Lifeboats & Trolley Cars

Catastrophe and Sustainability

There were two important topics that we discussed in class today. First, I reviewed the two frameworks we’ve studied. The point of looking at different ethical frameworks is not so that, for any problem, you can pick the one that gives the answer that you want to hear. (It’s not like picking a meal off of a menu.) Actually, for many questions, different ethical frameworks will give fairly similar guidance, though perhaps for different reasons. 

We looked at how different frameworks are useful for different purposes. A deontological framework, for instance, provides the type of justification that is needed to formulate professional codes of ethics, like these codes from IEEE and ACM. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is useful for highlighting the wide range of harms and benefits that are relevant to complex social decisions.

Then we discussed the problem of population growth and the types of conflicts that arise when we consider population control. In our research, many of us saw statements such as this one:

Despite being one of the largest drivers of climate change, the question of population growth is strangely absent from public debate.

As always, this post is available for additional comments on the class discussion.