6.1.09

University of Evansville: First Annual Undergraduate Ethics Conference, Pro and Contra --Deadline 2.15.09--


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Brian Glenney said...

The University of Evansville Philosophy Club and Department of Philosophy and Religion with the generous support of The GAGE Corporation are hosting our First Annual Undergraduate Ethics Conference, Pro and Contra, on Saturday, April 4th, 2009. The Conference will be held on the University of Evansville campus in Evansville, Indiana. The purpose of the conference is to discuss and debate ethical issues in contemporary culture.

We would like to extend an invitation to any of your undergraduate students to participate and to submit papers. Submissions are not limited to philosophy students. Students in other areas such as environmental studies, business, religious studies, and healthcare sciences are encouraged to make submissions.

Below please find a brief description of the ethical issues that will be explored at the Conference. Interested students, in teams of two, should submit a one page summary statement of each of two conflicting positions on the topic of their choosing. The Conference will be set up as a debate with sides being determined by lot. Each team of students will make a 20 minute presentation of their position, a ten minute rebuttal followed by questions from a panel of judges as well as open questions from the audience. The debate will be scored by a panel of academic and community professionals.

Submissions should be sent to Dr. William R. Connolly at dc25@evansville.edu. Please include a title page which identifies the team members and their university or college affiliation. Be sure that no such information is included in the body of the statement as they will be blind reviewed. Submissions are due by Feb. 15. Selections for presentation will be announced by March 1.

If you have any questions, please contact me at the address or email listed below. We look forward to hearing from you.


Sincerely,



Dr. William R. Connolly

Professor of Philosophy

University of Evansville

1800 Lincoln Ave.

Evansville, IN 47722

dc25@evansville.edu


Problems to be discussed:

Business: Responsibilities for Safety Overseas


You are the CEO of a modest business, ACME Furniture and Appliance Company, that contracts with a firm in Eastern Kaskasia. This country is an emerging industrial nation known for its inexpensive production costs. The per capita income level is low enough and the quality of workmanship high enough that it is an attractive choice for you to feel comfortable working with. This is a good deal for ACME Furniture and Appliances. So, your company has entered into an agreement with this Eastern Kaskasian firm to build wooden cabinets for your furniture line.

Unfortunately, you learn that the legal standards for safety in the workplace in Eastern Kaskasia are not up to US standards. There have been reports that workers have lost limbs, fingers, eyes and hands working with saws without, by US standards, proper guards and without proper eye protection. While the conditions under which they work would not be allowed in the US, they do not violate any Eastern Kaskasian law.

Should you continue this relationship? Would it be right for you to insist that standards of worker safety be up to US standards? Suppose doing so would make contracting with this firm no longer financially feasible? Were you to fail to renew the contract, there would be considerable loss of employment in this Eastern Kaskasian community. What should you do? Do you have a right to try to impose our standards of safety on them? Should your or the Eastern Kaskasian community's economic benefit be the deciding factor in your decision?

Religion in the Workplace

John is a member of a non-denominational Christian Church that encourages its members to evangelize. John works in the local J-Mart store. Aside from the complaints noted below, John has an excellent work record. However, recently management has received several complaints about John's evangelizing on the job, complaints originating from his co-workers and the store's customers. He frequently engages in conversations with his fellow workers whom he encourages to "get right with the Lord" and invites them to attend his church. In addition to initiating such conversations with customers, he also passes out church literature as well. J-Mart supervisors asked him to stop such activities, but John refused, claiming that not to evangelize was to betray his faith. As long as he continued to do his job well (which by all accounts he did), John claimed that to require him to stop evangelizing was an unjustified intrusion on his freedom of religious expression. Should John be terminated if he persists in his evangelizing? If he were terminated, would you consider this termination for cause, making him ineligible for unemployment benefits?

Environmental Ethics

In a state forest in the State of Confusion there are numerous trails for hiking, bird watching and general nature watching. ACME Entertainment Company has approached the state, a state sorely pressed for revenue, with a proposal to purchase the area. It plans to develop the area as a ski resort and entertainment community, complete with musical entertainment and gambling, legal in Confusion. Their offer is contingent on their being able to develop the area.

The issue for you to consider is not whether to approve this sale, but what should be considered in your deliberations. On the one hand, one might argue that while the forest itself has no moral or legal standing, people's interests are affected and the decision should be made to further the interests of the affected people in the community. Will their interest be furthered by the sale or not? On the other hand, some might argue that, in addition to the interests of the people affected, the forest itself has interests that should be taken into account as well. Who should represent its interests? Which approach do you think is best?

Is Health Care a Right?

While there is much disagreement about how to "fix it", there is wide agreement that the US health care system needs work. It seems to be in crisis. It is expensive. We spend roughly 16% of GDP on health care twice that of any other industrialized nation. Nearly 50 million people are without health insurance and many more are underinsured. It is a significant expense for businesses which provide health insurance for their employees, threatening their competitiveness. Hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt each year due to health care expenses.

Yet, for all that financial outlay, our health outcomes, measured by things like longevity and infant mortality rank near the bottom among industrialized countries. Clearly, something needs to be done.

Before this is tackled, however, we need to ask some fundamental ethical questions. Do we have a right to health care? Is it a positive or negative right? (A negative right is a right that others have an obligation not to interfere with, like the right to free speech. If I have a right to free speech, you may not interfere with my exercise of that right, but you are not obligated to provide me the means to exercise that right. A positive right is a right that others have a duty to provide me the means to exercise. The right to basic education is, in the US, a positive right. Others, through taxes, are obligated to provide that basic education to all citizens.) If we have a right to health care, is it a positive right? Does the state have a duty to provide, through taxes, a basic level of health care?



Physician Assisted Suicide

Modern medicine, with its technological and pharmaceutical miracles, has provided the means to extend human life well beyond that possible in past ages. We live longer and healthier lives than ever before. However, this often turns out to be a mixed blessing. With devices that can breathe for us and nourish us and with drugs that can prevent disease from taking its final payment, we are often left to live under circumstances that few of us would choose.

In the light of these developments, there is interest in legalizing physician assisted suicide. Would you support such a move? What restrictions and regulations should such a provision for assisted suicide include?


Access to Genetic Information

With the exponential growth in information about the human genome, we are learning more and more about the genetic bases of many diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease. Thanks to the advances of genetic science, we are learning about the genetic predisposition people have to various forms of cancer as well as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease. The future promises even more information.

Such information would be especially valuable to employers and insurers. It might implicate both the costs of health insurance and the prospects of a person's being able to be an effective and economically efficient employee. The health of their workers is of grave concern to employers. On the other hand, we have a long tradition of respecting peoples' right to protect the privacy of their medical information. Should employers and insurers have access to genetic profiles of its prospective employees and clients? If so, what information do they have a right to?


Almost, But Not Quite, Genetic Matches

Every state in the US collects a DNA sample from convicted felons and forwards the sample to the FBI which loads the results into a national database. When crime detectives later investigate a crime scene and obtain a DNA sample, the sample if forwarded to the FBI to check for matches. If there is a match, the FBI informs the police and this piece of information becomes a valuable piece of evidence.

However, sometimes the match isn't perfect, but is so close that the DNA is almost certainly that of a close family member. Should the FBI inform the police of this? With this information, should the police investigate close family members of the convicted felon on the basis of this genetic information?

This is a two edged sword. On the one hand, it seems to threaten the privacy of innocent people. Should you become a suspect in a crime simply because your brother or sister is a convicted felon? Isn't that an important civil liberties issue? On the other hand, such information has been used to solve serious crimes. In England, for example, a serial killer was arrested and convicted based on a close match with his sister who had been convicted of drunk driving and whose DNA was in the British database. There is no way the police would have known to investigate this person but for the DNA evidence. In the US this information has also been used to free innocently convicted people upon learning that the crime had been committed by another person, based on a close match with a convicted felon.

Should this information be used in criminal investigations or is the danger for the abuse and harassment of innocent relatives of felons a sufficient reason not to provide such information?

7.1.09

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