1. Ben Smith
Senior Seminar p.4
December 13, 2011
Ethics Seminar Reflection
The first seminar we did in the period 4 class was on ethics. In preparation for the seminar, about 6 groups
of people presented in order to review the general points of the ethics chapter in our book. I was a
participant in the first seminar that day in class, and the facilitator was Honori. The first question she
asked really got the whole discussion started, and that was “What is ethics?” I think this question was
very important and outlined the fundamental theory of ethics and how it affects our daily life. The
discussion just continued from that point going deeper and deeper into the theories within ethics. A main
topic that was discussed to great length was Cultural Imperialism because of the subjectivity of Cultural
Imperialism and how it can be interpreted in many different ways. Other points that were discussed in
some detail were the Lack of Foundations Argument, Self Interest Theory, the Evolutionary Argument,
the Fear of Punishment Argument, and Utilitarianism.
I don’t think that I really learned anything new from this discussion, per say, because I had already read
the book and taken detailed notes, but what I did learn is how everyone’s viewpoint is a little different
from anyone else. So in this case, there were many different personal interpretations of how the Lack of
Foundations Argument could be applied to real world situations.
I thought that this discussion was very interesting because of the fine line between ethical and unethical.
For instance, one person’s ethical is another person’s unethical. It all depends on which arguments are
chosen to support or refute the claim. For example, we saw a presentation about a scientific procedure
that allowed for the treatment of fertilized eggs in order to prevent all disorders. However, this procedure
was taken to the point where people would be able to choose the gender and physical traits of their
children. Many people believe that this is unethical because of the idea that the egg is a human with free
will, but there are some people who think that this is perfectly ethical because people should be able to
choose their children’s features.
There are an abundance of arguments against and for ethics, including the Diversity Argument, Lack of
Foundations Argument, Cultural Imperialism, Self-Interest Theory, Definitional Argument, Evolutionary
Argument, Hidden Benefits Argument, Fear of Punishment Argument, Theories of Ethics, and
Utilitarianism. In my opinion, the lack of foundations argument is probably the most important to explain
moral relativism, because it states that there are no universally accepted values because there is no larger
moral reality to base our values on. To refute the moral relativism argument, there is the idea that because
all humans have broadly similar needs, they have accepted a set of core values to meet their basic needs.
In retrospect, this ethics seminar was a very important seminar because we were required to learn about
the benefits and limitations of Ethics and how we can apply our knowledge to real world situations.