Human Flourishing in the Digital Age

Course Description:

What is it to live a good life, and how do recent and future advances in technology present both challenges and opportunities for human flourishing? This course provides students with an overview of the main theories of welfare and an introduction to the ethics of technology in light of its relevance for human flourishing. The course also encourages students to reflect on their own values and plans for their lives in the context of the ubiquitous use and rapid development of technology. After a survey of ethical theories, we will discuss the main theories of welfare, including hedonism, desire satisfactionism, and the objective-list theory. We will then turn our attention to topics in the ethics of technology such as privacy, surveillance, and the use of algorithms, especially in the criminal justice system, as instruments of racial inequality. By the end of the course, students will be able to explain and evaluate the main ethical theories; explain and evaluate the the main theories of welfare; analyze whether and how particular technological advances will threaten or promote human flourishing; and devise practical strategies for improving the quality of their own lives in the context of a rapidly changing world.

Topics Include:

Topics in ethics and meta-ethics: egoism, consequentialism, deontology, moral relativism, virtue ethics, values, ethics and religion; naturalistic fallacy, truth and justification, realism and objectivity, motivation and practical reasoning, autonomy and game theory.

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Sample of Course Materials:

Chris Heathwood’s “Desire-Fulfillment Theory.”

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “The Right to Privacy.”

Peter Asaro’s “Autonomous Weapons and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence."

C. Thi Nguyen’s “How Twitter Gamifies Communication.”

Carissa Véliz’s “Self-Presentation and Privacy Online.”