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Lesson 7

We will return to the Moral Machine quiz to reflect on the underlying reasoning behind our decisions and then learn about a new ethical approach focused on the idea of justice.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I formulate and use questions to establish and deepen my understanding of key terms and concepts related to ethics?

  • Can I express an accurate understanding of the central ideas of texts related to ethics?

  • Can I pay attention to others, acknowledge them, and thoughtfully consider their ideas?

Texts

Core

  • Digital Access
    • “Moral Machine Quiz,” Iyad Rahwan, Jean-Francois Bonnefon, and Azim Shariff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2016

Materials

Tools

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Write – Discuss

We will take the moral machine quiz again to reflect on the underlying reasoning behind our decisions.

As a whole class, take the Moral Machine quiz again. Vote on which scenario to choose. In your Learning Log, write down your answer to the following question:

  1. Who survives in each scenario? Use the scenario description to capture each scenario’s survivors: are they a driver or a pedestrian, male or female, young or old, human or animal, athletic, homeless, a doctor, etc.?

Then, discuss the following question with your class:

  1. Did you treat everyone the same way or value some more than others?

Activity 2: Discuss

We will learn about an ethical principle related to justice called the principle of equal liberty.

Read the following summary of John Rawls’s principle of equal liberty:

Each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all.

Discuss with a partner the following questions:

  1. What words or terms from the quote are unfamiliar to you?

  2. How would you summarize the principle of equal liberty?

Make sure you add unfamiliar words and equal liberty to your Vocabulary Journal. You might use a Vocabulary in Context Tool for words you can decipher from the text; for others, you might use morphology to decipher the meaning or a reference resource to check if your meaning is accurate.

Activity 3: Read – Discuss

We will learn about two ethical principles related to justice called the difference principle and the equal opportunity principle.

Read the following summary of John Rawls’s (a) difference principle and (b) equal opportunity principle:

Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both

(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.

Discuss with your partner the following questions:

  1. What words or terms in the summary are unfamiliar to you?

  2. How would you summarize the difference principle and the equal opportunity principle?

  3. How are the difference principle and the equal opportunity principle dependent on the principle of equal liberty?

Make sure you add unfamiliar words and the phrases difference principle and equal opportunity principle to your Vocabulary Journal.

Activity 4: Discuss

We will connect rawls’s ideas to the ethical frameworks we’ve learned about thus far.

Step 1

Using your Ethical Approach Note-Taking Tool, Video Note-Taking Tool, and other notes you have kept in your Learning Log on texts from this unit, discuss the following question with your partner:

  1. How is Rawls’s idea of justice similar to the other ethical frameworks you studied? How is it different?

Step 2

Once you have discussed the question with your partner, complete the Extending Understanding Tool for the question.

The Extending Understanding Tool supports and guides a process for analyzing relationships among texts or sections of text, making text-based comparisons and developing a claim or posing a new text-specific question.

Use the tool in the following way:

  1. Write down the guiding question in the space provided at the top. You might be assigned the guiding question by your teacher, it might come from a question set, or you might think of your own question. This question can help you focus your reading, or it might give your reading a specific purpose. It will usually be a question that builds on other questions you have considered and involves more than one text.

  2. The first row on the tool can serve two purposes:

    1. If you are working with one text, this is a space to compare ideas in the text or track how an idea or claim is developed within the text.

    2. If you are working with two or more texts, this is a space to compare ideas among them. The space can be used to compare how different authors convey similar themes, or how different authors develop arguments. Notice the directions state to explain and not just identify. This means you might have to include relevant facts or details to support your comparisons.

  3. The Analyze Relationships row asks you to identify how your thinking about the topic, texts, or claims has changed or expanded as a result of new information you read. This is not just a space to write the new information you gathered; it is a space to identify how or why this new information has shifted, refined, or confirmed your perspective.

  4. The final row invites you to synthesize this new information. When you synthesize something, you are putting all the pieces together and considering all of your information, then developing a new claim or question. You can write the claim or question in the space provided.

  5. You might repeat this process several times as you gather new information.