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Throughout this week, I was very interested in Professor Perrone’s powerpoint and lecture. I felt his teaching presence was very captivating. In Michael Quinn’s Ethics for the Information Age, the author introduced nine ethical theories. I was particularly interested in the Divine Command Theory, which is based on the idea that good actions follow the will of God and bad actions are those of contrary to the will of God. Since I grew up in a predominately Christian family, I felt a strong moral connection to this theory, for we owe obedient to our all-good and all-knowing creator because God is the ultimate authority spiritually. However Professor Perrone seemed to be against this theory since he declared himself as a non-secular person. He questioned the moral objectives of the holy bible and how scripture doesn’t address all moral problems. To some extent, I agree with his position against scripture. For example, the bible addresses homosexual sex /desires/ and marriage as as lustful sin in Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27. However as time has changed and progression for gay rights have been approved and embraced, is the bible/ is the Divine Command Theory negotiable and flexible? Questions like this and moral dilemmas such as a Christian raised homosexual, raises ethical concern and moral judgement. In the beginning of class, I was all in favor of the Divine Command Theory, but after much discussion and thought, my perspective has been significantly altered and I am no longer in favor. I think the most applicable theory is Ethical Egoism, the philosophy that each person should focus exclusively on his or her self-interest for it’s a practical moral philosophy and it empowers people to take care of themselves. When individuals protect their self-interests, the society benefits. At the end of the day, we as a society, have different social contexts and demand different moral guidelines. We all act in our own self-interest to maximize the long-term benefit.

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.

During this week of class, the concept of ethics and morals was thoroughly discussed and applied to different situations. To me, ethics is a difficult and sometimes confusing subject because it addresses how society tackles issues of conflict. I think it is important to understand that there are multiple factors that one has to consider when judging others morals. It is hard to say that someone has bad morals when their culture or religion has taught them those core values and views. At the same time, who is given the power to decide what is right and what is wrong? And what gives them the authority? For example, when we were reading The Bicentennial Man, humans thought that they should have full control over robots and were hesitant to give them rights. I think this was because as a species, it is natural for humans to yearn for superiority. We feel like we need to be in control because we are all fearful of something that will take our place. We are used to being at the top of the chain. We consider ourselves as the most intelligent species on earth because we have dominated by building, industrializing, and marking it as our planet. We are hesitant to share it with others, even among ourselves. Our competitive and selfish nature has proven to be beneficial, but I also think there are some downfalls. It is a very efficient way to isolate ourselves. There is an undertone of racism in The Bicentennial Man seen through the discrimination towards robots. One example is the color of their “skin”. The robots do not wear clothes and their metallic “skin” is fully exposed. Once Andrew realized that people wore clothes, he wanted to as well in order to fit in and assimilate with the human society. But, we have shown that we are often close-minded to things that differentiate from us. We are quite stubborn because we are  afraid of change. We are afraid of the threat it might have and how it might alter our system of living.

The ethical dilemma in the situation of allowing robots to have rights is how are we to expect progress in a technological world if we are denying the fact that robots should not have the freedom to be conscious individuals? It seems as if we are stopping ourselves from accepting a world where humans are not at the top of the chain. This scares us because humans have always had the power and it does not seem right to transfer that power to something else. We would feel insufficient and worthless.

But what if it would create benefits for us? In most science fiction movies, robots are often portrayed as going rogue and ending up wanting to kill the human race. My view on that is that is their only a natural response because they are so constrained. It only proves that they have very humanistic characteristics in which they feel strongly against being held against their will and being discriminated against.

I really enjoy the controversy around the trolley question. Is it the most ethical to do nothing and kill five people, or move the steering device in a way in order to only kill one. However, I believe taking the variable of time out of the equation degrades the question from a real-life moral and ethical decision into a crazy “what if” proposition that brings in many unnecessary variables. My favorite unnecessary variable that is probably the most frequent addition to the problem is the identity of the single person versus the identities of the five. The problem itself is about the sheer number of people not murdering one person is worth. If killing five people is a worse offense than murdering one then you you obviously steer into the one and vice versa. The question can only work in a situation where the rules of society do not apply. In the analogy and unlike reality: every life is equal, you as the killer/ murderer will not go to jail regardless of what happens, the people are hogtied up in front of the trolley and the trolley moves at a pace so fast that bystanders are unable to save the hostages. None of these variables are realistic, nor has this situation ever really happened, so the extra variables take away from the point of the moral question, which is: Is killing five people you do not know equal in your mind to murdering one person you do not know.

Upon reading The Bicentennial Man, I was immediately reminded why I love science fiction and Asimov’s style of writing. The pace he sets connects well with the story, and he very clearly understands his character’s motives and actions. There is almost a biblical parallel to a Jesus-like figure that Andrew Martin portrays; an immortal being that has chosen to live with and understand humans and ultimately experiences all that makes one human, flaws and all. That being said, the character of Andrew Martin could not have been crafted without at least a basic understanding of morals and ethics, especially Kantianism. Andrew suffers from elements of the second maxim of Kantianism, not manipulating another being, at the beginning of the story when he is ordered to dismember himself by two other humans. Andrew is also not very comfortable with his case against the Smythe-Robertson firm as Paul Martin essentially asks Andrew if he agrees with the rule-bending decree of pushing for the firm to create android parts. There many other examples of Kantianism throughout the story, and Andrew himself may be categorized as a Kant-follower given the emphasis he stresses on himself and what he can do for himself to be more human. Andrew is ingrained with following the Three Laws, but gradually bends and sheds those laws, especially towards the end when he unknowingly gives an order to a human. It is in these small moments throughout the story where Andrew forms small opinions like his thoughts on Paul Martin’s makeup, his choice to agree with Paul Martin’s somewhat manipulative dealing, and in his choice not to give up in the face of defeat to achieve his human status he so desperately craves that Andrew becomes human.

Sure, we are human based on phylogeny, taxonomy, biological and genetic makeup, etc., but what truly makes us human beings? Is it our emotion? Perhaps not, as we know many of the emotions we experience daily can be deduced to a set of neurotransmitters fired out through a sequence of neurons. Things such as happiness, sadness, even love. Is it our seemingly unique intelligence? Perhaps. After all, our current state of evolved brains can be linked back to the moment in time where man discovered fire, cooked raw meat and thus unlocked many nutritious elements that helped our brain develop and become capable of such complex thought. So what does make us human? What defines the line between a form of life arising from a single cell over eons ago and developing into a multicellular, sentient being and an artificial creation of circuitry and robotics that are both capable of the same level of thought? We may never have a concrete answer, only possible explanations, one of which may be how we perceive ethics and morals in our life. It is our distinguished, unique perception of right and wrong, no matter how distorted or virtuous given the context, that ultimately makes each human being different, each man and woman, human. Andrew over time, realizes that it is through flaws that makes him more and more human. Andrew gives up his strong, steel body, adds emotion to his face, and ultimately solidifies a point in time in which he would die and experience mortality. In these ways, yes. Andrew becomes almost identical to a regular human on a physical level. However, it is in his thinking and judgement, which become nonbinary as the story progresses, that he truly becomes human. Andrew begins to truly think for himself, how to obtain his own personal goals. He distances his thinking from the Three Laws, adopts Kantianistic-like thinking, and achieves what he truly desires. He may have seen planning his death as his penultimate release from being a robot, but I think he achieved human status much earlier in the story, through small moments of change in his morality and ethics.