week 12: ethics of care and interdependence

Question 1

describe the prisoner’s dilemma

Answer 1

• game theory
  
  • strategic choices in the midst of the uncertainty
• you can either betray your partner or keep silent, but you do not know what they will do

Question 2

describe feminist ethics and human nature

Answer 2

• Carol Gilligan
• argues that two biased conceptions of human nature are the autonomous agent and the homo economicus
  
  • androcentric bias (male bias)
• if we research both sexes, we get a more complex viewpoint
• autonomous self: human beings are understood as essentially independent, self-governing selves
• homo economicus: human beings are understood as rational decision-makers and self-interest maximizes
  
  • rational self-interest maximizers

Question 3

describe the ethics of care

Answer 3

• human beings are interdependent
  
  • we have mutual vulnerability with others and the world around us
  • ex: Keshav Singh
    
    • The level of reality at which we are all individuals is a less fundamental reality than the level at which we are all One
• ethical reasoning should be based on relational context, not abstract principles
• we have a special obligation to care for those closest to us (who are dependent on us)
• moral reasoning should be based on the relational context in our moral psychology, this is how we typically think about - descriptive
• we should be thinking of relational care - prescriptive
• emerges from feminist critique

Question 4

list the difference between conventional vs feminist ethics

Answer 4