Problems, claims, reasons, principles

Today in class, we watched this video by Michael Sandel, "The Lost Art of Democratic Debate."  We learned a method for building moral arguments.  In your blog post this week, please practice this method.

Select a specific situation with moral stakes (a case) in the world of computing.  Piracy.  Communications monitoring.  Whatever.  Include a link to a news story or similar description of the case, and introduce us to the facts of the case in a few sentences.

Then:

Identify the PROBLEM.  The PROBLEM is the situation in which the moral dilemma emerges.  Often, the problem can be expressed as a question beginning with "Should," like "Should governments be allowed to monitor their citizens' email, texts, and phone conversations?"

Make a CLAIM.  The CLAIM is your assertion in answer to that question.  This is what you believe. to be right in this matter of right and wrong.  "Governments should be allowed to monitor their citizens' email, texts, and phone conversations."  Or, "Governments should not be allowed to monitor their citizens' email, texts, and phone conversations."

Support your claim with a REASON.  The REASON is what would come after a "because" attached to the claim statement.  "Governments should not be allowed to monitor their citizens' email, texts, and phone conversations because..." There can be REASONS rather than just one reason.  Often, there are several reasons in a really strong argument.

Then, excavate the PRINCIPLE underlying your reason.  Imagine that after you made the "because" statement in the preceding step, someone asked you, "Why is that so?"  PRINCIPLES get at ideas that are bigger than any one moral situation.  They are also "should" statements, but they're rules that apply in varied situations, like "When they have to make a choice, governments should put the security of their people ahead of their people's liberty and privacy."  Or, "You should tell the truth, no matter what."  They can often include language like "always" and "no matter what," because they are meant to be rules that could be applied to a variety of cases.  The test to identify whether you're talking about a PRINCIPLE (and not a reason) is this: could it be applied to a completely different situation, a completely different context?

I recommend making each of these a separate paragraph, for clarity--so, one paragraph for the description of the case, one paragraph for the problem, one paragraph for the claim, and so on.  The paragraphs can be brief.

Please make an original post using the above method no later than Monday at 9:00 PM.  DO NOT MAKE A COMMENT; make a brand-new post.