1. CSCI102 Introduction to Computing 1B
Week 10 – Friday
Methods & Tools of Analysis
Bob Brown
SITACS
University of Wollongong

2. Ethics & Morality Ethics is the Study of Morality Ethics Morality
From the Greek ethos
Morality
From the Latin mores
Both refer to character, habit and behaviour
Ethics is the Study of Morality

3. What is Morality? There is no agreed definition Rules of human conduct
Two kinds of rules of conduct
Directives to guide individuals (microlevel)
Eg: do not steal, do not kill
Social Policies (macrolevel)
Eg: software should be protected, respect privacy

4. Moral Systems A system whose purpose is to prevent harm and evil
Bernard Gert (1998)
… and should promote human flourishing
Louis Pojman (2001)
Are Public & Informal, Rational & Impartial (Gert)
PUBLIC: everyone must know the rules
INFORMAL: there is no authority enforcing it
RATIONAL: based on the principles of logic
IMPARTIAL: apply equally to all

5. Deriving & Justifying a Moral System
Grounds for justifying a moral system
Religion
Obedience to divine authority
Difficult in a pluralistic heterogeneous society
Legal
Obedience to a legal system
Laws not uniform across national boundaries
Philosophy
Ethical theory
Appeal to logical arguments to justify claims and positions

6. Cultural & Moral Relativism
Cultural relativity:
Different cultures may have different concepts of right & wrong
Can right and wrong in a society only be determined by members of that society?
Moral relativity:
Says, no universal standard of morality is possible because different people have different beliefs about what is right & wrong
Incommensurability

7. Why do we need Ethical Theories?
Why not just use the so-called ‘Golden Rule’ or simply ‘follow your conscience’?
Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Assumes what you’d accept or desire is what others would accept or desire!
Follow your conscience
Conscience is subjective, as is therefore neither rational or impartial

8. Structure of Ethical Theories
Must be coherent and comprehensive
Cannot contain ad hoc, patchwork components
The “Bork Bill”
Proposed Victorian Firearms Ammendments, pertaining to swords

9. Consequence-Based Ethical Theories
Some argue the ends are the best test, as ethical systems are designed to produce desirable outcomes
Utilitarianism: act for the greater good
People desire happiness, happiness is therefore good
If one actions makes more people happy than another, it must be better than the other
Act utilitarianism
‘greatest good’ results for the majority may require very bad results for a minority
Rule utilitarianism
Establish ‘good rules’ to benefit society, and actions that lie within that rule are acceptable
Critics dismiss utilitarianism because it is grounded in consequences and happiness … “I wont help you with your problem because it wont make me happy”

10. Duty-Based Ethical Theories
Duty and obligation (Immanuel Kant )
It is right that we must do our duty, even it it makes us unhappy
Humans are essentially rational in nature and can recognize obligations to each other
Humans are an “end” in themselves – ie: no human may be a “mean to an end”

11. Contract-Based Ethical Theories
Contractual agreements between individuals
Rational beings see the advantage of co-operation to gain a better life (Thomas Hobbes )
Social-contract theory criticized as minimalist – ie: only applies where rules and formal contracts exist
Leads legalistic behaviour, remember Tesltra and the teletypewriter?
No requirement to do good, merely a rule to do no harm
Rights based contract theories
Negative rights: right not to be interfered with, eg: right to own a computer ~ no one is oliged to provide one, but no-one may orevent you from having one
Positive rights: very rare! And controvertial … eg: US right to receive an education … so does that mean they must receive the tools and equipment etc? ‘net access?

12. Character-Based Ethical Theories
Virtue ethics.
Focus on character development and acquiring good traits from their habits (Plato, Aristotle c.400BC, Alasdair MacIntyre 1981)
Being a moral person
Requires the right training to acquire the right qualities
Acquiring correct habits
When ‘good behaviour’ becomes habit, it no longer requires a conscious decision
Difficult to put in place in a large heterogeneous society

13. A Comprehensive Theory?
James Moor’s just-consequentialist theory (1999)
What kind of conduct do we want ethics to regulate?
ID a set of ‘core values’ common to all cultures
A desirable objective of ethics is to support justice, rights and duties
IF all we had to do was ‘do no harm’ and perform our duties, ethics would be easy to understand … BUT … we have to be able to decide between conflicting options
Decision process has two steps:
Deliberation
Use an impartial standpoint
Selection
Weigh the good and bad consequences of the choices

14. Tools for Evaluating Cyberethical Issues
As we have seen, logic forms a basis for rational and impartial theorising about ethics
We can begin to evaluate ethical issues by testing the logical validity of claims and statements

15. Logical Arguments Structure of a logical argument: PREMISE 1
PREMISE 2 (optional)
PREMISE 3 (optional) …
PREMISE n (optional) _________________
CONCLUSION

16. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Fallacy refers to “faulty reasoning”, not “being wrong” … as a fallacious argument can be constructed out of all true statements!
Next we see ten ‘informal logical fallacies’ to assist you to identify fallacious arguments

17. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Ad hominem argument
Attack directed to the person rather than to the substance of the person’s argument

18. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Slippery Slope argument- “edge of the wedge”
“X could possibly be abused, so we should not allow X”
“swords can kill, so lets remove them all from society before we all get killed”
Fallacy in assuming that the worst consequence will inevitably follow … the argument itself contains to evidence to that effect

19. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Fallacy of Appeal to Authority
PREMISE 1: X is an authority in Y
PREMISE 2: X said Z ______________________
CONCLUSION: Z
An expert chef may have an opinion regarding a brand of oven, but are they necessarily an expert in electrical design etc?

20. Identifying Logical Fallacies
False cause fallacy (post hoc ergo prompter hoc – after this, therefore because of this)
Just because X preceded Y, does not mean that X caused Y
Circular logic: the truth of the premise presupposes the truth of the conclusion, rather than supplying the evidence for the conclusion

21. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Begging the question
The premise presupposes the truth of the conclusion it is trying to establish (circular logic again)
Eg: “OO programming languages are superior to non structured programming languages because OO languages are structured”

22. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Fallacy of Composition
Confuses the characteristics that apply to the parts of a whole, with the characteristics of the whole itself
Eg: “Brand X PC is the best because it has the fastest processor and twice the RAM and comes with a better suite of software than any other”
Eg: “this film has academy award winning stars in it – so it must be an academy award winning film”
Fallacy of Division
Infers attributes that apply to the whole must apply to the parts
Eg: “This was voted the best computer in 2002, so it must have had the most advanced graphics card”

23. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Fallacy of Ambiguity
One or more terms used ambiguously
Eg: “humans think and computers think, so computers are human”
Eg: ‘Computers have memory. Memory allows us to remember our childhood. So, Computers can recall their childhood”
NO – because the terms “think” & “memory” are ambiguous, the ‘thinking’ each of these entities does is not the same thing, and the ‘memory’ is not of the same kind

24. Identifying Logical Fallacies
Appeal to the People (Argumentum ad Populum)
Assumption that there is strength in numbers
“greatest album ever! 50 million Elvis fans cant be wrong!”
“slavery is cool, 100 million slave owners cant be wrong!”
“its OK to pirate music, everyone does it!”

25. Identifying Logical Fallacies
The Many / Any Fallacy
PREMISE 1: many items of kind A have feature B _______________________________________
CONCLUSION: any item of kind A has feature B
“There are many acceptable ways to travel from Sydney to Hong Kong, therefore it is acceptable to travel from Sydney to Hong Kong by bicycle”

26. Identifying Logical Fallacies
The Virtuality Fallacy
PREMISE 1: X exists in cyberspace
PREMISE 2: cyberspace is virtual ____________________________
CONCLUSION: X (or effect of X) is not real
Virus attacks?
Pornography?
Paedophilia?

27. Constructing an Argument
Arguments are used to justify things, to convince people of things etc.
Generally arguments will succeed or not depending on how well constructed they are, and on their “argument strength”
How do we determine argument strength?
Need to understand difference between valid & invalid arguments

28. Valid & Invalid Arguments
We can use an informal system developed by John Nolte (1984).
Don’t need to know anything about the truth of the claims in the argument, we determine if the arguments conclusions would necessarily follow from its premises (when they are all assumed to be true)
To demonstrate an argument is INVALID, we need only find one counterexample
This isn’t enough though, we need to test IF the premises are true in the real world …

29. Sound Arguments
Soundness is a test of the truth in the real world of the premises in an argument.
A valid argument can be sound or unsound.

30. Invalid Arguments
Has at least one counterexample, even if the premises and conclusion are true in the real world.
PREMISE 1: all CEO’s of major US software corp’s have been US citizens
PREMISE 2: Bill Gates is a US citizen ______________________________________
CONCLUSION: Bill Gates is CEO of a major US software corp.
Try substituting “Julia Roberts” or “George Bush” ? This is invalid because there are counter examples

31. Inductive Arguments Not all invalid arguments are weak however
Some are inductive
These may not guarantee the truth of their conclusions, they provide a high degree of probability for their conclusions.
PREMISE 1:“75% of people who own iMac’s previously owned AppleIIe computers”
PREMISE 2: “my friends has an iMac” ________________________________
CONCLUSION: “My friend owned an AppleIIe”
Clearly invalid, but the “75%” makes it far stronger than the Bill Gates argument … (there are very few US software corp CEO’s, but 250+million US citizens!)
Inductive invalid arguments can be stronger than valid, but unsound arguments!

32. Unsound Sound Inductive Fallacious
Argument Strength
Arguments
Valid Invalid
Unsound Sound Inductive Fallacious
WEAK STRONG WEAK