Lawrence Hinman. The Ethics of Character: Aristotle and Our Contemporaries.
This is the second of two excellent Ethics introductions chapters we will be reading thanks to Hinman. To obtain this chapter for sharing with your students, you should contact Prof. Hinman. The fifth edition of his book, which will contain both chapters that I use, will be out in early 2012 by Wadsworth/Thomson. Prof. Hinman has also given me permission to distribute these chapters upon request, so you are welcome to contact me (illah@cs.cmu.edu) as well.
Reading question:
1 The Aristotelian approach to ethics, based on personal and societal character and virtue, is a markedly different approach from consequentialism, which more obviously mates with the cognitive process of a robotics engineer in deliberating future technological advancements. Considering human flourishing as a litmus test of character ethics, evaluate the Roomba in terms of what positive ethical impact it is capable of having from an Aristotelian point of view. You ought to come up with at least three distinct ways in which such a home-cleaning robot can have positive impact on human flourishing; name and describe them.