ENG-113 Ethics and Technology
In this composition and humanities course, students will continue to develop their research and writing skills, and they will apply these skills to various topics related to ethics and technology. Content will include major ethical schools of thought (including Deontological Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics) and a range of evolving technologies. This course carries SUNY General Education Written Communication and Humanities credit.
Prerequisite
Successful completion of ENG- 101
Course Learning Outcomes
- Knowledge and Application of Ethical Perspectives:
Introduce and apply a range of major ethical schools of thought (including Deontological Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics) and examine primary texts representing each perspective.
- Rhetorical and Genre Knowledge:
Read, analyze, and compose a variety of texts by evaluating and responding to purpose, audience, genre, and context across academic, professional, and civic situations, engaging in reasoned inquiry and considering multiple viewpoints to participate constructively in civic discourse.
- Critical Thinking and Information Literacy:
Effectively locate and evaluate information using tools appropriate to the rhetorical situation, with an awareness of authority, validity, bias, and origin; and synthesize and integrate that information ethically to develop well-supported arguments.
- Composing and Research Processes:
Employ flexible, recursive writing and research processes—including planning, drafting, revising, peer review, and reflection—to compose rhetorically effective and coherent texts for varied contexts.
- Ethical and Transferable Written Communication Practices:
Demonstrate command of conventions, documentation, and style while showing an understanding of the ethical dimensions of information use, creation, and dissemination—including appropriate engagement with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence—and apply these practices to academic, professional, and civic contexts through informed, ethical advocacy, dissent, and dialogue.
View Course Outline
Course Description
In this composition and humanities course, students will continue to develop their research and writing skills, and they will apply these skills to various topics related to ethics and technology. Content will include major ethical schools of thought (including Deontological Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics) and a range of evolving technologies. This course carries SUNY General Education Written Communication and Humanities credit.
Credit Hours
3Semester(s) Course Will Be Offered
Summer, Spring, Fall
Prerequisites
Successful completion of ENG- 101
SUNY General Education Course
- Humanities
- Written Communication
First Year Experience Course
No
Course Learning Outcomes
- Knowledge and Application of Ethical Perspectives:
Introduce and apply a range of major ethical schools of thought (including Deontological Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics) and examine primary texts representing each perspective.
- Rhetorical and Genre Knowledge:
Read, analyze, and compose a variety of texts by evaluating and responding to purpose, audience, genre, and context across academic, professional, and civic situations, engaging in reasoned inquiry and considering multiple viewpoints to participate constructively in civic discourse.
- Critical Thinking and Information Literacy:
Effectively locate and evaluate information using tools appropriate to the rhetorical situation, with an awareness of authority, validity, bias, and origin; and synthesize and integrate that information ethically to develop well-supported arguments.
- Composing and Research Processes:
Employ flexible, recursive writing and research processes—including planning, drafting, revising, peer review, and reflection—to compose rhetorically effective and coherent texts for varied contexts.
- Ethical and Transferable Written Communication Practices:
Demonstrate command of conventions, documentation, and style while showing an understanding of the ethical dimensions of information use, creation, and dissemination—including appropriate engagement with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence—and apply these practices to academic, professional, and civic contexts through informed, ethical advocacy, dissent, and dialogue.
Topic Outline
- Rhetorical Reading and Writing, which includes:
- audience
- purpose
- subject
- context
- genre
- Writing Strategies for Genres, which may include but are not limited to:
- research proposals
- annotated bibliographies
- planning documents, such as synthesis documents
engaging with emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, in ethical and appropriate ways
determining how to use emerging technologies as tools vs. substitutes
- researched-based academic papers
- Reading Strategies, which may include but are not limited to:
- identifying key terms
- evaluating
- summarizing
- annotating
- responding to texts
- Joining an Academic Conversation:
- posing inquiry-based questions
- framing an issue or concern
- arriving at an independent conclusion
- adding an independent contribution
- Integrating Sources, which may include:
evaluating for Credibility
evaluating for Relevance
evaluating for Authority
evaluating for Accuracy
evaluating for Purpose
- evaluating for Bias
- popular Sources
- scholarly Sources
- quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing
- citation systems, such as
- MLA
- APA
- CSE
- in-text citation format
- end-of-text citation format
- Recursive Research and Writing Process, which may include but is not limited to:
- generating content
- drafting
- peer commenting or reviewing
- revising
- maintaining the integrity of the recursive research and writing process through scaffolded work
- Reflective Writing, which may include but is not limited to:
- self-evaluating before, during, and after a writing project to see growth in critical thinking
- examining change in perspective before, during, and after reading research
- transferring writing and research strategies to other contexts
- Ethical Considerations and Technology, which may include but are not limited to:
- Professional codes of ethics (and the values and assumptions on which they are premised)
- The Value Neutrality thesis
- Utilitarian ethics and its critics (Bentham, J.S. Mill, Peter Singer, Bernard Williams, et al)
- Kant and deontological ethics
- Social Contract Theory and the distinction between positive and negative rights (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, et al)
- Virtue Ethics and Wisdom Traditions (Aristotle, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Thomism, etc.)
- Natural Law ethics (Aquinas)
- The conceptual roots of data privacy, intellectual property, and private property rights (Locke, Brandeis, et al)
- Theories of technology and social systems / social control (Max Weber, Taylorism, Bentham’s Panopticon, etc.)
- The ethics of government and corporate surveillance
- The concept of informed consent
- The ethics of security, reliability, and risk assessment
- Whistleblowing and ethical hacking
- Technology and systemic bias
- Epistemology and ethics (mis/disinformation, deepfakes, etc.)
- Artificial Intelligence and the nature of agency, intentionality, originality (and questions raised regarding ethical responsibility
- Historicism and the ideological basis of progress narratives