This week we talked about ethics and morals, two terms that can sometimes be mistaken as the same. Morals are the rules in society, the principles and habits that inform what is right and wrong. Ethics are the study of morality and the rational explanation of moral beliefs and behavior. These terms differ in how they are created, whether the behaviors are shaped by the individual or the society they are a part of.
On Thursday, we looked closely at moral dilemmas in the short story The Bicentennial Man. A moral dilemma occurs when moral principles are pitted against each other. Isaac Asimov writes a tale of a robot whose dream is to become a human. This story explores the line of what is human and what is not. In some cases, like this story, robots are changed to possess human like features. On the other hand, humans are becoming more robotic. This dehumanization can be contributed to technology and how much we rely on it.
The robot, Andrew Martin, is built with an almost human like consciousness. Andrew cannot refuse to takes orders from humans, yet he has an impeccable gift of artistry and woodworking. He is more creative than most robots and uses words like enjoy, to describe how he is feeling. Throughout the story, he starts earning his own salary, wins freedom from his human owners, starts wearing clothing, and in the end receives surgery so to die like a human at age 200. This whole time though, many humans, excluding those who were part of his original owner’s family, regarded him as a robot. The book uses the brain as the line between human and robot. Even though Andrew’s mind resembled a mix of a human and robot brain, he was not officially a human until the brain surgery.