Top-Down Morality

TUT 100 - Virtue in Animal and Machine - Professor Weinman



Answer the following questions. Record your answers in your Reading Journal.
  1. Select the sentence in the reading by Powers that you feel is the best example of answering Graff and Birkenstein's "So what?" question. Briefly explain your selection, noting whether you think it is a good example.
  2. Select the sentence in the Wallach and Allen chapter that you feel is the best example of answering Graff and Birkenstein's "Who cares?" question. Briefly explain your selection, noting whether you think it is a good example.
  3. Give an example from your own experience of reaching a decision on some ethical question that models Powers's "coherent system of maxims."
  4. Identify the sentence or short passage from the reading by Wallach and Allen that you feel makes the best distinction between consequentialism and deontology. Briefly explain your choice.
  5. Wallach and Allen note that "if a given list of rules fails to be comprehensive, the AMA will fail in unknown situations" (p. 93). Select the sentence from Powers that you feel is most closely related. Briefly explain whether your choice supports, denies, or complicates the assertion from Moral Machines.