Discussion Question on Ethics

Consider different situations in your life where you my use different ethical perspectives to justify your actions. Consider, as well, whether situational ethics or universal ethics is more desirable.

Ethics is something that all people are born with and can apply to different situations they experience throughout their lives. Some people may lack ethics more than others though. For example, there have been many documented  instances of racism in judicial court cases where white men experience a less harsh reprimanding for criminal acts, opposed to individuals of other ethnicities who had committed less threatening crimes, particularly black men and women in the United States. If the judicial court had applied ethics to their punishments, perhaps they would have been more just instead of racist.

Many parents today face the ethical decision of choosing to allow their young children to use electronic devices as a way of keeping busy. As the technologies of the world advances, it may be important for children to be familiar with the logistics of technology however one should also consider the health impacts of our electronic devices. Obesity rates have increased largely over the past century alongside the development of technology and the two have been linked together. Is it therefore ethical to allow children to depend on devices from such a young age?

This theory can be answered using situational ethics as it depends on the individual child and their reliance on technology. The first example should however use a universally ethic stance as law should be universal and uniform for everyone.

Chimps have feelings and thoughts. Should they have rights?

Steven Wise presents a theory: Chimps have feelings and thoughts. They should also have rights. He has done extensive research into the treatment of animals, specifically chimpanzees, over the past thirty years. This real life situation explores Wise's intention to change the ethical relationship between humans and animals, particularly within reason and emotion. 

I believe that all animals should have the right to be free; cows, bears, cats, humans, tigers. There is also an incredible amount of information at our fingertips proving how they are regularly mistreated by humans. Wise enforces this information throughout his speech, explaining how the battle to equalise the free rights of animals to be the same as humans has been incredibly tough due to the bias evident throughout history. Humans have increasingly viewed animals as their property, which in terms of nature is not ethically reasonable. If humans were to alter their point of view on the treatment of other animals by becoming more informed about reality, perhaps their emotions would cause them to be more sympathetic to nature. 

Do schools kill creativity?: a Real-life situation

Ken Robinson's Ted Talk explores the knowledge claim that the way education is structured harms our creativity. This real-life situation focuses on the the ethics of knowledge, particularly within  imagination. While watching  this talk, Robinson allows viewers to wonder: Do schools kill creativity?. 

In my opinion, creativity is not encouraged in education as it allows for mistakes, something which schools and the workforce discourage. Robinson believes that "we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it". As kids age, they are made to believe mistakes are bad and that facts allow for more opportunities in life, a bias rigorously enforced. While imagination offers incredible opportunities as well as room for mistakes, the fear of making a mistake may come from the extra time this mistake would take to essentially "perfect". Since time is equated to money, this fear of losing money and time may relate to making mistakes. From the biased point of a education system, if children are constantly told mistakes are bad, they will spend less wasted time trying to perfect the mistakes, time which could be spent furthering education. 

The Arts in TOK

The Arts have always been my favourite subject to participate in school and its relation to Theory of Knowledge can be quite interesting. The beauty of art is its flexibility. The arts allows an artist to emotion, sense perception, intuition,  language or reason to express knowledge. Depending on the message wanting to be expressed, each way of knowledge can be used to their advantage. Emotion can be used in an artwork to reveal a personal feeling towards a topic while reason can be communicated similarly. Sense perception can be conveyed through dimension in two-dimensional images yet this can also be expressed in sculpture and its use of negative and positive space. Although language may not seem like an obvious  way of knowing in the Arts, understanding language and culture visually can be rather important to the message of an image. More obvious artworks can be associated with intuition as they require less research to understand the overall message of the artwork. 

An important question to associate with Theory of Knowledge is: In what way does our culture and upbringing affect our view of the world? 

This is an idea that we have been exploring in our Standard Level Language and Literature course. Our context's definitely affect on our perception of the world in many ways. Personally, the way my parents have taught me to treat others varies from perhaps someone from another culture. For example, tipping a waiter at a restaurant is something normal in our culture, however I have met other individuals from a different culture who don't believe tipping is as important. This value changes from a culture to another. Open-mindedness has also been a crucial part of my upbringing and to also aware of cultures around the world. Studying at an International School has allowed me to live around other cultures and learn new things about them. Most kids at an International School develop an "international accent" seeing as they are surrounded by a variety of cultures and therefore, accents as well. I have somewhat adapted this accent however when I travel back home to Canada during the holidays, my accent adapts to the one of my extended family and friends. I feel as though open-mindedness and awareness of cultures is a key aspect of viewing the world in a positive way, compared to those who know little beyond their own culture. This awareness can also lead to finding ones identity in a cultural context.