe that friends can be in the inner sphere along with family. I don’t believe that blood is the only thing family is. I do believe that it is an accurate representation of contemporary moral spheres. I would just include friends and mentors in the inner sphere.
2. Consider an ethical dilemma you’ve faced. Was your decision in this instance based on abstract reasoning? If so, can you conclude that ethical considerations are inherently linked to the type of thinking used by scientists and engineers? If not, what other factors might influence the outcome of these decisions? An ethical dilemma that I have faced where I had to make a decision is where a bird hit my window and I had to choose to either end its misery or try and save it. I chose to end its misery, because I am not a doctor, so the chances of me saving the bird and for it to be able to continue to live was pretty low. Yes, for me personally my thinking is mainly based on logic and statistics.
3. I Think that it would be ethical to switch the tracks to hit the single person instead of five. However, personally I would not push the person off the bridge to stop the train, because I would be directly responsible for the man’s life. If the person was someone I knew I would definitely do everything in my power to save them, even killing five people. This relates to the spheres and how we make ethical decisions based on how well we know the person influenced by the decision.
4. After completing the moral machine decisions, the factors that affected my decisions the most were if they were human or not, and age. This was due to the fact that people who are younger have more available years alive that they can impact the world with. What mattered most for me was if they were abiding by the law.
Connection: An outside connection to this is the current environmental situations with science, situations such as electric cars and pollution. Electric cars use up a lot of rare earth metals which currently are not replaceable, however they reduce CO2 output. So this is a judgement of ethics of which is more important.
