EECS 690

Moral Issues in Computing Technology

Syllabus highlights:

Information on the syllabus includes:

Office Hours, Office Location, Instructor Email, Course Website, Grading Scale, Assignment Weights, Texts, Course Information, Various Course Policies.

A Note about the Notes:

• I will often utilize projected notes. These are for general organization and are often not intended to be written down verbatim by the students. So if you are currently writing ‘and are not intended to be written down…’ STOP WRITING.

• These notes will be available in their entirety on the course website, so your own written notes should consist of highlights and jottings that help you remember what has gone on in the class lecture. Use your common sense to determine what should be copied directly from the projected notes and what should not be.

• You are far more likely to be engaged with the day’s class period if you are not writing the whole time.

The first of many distinctions:

Descriptive versus Normative language:Descriptive statements are statements of the way thing are, while normative statements are statements about the way things ought to be.Certainly there are many opinions about what is considered morally correct versus morally incorrect, but the fact that some, or even most, are of a certain opinion is only descriptive, and not normative. We will examine prevailing attitudes, but we will keep in mind that the popularity of a view is no evidence of its normative truth.

Course Objectives:

1. Gain an appreciation for where and how moral and ethical issues affect those working in Computing and Information Technology

2. Gain a framework of moral and ethical reasoning that can serve as a guide in difficult situations.

3. Gain an increased understanding of our moral, ethical and legal obligations and how these obligations interact.

A Note about Moral Theory

• The goal of this course is to supply a variety of time-tested and rational moral frameworks to supply a pattern for thinking about difficult ethical or moral issues, but no course can ensure that what you learn in the classroom will follow you outside of the classroom.

• There are few if any issues more important to people than those which we call moral issues. Most people however, make decisions about morality without expending a great deal of thought on the issue.

• Most of the time this is not a problem, as most decisions are easy ones. People do fine on “moral autopilot” much of the time, but the rationale for having a study of morality that we can do it better when we think about morality and be moral on purpose.

A place to start:

• You will soon see that there are many different moral theories which overlap in some places, conflict in others, and you will see that there is dispute about how to apply each moral theory to some difficult situations.

• Study of moral theory is useful above all in that it can inform and shape our actual moral decisions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you must settle wholesale on any single moral theory or approach.

• A good place to begin is described by Soren Kierkegaard:

Soren Kierkegaard

• 1813-1855, Danish Philosopher, Psychologist, and Theologian.

• Kierkegaard suggests in his essays “Fear and Trembling” and “Either/Or” that the distinction among kinds of persons that matters the most is not the distinction between the moral person and immoral person, but rather the distinction between the person who takes the categories of right and wrong seriously and the person who does not.

• Deciding to take the categories of right and wrong seriously is a good place to start.