The fundamentals Evolution of the social - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss aboutThe fundamentals Evolution of the social. Answer: Ethics is a field that deals with moral principles and philosophy. It helps in recommending and defending the concepts of wrong or right behaviour (Peters, 2015). Ethical theories can be used for understanding whether an action is morally correct or incorrect. Ethical theories are classified into metaethics, applied ethics and normative ethics (Melden, 2013). Metaethics tries to get an insight into the meaning of the principles of ethics and revolves around the concept of moral judgements. Applied ethics focuses on examining controversial situations and issues such as animal rights and nuclear war. Normative ethics tries to establish moral standards for regulating right as well as wrong conduct (Dewey, 2016). This essay uses the four main ethical theories: Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Deontology and Contract Theory for analysing an article based on automation. It explains the concepts of the four ethical theories and tries to find out whether automation is ethically right or wrong. About the article A researcher and neuroscientist from Russia named Alexandra Elbakyan made 48 million or more peer reviews and journal articles available over the Internet at free of cost. She was accused of providing pirated journals via a site called Sci-Hub in an illegal manner. She had refused to close the Sci-Hub despite a lawsuit from one of the biggest publishers in the world, Elsevier. A district court New York had also ordered to close the site. According to Elbakyan, paying $32 was expensive for the students for carrying out research work (MacDonald, 2018). She believed that knowledge should be accessible to everyone irrespective of their income. She even claimed that leading universities such as Cornell and Harvard were unable to afford the research papers because of high subscription rate. Elbakyan said that pirating in the film and music industry destroys its creators. The pirating in case of journal publishing is different as it helps to spread knowledge and facilitate research works. A ccording to Elbakyan, shutting down of the Sci-Hub site would demonstrate that the general public and students have no right to access information and knowledge. Utilitarian Theory The utilitarian theory falls under the category of normative ethics. Utilitarianism determines an action or policy to be ethically correct or incorrect depending on the consequences (Barrow, 2015). This theory considers an act to be morally right when it produces maximum utility for the maximum number of people. Utility is measured in terms of happiness and pleasure. Utilitarianism focuses on the principle of greatest happiness that states that an action is morally right when it maximizes the utility of the people in the world. A morally right action would always make the people happy and reduce pain or negative consequences. Utilitarianism or consequentialism focuses on the effects of an action and decides whether the action is wrong or right. This theory is based on the fact that if the good thing in the world such as happiness is increased then it will make life better (Mulgan, 2014). Positive contributions of human beings help to reduce pain of the people and make the world a bet ter place. Utilitarianism focuses on the well being of the people. This article talks about a neuroscientist named Alexandra Elbakyan who had developed a website called Sci-Hub for providing free research papers and peer reviews to the people. She had enabled the students and researchers to download journal articles of big publishers such as Springer and Elsevier over the Internet without any cost (MacDonald, 2018). The sole intention behind this pirating was to support Human Rights by allowing the people to freely access knowledge. She had taken this action as she could understand the problems faced by students and researchers who were unable to afford expensive journal articles for their research work. This act of spreading or disseminating knowledge could maximize utility among maximum people and spread happiness (Ryan, 2015). Therefore according to Utilitarianism, the action of Alexandra Elbakyan was ethically correct as it was able to maximize the utility or happiness among the people around the world by spreading free knowledge. Deontology Theory Deontology does not focus on the consequences of the action but focuses on the action itself. If an action taken is right then it is considered to be morally correct even if the consequences are negative. When an action is itself wrong then it is morally incorrect even if consequences are positive. According to this theory, an action can be morally judged based on certain rules (May, 2014). Deontology establishes a relation between morality of actions and human duties. It is considered to be obligation-based ethics (Hurley, 2013). This theory is opposed to the Utilitarianism theory where morality of actions is dependent on the consequences. For example, if someone tries to kill another person in response of self defence then the action is morally incorrect as the action of killing someone itself is a crime. In this article, we get to see that a Russian neuroscientist and researcher named Alexandra Elbakyan established a website for providing free access to journal articles for enhanc ing knowledge of the people. She did not want people to get deprived of their Human Rights to access knowledge at free of cost. She established the Sci-Hub website that downloads journals from LibGen, a pirate database or bypasses the journal paywalls by using access keys (MacDonald, 2018). Piracy is an illegal act. This act committed by Elbakyan was itself morally wrong as it did not follow rules or duties even though its consequences were good. Therefore according to the Deontology Theory, the action of Alexandra Elbakyan was ethically wrong. Virtue Theory Virtue Ethics deals with the moral character of individuals. It focuses on the virtue of individuals rather than good consequences and duties. Virtuous people have ideal or morally right character traits (Van Hooft, 2014). Virtue Theory does not guide people on how they should behave or act in several situations. There is no rule that can be followed for being morally correct. This article clearly shows that Alexandra Elbakyan had faced issues in accessing expensive journal papers so she thought to resolve this problem of others by launching a website that could provide free access to journal articles. She thought that this act would enable people to gain knowledge and carry out research work with ease. Pirating was illegal but her intentions were good. She was correct in her own terms and her motive behind this act reflected her good moral character (Shafer-Landau, 2014). Therefore according to Virtue Theory, Elbakyan has an ethical character and her action was morally correct. Contract Theory Contract Theory deals with social contracts that help in establishing moral rules of behaviour. A social contract establishes moral obligations for the people and helps in forming a society (Skyrms, 2014). The moral obligations depend on the social contract. Absence of obligations would harm the society and in order to maintain harmony in the society political communities are established. In this article, Elbakyan talks about Human Rights and says that the reason behind pirating was to disseminate knowledge. But in a society pirating is an illegal act. So according to the social contract theory, the act of providing free access to journal articles of other publishers and authors without their permission was unethical as it was against the rules, regulations and contracts of the society. This essay concludes that the act of illegally sharing millions of journal articles and scientific papers over the Internet was either ethical or unethical depending on the ethical theories. From the perspective of Utilitarianism, it can be said that this act was ethically correct as it maximized the utility and had spread happiness among maximum number of people. Deontology Theory said that this act of spreading knowledge was unethical as the action of pirating was illegal. According to Virtue Ethics, the intention of Elbakyan was good and she had a virtuous character. The Contract Theory pointed out that the act of piracy is illegal and it is against the social norms and contracts, therefore this act was unethical. References Barrow, R. (2015).Utilitarianism: A contemporary statement. Routledge. Dewey, J. (2016).Ethics. Read Books Ltd. Hurley, P. (2013). Deontology.The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. MacDonald, F. (2018).Researcher Illegally Shares Millions of Science Papers Free Online to Spread Knowledge.ScienceAlert. Retrieved 16 January 2018, from https://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploaded-millions-of-journal-articles-in-an-attempt-to-open-up-science May, J. (2014). Moral judgment and deontology: Empirical developments.Philosophy Compass,9(11), 745-755. Melden, A. (2013).Ethical theories. Read Books Ltd. Mulgan, T. (2014).Understanding utilitarianism. Routledge. Peters, R. S. (2015).Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals). Routledge. Ryan, A. (2015). 16. Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy: The Views of JS Mill. Shafer-Landau, R. (2014). The fundamentals of ethics. Skyrms, B. (2014).Evolution of the social contract. Cambridge University Press. Van Hooft, S. (2014).Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge.