Kantian Ethics Keyword Revision Games

So it's been "a while" since I last posted! Here are some keyword games I've created for the Kantian Ethics topic for the OCR A level spec. I like to use these as quick starter activities to recap key vocabulary and clarify any misunderstandings.

You can download them from google docs here or TES here.

RS Question of the Week - Can You Commit a Crime Against Someone Before They're Born?

Photo: BBC

This week's question of the week is taken from the sad story of a seven-year-old girl born with severe brain damage after her mother drank up to eight cans of strong lager and half a bottle of vodka per day while pregnant.

Three judges ruled that she was not entitled to criminal damages under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme as the damage she undoubtedly suffered was inflicted while she was a foetus, not while she was a person: UK law only recognises crimes against persons.

The key questions I've been discussing with my students are:

• Can you commit a crime against somebody before they are born?
• At what point does a foetus become a person?

You can download a poster for this week's question here, and a pdf of a Daily Mirror story (yes, I know) about the case here.

RS Question of the Week - Ched Evans

Recently, I've been sticking a few questions up in and on the door to my classroom to prompt a bit of discussion and give me an extra starter task if I need it. This week, I've used the Ched Evans news story as the basis for the questions.

The questions and the story prompted some really good contributions from some of my Year 10 and 11 students, and I was pleased that they were keen to share their thoughts (and their own questions) without me having to prompt them. In fact, one of my students brought along a question from one of her friends, who I don't even teach!

The questions I used were:

1. Do all criminals deserve a second chance?
2. Does it matter if they haven’t apologised for their crime?
3. Should criminals be allowed to work in jobs where they could earn £1000s every week?
4. What is a "role model", and why do we expect sports starts to act as role models?

If you want to use the questions in your own classroom, you can download the poster here.

  

Euthanasia - A Few More Resources Added

I've added a few more resources on euthanasia to the Religion and Contemporary Society Resource Page. Added since last time are some worksheets on the sanctity of life and Christian views on euthanasia, plus supporting video and web links. I'll hopefully get the rest of the unit, plus an outline scheme of work posted up in the next week.

Euthanasia Lessons

I've been meaning for a while to start to post some materials and lessons related to the Religion in Contemporary Society AS module for WJEC, with a view to (eventually) building up a fairly comprehensive set of resources to support teaching the whole unit.

Things get in the way (as they do), so I've not made much progress towards so far, but the first couple of lessons on euthanasia, plus an introduction to RICS, are now up. You can find them on the Religion in Contemporary Society Resource Page.

2014 Religion Philosophy & Ethics Essay Competition

Photo credit: freeimages.com/tpacific

If you're missing Religious Studies after your exams, then the University of Gloucestershire's 2014 Religion, Philosophy and Ethics Essay Competition might be for you.

The competition is open to AS and A2 students in the UK, and the winner will receive an iPad. All you have to do is write 1500 words on one of the following titles:

1)  What is the proper role of religion in a modern, secular, society?
2)  If you had a time machine, would it be wrong to travel back and kill Hitler?
3)  Does science give us an accurate picture of "how the world is"?

Easy peasy, eh?

Even if you don't win, entering competitions like this one is an excellent way of developing your writing skills, and preparing you for the deeper research and reading required at degree level study (and that good universities will look for in UCAS statements).

You can find out more here. The deadline for entries is 24th October 2014.

Dawkins: Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life on 4oD

In my Year 13 A level class, we're currently studying the AQA synoptic unit on Life, Death and Beyond.

4oD is showing Richard Dawkins' series Sex, Death, and the Meaning of Life, which is useful for thinking about atheist responses to ultimate questions. Dawkins is always watchable, even if his tendency to cherry pick his evidence occasionally becomes annoying. The series is available free on 4oD, though you have to register first. Each episode is worth watching if you are studying or teaching the synoptic unit.

Episode 1 considers why we should act morally if there is no God watching us.

Episode 2 explores what science can tell us about death.

Episode 3 asks if there is a purpose to life in a Universe governed by the blind forces of nature.

Christian Ethics: AQA "A" Spec Revision Workbook and Checklist

I've come across a workbook I put together for the AQA A Specification  GCSE unit on Christian Ethics. I no longer teach the A spec (and to be honest I completely forgot that I'd made the workbook), but somebody out there might it useful.

Looking through the workbook, it's mostly made up of candidate sample answers for peer assessment, plus some past paper questions and a set of key facts to learn.

There also a revision checklist for four of the six topics in the GCSE (I might have put it together for mocks rather than the final exams), which might also be of some use.

You can download the checklist here and the workbook here via google docs.

I am, of course, still hunting for the Year 12 revision booklet I was actually looking for when I found them...

Though Experiment #2: Hot Bricks and Wet Fur

Photo credits: sxc.hu

I came up with the following simple thought experiment that I used with my year 12s today:

Imagine that you are walking home one evening when you notice a fire in your neighbour’s house. Do you have any moral responsibility to try put the fire out (or at least call the fire brigade)?
 
Assuming that your answer is yes, is your duty to your neighbour or to the house itself?
 
The next day you are talking a walk along a nearby canal bank when you see your neighbour’s dog: it has evidently fallen into the canal and is unable to get out again. It is still swimming but seems exhausted and in danger of drowning. Do you have any moral responsibility to try to rescue the dog (or at least call the RSPCA)?
 
If your answer is yes, then once again: is your duty to your neighbour or to the dog itself?

The aim of this particular thought experiment was to illustrate the concept of moral status, and particularly how it might (or might not) apply to animals. Adapting a definition found here:

Moral status means that a particular thing matters for its own sake, so that we must pay attention to its interests when we consider actions that might affect it.

Moral status is different from moral goodness. Some beings may act in a morally good way, some may act immorally, and others may be incapable of moral action (e.g. new-born babies), but deserving consideration in others' moral reasoning is different from acting morally oneself.

When a thing has moral status, we may not act toward it in any way we please, disregarding its well-being, preferences, or continued existence. We owe some moral obligations to that being itself. As moral agents (beings capable of doing right or wrong), we must care to some degree about what it wants or needs, or simply what it is; this imposes some limitations on how we may act toward it.

In the first scenario, of the neighbour’s burning house, most people would agree that we have some duty to act, by trying to put the fire out or dialling 999. They would, however, be motivated not by any sense of duty towards the house itself, but instead by concern for the house’s occupant, because their life may be at risk, or because of the distress and difficulty they would suffer if they lost their home in a fire. Houses therefore, and I would say all inanimate objects, have no moral status. If we do consider such things in our actions, it is only because of their relationship to some being that does have moral status (in this case, our neighbour).
 

Photo credit: sxc.hu

In the second scenario, of the neighbour’s dog, if you would not act to try to save the dog, or your action to save the dog was motivated only by a desire to save your neighbour from distress caused by losing the dog or the financial inconvenience or buying a new one, I think that you would agree that animals have no moral status. Dogs, you would say, deserve no more consideration for their own sake than inanimate objects.

However, I suspect that most people would act to try to save the dog. Furthermore, I'd say that in acting, most people would be primarily thinking about the dog (recognising that it might be distressed or its life in danger) rather than the dog’s owner. That is, they would see their duty as being to the dog, not to some other being. 

If so, I think you’d have to conclude that animals do have a moral status. Of course this doesn’t tell us whether the moral status of animals is the same as or different to that of humans, but I’d argue that it would be morally inconsistent to rescue the dog in the above scenario, but then act as if animals have no moral status in ethical questions such as the use of animals for food, entertainment, or medical experiments.

My year 12s seemed to mostly agree with this line of reasoning, but as always I’d be interested to hear any feedback. How would you respond in the house and dog scenarios and why? Or do you think there are problems with the though experiment or the conclusions I’ve drawn from it?

Young Catholic Minute

I've been trying to put together some resources for the AQA Religion and Contemporary Society course I'm teaching for the first time next term, and I remembered the Young Catholic Minute website, which I though I'd share here.

The site is run is run by and for young people, and has a number of short videos giving Catholic views on issues of ethics, politics, and relationships. When I've used them in class students have found them pretty amusing (perhaps not always intentionally) - click the video below to get an idea.

Buddhist Ethics: Five Precepts Revision Postcards

The Five Precepts: No. 3

A few weeks ago I uploaded a set of Christian ethics revision cards, to help students remember some of the key Bible verses that relate to the ethical issues we study at GCSE. I was pleased to see that quite a few students did actually put them up in their cubicles (I work in a boarding school), and rather natty they looked too.

In a similar line, I've created a small set of revision postcards illustrating the Five Precepts, the basic ethical code of Buddhism. As with the Christian ethics postcards I uploaded a few weeks back, the idea is to get the students revising them so they can easily incorporate them into their exam answers.

You can download them as a pdf here, or if you have a TES account, as a Word document here.

The Jesus Compass

The Jesus Compass is a little acrostic I've used with some of my GCSE classes to help them respond to ethical questions from a Christian perspective by thinking about the different ways that individuals could be influenced or inspired to behave. The acrostic stands for:

Jesus - Are any of Jesus’ sayings or actions relevant to the question?     

Church - What are the teachings of different Christian churches / denominations?

Obey Conscience - What might an individual Christian’s conscience tell them to do?    

Ministers & Priests - How might a minister or priest advise a Christian to act?

Prayer - How might praying help a Christian to make moral decisions?    

Agape - What is the most loving thing to do?

Saints - How might the lives of famous Christians inspire others to behave?        

Scripture - What Biblical quotations or teachings are relevant?

Partly it's a revision crib to help students remember some of the religious teachings and individuals they have studied who could be relevant to a particular ethical question, and partly it prompts  students to include the religious perspectives that are needed to access the higher grades.

Some of the "points" of the compass are meatier than others of course, but referring to - say - the conscience or agape might be enough to shift a student from a level 3 to a level 4 in the AQA mark scheme. For more able students, it also encourages them to consider a wide range of possible sources of evidence and select the best from them. It's worked well with the GCSE classes I've used it with, and even with the A2 class I've used it with, so I thought I'd share it here.  

I've posted a generic revision sheet for it, and a worksheet version that students can use to focus on a particular question. You can download these as pdfs here and here, or if you have a TES account, as MS Office documents here.

Christian Ethics Quotations - Revision Postcards

Well the exam season is under way, and my Year 12 Religious Studies class have already taken their AS exam. They seemed pretty happy with the questions that came up, no evil AQA surprises as far as I could tell. Good luck to everybody out there, whether you're taking exams or sweating on your students' results!

I've put together a set of revision postcards illustrating some of the key Christian quotations that GCSE RS students should incorporate into their exams to support their views and access the higher grades.

You can download them on the TES here or via Google Docs here. You will need an account with the TES or Google to view them.

Hard Determinism Revision Fact Sheet

Photo credit: fodor

My last school liked to break topics down into key facts that students could use memory techniques to learn. This year, I've been trying out a memory journey or loci method to help my Year 12s learn key criticisms of the argument from religious experience. Hopefully I'll post a bit more on this in the next week or so, when I see how well it's worked.

In the meantime, below is a fact sheet on hard determinism that I used last year, broken down into 20 key facts that you could use the loci method or the peg system to help you remember. The facts are below, or posted to google docs here (you will need a google account to access them).

Update: I've realised that the original 20 bullet point fact sheet I've uploaded, was partly culled from a page on the Tutor2u website here. Not something I worried about when I was putting together a fact sheet for a dozen-or-so students in class last year, but I've contacted the website to check they're happy for this post to remain.

1.    Philosophical Determinism is the theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to exclude the possibility of free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do.

2.   Universal Causation is the belief that everything in the universe including all human actions and choices has a cause. Thus all events are causally determined and theoretically predictable; you just need to know the effect of the causes. 

3.   The Illusion of Moral Choice is a result of our ignorance of what causes these choices, leading us to believe they have no cause. 

4.   John Locke used an analogy in which a sleeping man is locked in a darkened room. On awakening he decides he will remain in the room, unaware that the room is locked. In reality the man has no freedom to choose, he cannot get out of the room. However, his ignorance of his true condition has led him to believe that he does have the freedom to choose to remain in the room. 

5.   David Hume (actually a soft determinist) commented that we can observe patterns in the physical world that can also be found in the decisions we make. Our decisions thus, just like the physical world, are causally determined. Theoretically then, we could know the future if we were knowledgeable of all the causes in the universe and their effects. 

6.   Benedict Spinoza said “In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which has been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on until infinity.” 

7.   Adolf Hitler is no more culpable for his actions than the good-doing Christian church-goer, according to hard determinism. We cannot be held morally responsible for our actions if they are causally determined and not a result of our own moral choice.  

8.   Psychological Determinism is the view human behaviour, thoughts and feelings are the inevitable outcome of complex psychological laws describing cause and effect relationships in human behaviour. Thus all decisions and actions can theoretically be predicted. There are many influencing factors on human behaviour: Hereditary, Environment, Society, Culture. 

9.   Clarence Darrow successfully defended two youths guilty of murder by focusing his argument on their lack of moral responsibility. Darrow argued that their actions were influenced by a combination of heredity and social conditioning. 

10. Ivan Pavlov found that dogs could be conditioned to respond in a particular way to an external stimulus. Pavlov believed that conditioned reflexes could explain the behaviour of psychotic people. For example those who withdrew from the world may associate all stimuli with possible injury or threat.  

11. Skinner’s theory of Operant Conditioning suggests that changes in behaviour are the result of an individual’s response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. A response produces a consequence, and when a particular stimulus-response pattern is reinforced (rewarded) the individual is conditioned to respond.  

12. Theological determinism is the belief that the causal chain can be traced back to an uncaused causer (Cosmological argument, Aquinas), and this is God. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, we cannot have free-will and our actions must be pre-determined by him.  

13. St. Paul believed that God chooses who will be saved. We shouldn’t question God’s right to choose since none of us deserve to be saved. Humans are free to choose how to live their lives but their final destination is determined by God alone. 

14. St. Augustine believed in pre-destination, the belief that only those elected by God can achieve salvation. God has foreknowledge of our choices and the decisions we will make. This does not mean man doesn’t make decisions freely; rather it emphasizes God’s omnipotence. 

15. Jean Calvin argued that that the destination of each human being is determined by God on the basis of his foreknowledge of everyone’s character and life. He said that there was nothing anybody could do to change their destiny. According to Calvin, there is no free will. Calvin therefore takes a hard determinist approach. 

16. Scientific determinism tells us that for every physical event there is a physical cause, and this causal chain can be traced back to the moment of the Big Bang. If we consider the mind to be material activity in the brain i.e. chemical impulses, then our thoughts and decisions are also pre-determined. We can explore the causes of human behaviour through the many different branches of science, for example Psychology, Sociology, Physiology and Anthropology. 

17. Isaac Newston revolutionised physics with his proposition that all bodies are governed by the three laws of motion. Newton’s universe was predictable, like an intricate clockwork toy. 

18. Laplace believed that if it were possible at any one time to know both the position and the speed of all the particles in the universe at any one time, it would be possible to know their position at any other time in the past, present or future. This implies we can, theoretically, predict the future even though it might not be possible in reality. 

19. Heisenburg Uncertainty Theory challenges scientific determinism. It says that it is not possible to measure both the position and speed of a particle at the same time due to the effect of photons which has a significant effect on a subatomic level. However just because we cannot measure both does not mean they cannot both be known.

20. Chaos Theory suggests that in the material world events occur randomly and by chance. This theory is also known as the “butterfly effect” as it suggests that the slightest movement of a butterfly’s wings in Beijing could cause a hurricane in New York some time later.

Student Revision Videos and Blog

So the revision season is upon us. The Easter holidays seem months ago already, and for A level students, the few weeks until exams start will go by in a dizzying whirl of revision cards, double bubble maps, and last minute crammer sessions.

I thought I'd share these useful revision videos made by student Komilla Chadha. From the topics cover, I think Komilla must have studied the OCR RS syllabus, but the videos are also useful for other exam boards too, and over a wide range of topics in Philosophy and Ethics. There are also videos relevant to Law and Economics, if you're taking these subjects. 

Komilla also has this blog. It hasn't been updated recently (by the dates, I'd guess she took her A levels a couple of years ago), but some of the materials are well worth a look.

Peter Singer: Religion's Regressive Hold on Animal Rights

In this 2010 article from the Guardian, Peter Singer (who one of my University lecturers referred to rather sniffily as a "minor ethicist") discusses the influence of religious views on our attitudes to animals. 

Last week, the chief minister of Malacca, Mohamad Ali Rustam, was quoted in the Guardian as saying that God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans...

The chief minister's comment is yet another illustration of the generally regressive influence that religion has on ethical issues – whether they are concerned with the status of women, with sexuality, with end-of-life decisions in medicine, with the environment, or with animals. Although religions do change, they change slowly, and tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful.

Russell Stannard on Free Will

If you were in my AS class last year, you might remember me showing you a couple of clips featuring the avuncular Russell Stannard, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the Open University.

In the OU video below, Stannard discusses the problem of free will.

Free Online University Courses

I recently found out about this website that offers free online courses from US universities. 

Useful to extend your A level studies, gain a taste of University study, or just to learn something new. I've signed up for a course on The Ancient Greek Hero, which sounds interesting. For philosophers and ethicists, there's also this course on Justice. 

Or if you fancy something a bit easier, there's always Quantum Mechanics. 

 

Animal Experiments - Resources For and Against

In class today, I showed my Year 13 students a video on animal experiments made by the charity Animal Aid, and I thought I would share a link to the video here. It's split into 4 parts. 

Although the video is intended for GCSE and A level students, it does contain distressing images throughout.

 

Part 1: How are animals used?

Part 2: Is it good science?

Part 3: Why do they do it?

Part 4: What are the alternatives?

Note that the video has a strong anti-vivisection agenda, I haven't posted it as objective summary of the debate. If you would like to hear the case for the use of animals in medical experiments, you can click here.

In related news,the European Union has recently acted to ban the testing of cosmetics on animals. I also posted about my own past views on vivisection here.

Confessions of a Denialist

A couple of days ago on Exploring Our Matrix (a blog I thoroughly recommend for RS students), James McGrath compared Jesus mythicists with those who spin conspiracy theories around the recent shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. McGrath took a bit of a pasting from some commenters on his blog, who found the comparison offensive.

I have mixed feelings about McGrath’s post. Upon reflection, I think McGrath was wrong to use the tragedy to score a cheap point in an academic debate. However, I do I think McGrath’s argument is a valid one: some of the reasoning employed by mythicists could equally be (and indeed is) used to justify all sorts of marginal theories, including thoroughly unpleasant positions such as 9/11 trutherism and holocaust denial. At the same time, I think it needs to be made clear that pointing out that (for example) holocaust deniers and mythicists employ similar arguments, or that the two movements share other characteristics, does not imply that there is any moral equivalence between these positions.

I thought it might be useful then, to make a comparison between mythicism and a different form of denialism, one where I actually sympathise with the ideology that underpins it. As it happens, I think I’m in a reasonable place to be able to do this because something has recently dawned upon me: I used to be a denialist.

Let me explain. Some of you might know that I’m a vegetarian. These days I’m a fairly sloppy sort of vegetarian: I wear leather shoes, I don’t obsessively check food labels for suspect ingredients, and I occasionally enjoy the odd pint of bitter, even though it might contain extract of fish bladder. In my younger days though, I took it all much more seriously. I kept a strict vegan diet, pitched up at animal rights demos, and saved up my pennies to buy vegetarian DMs. Thinking back, I’m amazed that my friends and family put up with me for as long as they did, I must have been a terrible bore…

Like many vegetarians, I became interested the debate about the legitimacy of vivisection, the use of animals in medical experiments. In particular, I held a view, common among people who hold strong beliefs about animal rights, that scientific experiments on animals are not only morally unjustifiable, but also scientifically flawed.

A few days ago, I read an interesting blog post on some of the tactics used by denialists and noticed that the author listed the anti-vivisection movement as an example of denialism. And of course he was spot on. I’d never really thought about it before but there it was: I used to be a denialist. 

As with other forms of denialism, the position of anti-vivisection campaigners is completely opposed to the consensus position among medical researchers (i.e. that animals offer the best model of the human body when testing new medicines or procedures). As with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to focus on the problems with the scientific case for animal experiments (such as the case of thalidomide, where animal experiments failed to identify a risk to unborn children). As with other forms of denialism, prominent anti-vivisection authors often (though not invariably) lack relevant qualifications and expertise. As with other forms of denialism, these authors tend to appeal directly to the general public rather than participating in genuine academic discussion (via self-published books and leaflets; we didn’t have the internet in my day).

And as with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to share a strong ideology that is obviously closely related to the debated issue. So just as holocaust deniers are usually characterised by anti-semitic views, and mythicists tend to share a militant form of atheism, anti-vivisectionists almost invariably share a strong commitment to animal rights.

One of my students once asked me whether I thought that denialists arrive at their views on the basis of their ideology and then manipulate the evidence to support their views, or whether it was more likely that their ideology predisposed them to look at the evidence in a particular way, such that they arrived at a conclusion that supported the ideology. It’s an excellent question, and the answer is, I think, a little bit of both.

Of course, denialists reject the idea that ideology has anything to do with their views on the issue being debated, and in a sense I think they’re telling the truth. Certainly I genuinely thought that animal experiments were scientifically flawed, and I could have given you plenty of evidence why that was the case. I’d say I was pretty good at debating with people on the topic, even people with more obvious qualifications than mine.

What I think what is happening here is that a set of ideological beliefs is predisposing the denialist to interpret the evidence that favours their existing beliefs. However, once this has happened, I think perhaps this reading of the evidence strengthens the initial ideology. Once the evidence (or at least your reading of it) has persuaded you that animal experiments aren’t even good science, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that you were right in the first place that animals are misused by scientists? Similarly, once the evidence has persuaded you that the holocaust is a hoax arising out of a Jewish conspiracy, wouldn’t that confirm your anti-semitic worldview? And when the evidence has persuaded you that Jesus didn’t even exist, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that religion is a lie? And so, as the ideology is reinforced, a denialist’s reading of the evidence becomes ever more biased, and the ideology becomes more and more confirmed – a denialicious circle.

That’s why I think it’s almost impossible to confront almost any form of denialism on the basis of the evidence. Actually, I’ll clarify that: mainstream historians and scientists should certainly address the flaws and errors in the arguments of denialists, but it’s as well to recognise that you’re not going to change a denialist’s mind merely by pointing out that their reading of the evidence is wrong. Denialists will either ignore or gainsay any evidence that you put forward.

I suspect that the only way that most denialists will change their minds is by coming to see that there is something wrong with the underlying ideology, or at least that things are not quite as black and white as they appear. Certainly, nobody ever persuaded me on evidence grounds that I was wrong about vivisection. Actually I could still put up a pretty good fight in a debate if you feel like a row about it.  What happened was that as time passed I gradually became less vegangelical. I lapsed to being a regular vegetarian, stopped reading animal rights literature, and generally found other things to think about. As that happened, I think that gave me the intellectual space to re-think my perspectives.

So today, while I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of vivisection, I’ve come to accept that they are scientifically valid. It would be convenient for me if they weren’t, but they are. Perhaps a necessary part of becoming a mature thinking person is realising that the world does not always arrange itself to suit our beliefs.