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Ix. what you are going to do

Exercise one

Identify the capabilities realized by the following technical artifacts:

  • Podcasting technology used in Zimbabwe to provide farmers information about cattle.
  • The XO Laptops distributed to school children in the Global South as a part of the One Laptop Per Child program.
  • The redesigning of airplane cockpits around specifications that fit better the requirements of women as pilots.
  • The redesigned and implemented irrigation project implemented in India described by the “people’s choice” article.
  • Automobiles as used by Amish communities in the US Midwest.

Exercise two

Fundamental question posed by Nussbaum on a human life: For the best and deepest of the metaphysical arguments brought forward seem to contain an evaluative component: that is, they ask us (implicitly or explicitly) to consider which functions of an alleged human being are so important, so central, that their absence will mean the absence of a human being or human life.” (“Aristotle on human nature and the foundations of ethics” 94)

  • Capabilities emphasize practical reason and human sociability and responsiveness.
  • Nussbaum in “Aristotle on Human Nature” talks about how both Greek philosophy and drama carry out thought experiments that invite readers and audiences to ponder about the boarders of human being.
  • Specifically, humans are contrasted with gods who lack mortality and vulnerability. Plato and Aristotle both argue that a life without these two defining limits cannot be considered or conceived as human.
  • Aristotle also sets forth practical reason as a capability that enters into all the other characteristics that humans share with other living things, transforming these functionings into human functionings; e.g. humans eat but they eat in a peculiarly human manner.
  • Finally, humans are political animals; this refers to both sociability and responsiveness (to other human individuals).
  • Putting these concepts discuss the following in terms of what they share and do not share with humans. (Examples are taken from the Lord of the Rings.)
  1. Orcs and goblins . Orcs were bred from Elves in a process that clearly implies a degradation of the elf. How would orcs and goblins compare with Cyclops, Minotaurs, and other beings classified in Greek literature as beasts lacking fundamental human attributes. What would these attributes be? Are there, for example, distinctions to be made between the pleasures of a human and, say, those of a beast?
  2. Hobbits . Are Hobbits human in the Greek sense? (What characteristics do they share with humans? Are there any significant, boundary characteristics lacking? Are they more or higher than human in some sense(s)?)
  3. Elves (and dwarves) . Both are immortal (or, in the case of dwarves, live much longer than humans). Nevertheless, both are vulnerable; e.g. both can be killed in battle. How would these differences serve to distinguish what was a fulfilling for these beings versus human beings?
  4. Wizards . Wizards can change shape and possess magical powers. At least the movie implies that they come from beyond the earth. They are immortal but vulnerable. (Gandalf went through a death of sorts in his fight with the Balrog.) Discuss how this mode of being would be different from that of humans.

Works cited

  1. Vesilind, A. Peace Engineering: When Personal Values and Engineering Careers Converge,Pakeshore Press, 2005.
  2. Mitcham, C. and D. Munoz. Humanitarian Engineering, Morgan and Claypool, 2010: 35.
  3. Lucena, J., J. Schneider, and J.A. Leydens. Engineering and Sustainable Community Development, Morgan and Claypool, 2010.
  4. Baillie, C. and G. Catalano. Engineering and Society: Working Towards Social Justice, Morgan and Claypool, 2009.
  5. Riley, D. Engineering and Social Justice, Morgan and Claypool, 2008.
  6. Easterly, W. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have done so Much Ill and so Little Good. New York, The Penguin Press, 2006.
  7. Schumacher, E. F. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, Harper Perennial, 1973/2010: 188-201.
  8. Supplemental definition of appropriate technology found at Portal: Appropriate Technology. http://www.appropedia.org/Portal:Appropriate_technology.
  9. Winner, L. Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. MIT Press, 1978: 227.
  10. Werhane, P., S.P. Kelley, L.P. Hartmen, D.J. Moberg. Alleviating Poverty through Profitable Partnerships: Globalization, Markets and Economic Well-Being, Routledge, 2010: 21, 26-7, 75-85, 91.
  11. Nussbaum, Martha C. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011: 20, 33-34.
  12. Nussbaum, M. (2001). Women and Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.
  13. Robeyns, Ingrid, "The Capability Approach", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/capability-approach. Accessed March 12, 2012.
  14. Huff, C. “What is a Socio-Technical System?” From Computing Cases website. http://computingcases.org/general_tools/sia/socio_tech_system.html. Accessed January 10, 2012.
  15. Lee, Sander. “Paternalism.” In Werhane, P, and R.E. Freeman (Eds.) Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethic,. Blackwell, 1997: 480-481.
  16. Werhane, P. Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, Oxford University Press, 1999: 93.
  17. M. Jablonski, C. Papadopoulos, and J. Reisel. “Building Trust in International Development Work: A Case Study of a Recent EWB Project”. Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Austin, TX, June 2009.
  18. Schrag, B. “Research with Groups: Group Rights, Group Consent, and Collaborative Research: Commentary on Protecting the Navajo People through tribal regulation of research”, Science and Engineering Ethics (2006) 12(3): 511-521.
  19. Downey, Gary and Juan Lucena. “Are Globalization, Diversity, and Leadership Variations of the Same Problem?: Moving Problem Definition to the Core.” Distinguished Lecture to the American Society for Engineering Education, Chicago, Illinois 2006.
  20. Phadke, R. “People’s Science in Action: The Politics of Protest and Knowledge Brokering in India” (1987). In Johnson, D.G. and Wetmore, J.M. (Eds.). Technology and Society: Building Our Sociotechnical Future, MIT Press, 2009: 499-513.
  21. Werhane, P., R. Velamuri, D.E. Boyd. “Corruption and moral risk in business settings,” In Kirk Hanson (Ed.) The Responsible Corporation, Greenwood Publishers, 2006: 235-258.
  22. Colby, A, Ehrlich, T., Sullivan, W. and Dolle, J. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession. Carnegie Foundation, 2011: 142.
  23. (Karl Marx, Econnomic and philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Martin Milligan, in R.C. Tucker (ed), The Marx-Engels Reader, New York, 1978: 88-89. Quoted in Nussbaum, Human Nature, 119.)
  24. Robeyns, “Capability Approach: a theoretical survey, Journal of Human Development, 6(1), 2005: 99.
  25. See Oosterlaken, I. (2012). "Taking a Capability Approach to Technology and Its Design: A Philosophical Exploration, Introduction," 14. Simon Stevin Series in the Ethics of Technology). (See Taking a Critical Approach to Technology and Its Design 13 (table) and 14.)
  26. Mark Coeckelbergh, ““How I Learned to Love the robot”: Capabilities, Information Technologies, and Elderly Care.” in The Capability Approach, Technology and Design , Illse Oosterlaken and Jeroen van den Hoven (eds). New York: Springer: 77-86.
  27. Martha C. Nussbaum, Capabilities and Human Rights, 66 Fordham L. Rev. 273 (1997). Available at: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol66/iss2/2

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Source:  OpenStax, Business, government, and society. OpenStax CNX. Mar 04, 2014 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10560/1.6
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