Chapter 12 Exercises: Applied Ethics

Exercise 1: The Tech Ethics Dilemma — Deep Analysis

This exercise asks you to work through the algorithmic bias problem with care and precision.

Setup: A major bank uses an AI-driven loan approval system. An independent audit reveals that the system approves white applicants at a rate 23% higher than Black applicants with equivalent credit scores, income, debt-to-income ratios, and employment histories. The bank's CEO acknowledges the disparity but argues that the algorithm is "merely reflecting the market" — that the training data reflected real historical default rates, and that the algorithm is therefore being economically rational.

Part A: Apply the frameworks (write 2–3 paragraphs for each)

  1. Consequentialist analysis: What are the aggregate effects of this system? Think about: the immediate harm to rejected applicants; the second-order effects on wealth accumulation over a lifetime; the systemic effects on communities; and the third-order effects on future training data. Does the "efficiency" of the system justify the disparate impact? What would a utilitarian calculus that takes long-term effects seriously look like?

  2. Kantian analysis: The CEO says the algorithm is "just math." Evaluate this claim from a Kantian perspective. What does it mean to treat a loan applicant as an end in themselves? How does the algorithm's use of group-correlated features (however indirectly) conflict with Kant's requirement to treat persons as individuals? Is "the market made me do it" an adequate defense from a Kantian standpoint?

  3. Virtue ethics analysis: Describe the character of a bank that operates this system without auditing it for bias. Now describe the character of a bank that audits, finds a problem, and takes concrete steps to fix it. What institutional virtues are required to do the latter? What vices enable the former?

  4. Care ethics analysis: Who are the specific people affected by this system? What relationships of care and responsibility exist between the bank, its employees, its customers, and the communities it operates in? What would it look like to run a lending institution in a way that genuinely honors these relationships?

  5. Rawlsian analysis: Design a loan approval system from behind the veil of ignorance — not knowing whether you will be a white or a Black applicant, a wealthy or a working-class applicant. What features would the system include? What auditing requirements would you impose? What remedies would you build in?

Part B: The responsibility question

The bank's loan approval algorithm was: - Built by a third-party AI company that sold it to multiple banks - Approved by the bank's risk management team after reviewing its performance metrics (which did not include demographic breakdowns) - Deployed by the bank's technology team - Used by loan officers who were told to rely on its recommendations - Regulated under banking laws that did not specifically address algorithmic bias

Assign responsibility across each actor. Who bears primary responsibility? Secondary responsibility? Are there actors who are entirely off the hook? Would your answer change if the disparity had been discovered before deployment rather than after?

Part C: The hard question

Suppose fixing the bias requires accepting higher default rates — that is, suppose the algorithm's disparate impact is partly a function of economically relevant historical patterns, and "de-biasing" the algorithm means approving more loans that are, statistically, more likely to default.

Is this tradeoff ethically required? Optional? Prohibited? Write 2–3 paragraphs defending a position. Engage with at least two of the frameworks in your answer.

Exercise 2: Journaling — An Ethical Question in Your Own Life

This exercise is for reflection and self-knowledge. You are not required to share it with anyone unless you choose to.

Prompt: Write about an ethical question you face right now — at work, in your community, in your family, as a citizen. It does not need to be a grand dilemma. It could be:

  • Whether to say something when a colleague is being treated unfairly
  • How much of your income you have obligations to give to others
  • Whether to continue supporting a company or platform whose practices you have concerns about
  • What you owe a relationship that has become complicated
  • Whether to speak up about something you believe is wrong in an institution you are part of

Instructions: Write at least three paragraphs:

  1. Describe the situation clearly, including who is affected, what the relevant facts are, and what the tension or difficulty is.

  2. Apply two frameworks from this chapter (or from Chapters 4–11) to the situation. What does each framework suggest? Do they agree or disagree?

  3. Where do you land? What do you think you should do, and why? You are permitted — even encouraged — to be uncertain. If you are uncertain, describe what would help you resolve it.

The point of this exercise is not to reach a tidy answer but to practice bringing philosophical tools to bear on a real situation. The willingness to examine your own life is itself a philosophical virtue — what Socrates meant when he said the unexamined life is not worth living.

Exercise 3: Structured Dialogue — Corporate Responsibility

The setup: Two characters are having a dinner argument about a pharmaceutical company that has raised the price of an insulin analog from $35 per vial to $340 per vial after acquiring the rights from its original manufacturer. The drug has been on the market for decades. The company's CEO says the new price "reflects the drug's true market value and funds future innovation." Several patients have died after attempting to ration doses they could no longer afford.

Character A — The Rawlsian: Maria is a professor of political philosophy who holds that corporations, like other powerful social institutions, must justify their operation in terms that all affected parties could reasonably accept.

Character B — The Libertarian: James is an economist who holds that markets are the most efficient and ethically defensible mechanism for allocating resources, and that government interference in pricing does more harm than good in the long run.

Your task: Write the dialogue. It should be at least 800 words. Both characters should have the strongest possible version of their position (not strawmen). The dialogue should cover:

  • What obligations, if any, the corporation has to patients who cannot afford the drug
  • Whether the "innovation funding" justification holds up under scrutiny
  • Whether there is a morally relevant distinction between the company that developed the drug and the company that merely acquired it
  • Whether the deaths of patients who rationed their insulin change the moral calculus, and how

Tip: A good dialogue is not won by one character. It is one where both characters make valid points, force each other to refine their positions, and end with a clearer understanding of exactly what is at stake.

Exercise 4: The Dinner Party — Environmental Ethics

Setup: You are hosting a dinner party with three guests who have radically different views on environmental ethics:

  • Peter Singer: Utilitarian philosopher who argues that the capacity to suffer is the criterion for moral consideration, and that we have significant obligations based on this to both animals and the natural world.
  • Miriam Blackfeather (fictional): An Anishinaabe scholar and environmental attorney who argues that the land is a relational partner to which humans have obligations arising from membership in a shared community of life — and that Western environmental ethics, including Singer's, still centers humans in problematic ways.
  • Dr. Richard Hartwell (fictional): A corporate sustainability officer at an energy company who holds a stakeholder theory of business ethics and believes that market-based mechanisms and corporate responsibility are the right tools for addressing environmental problems.

Your task: Write the dinner party scene as a narrative, not a formal debate. The characters should ask each other genuine questions, challenge each other's assumptions, and acknowledge points of agreement as well as disagreement. Include at least one moment where Singer and Blackfeather agree against Hartwell, at least one moment where they disagree with each other, and at least one moment where Hartwell makes a point that neither can easily dismiss.

At least 700 words. You may include yourself as a fourth character if you wish.

Exercise 5: The Progressive Project — Complete Your Ethics Section

You have now worked through nine chapters on ethics: consequentialism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, social contract theory, Rawlsian justice, care ethics, and now applied ethics. This is the moment to synthesize.

Instructions: Write 3–5 paragraphs summarizing your ethical framework as it has developed through this section. This is not a summary of the textbook; it is an account of your own ethical thinking.

Questions to consider (you do not need to address all of them explicitly):

  1. Which framework do you find most compelling as a starting point? Consequentialism? Kantianism? Virtue ethics? Care ethics? Or some combination? Why?

  2. Which framework do you find least compelling? What objection do you find hardest to answer?

  3. Where have you faced genuine uncertainty? Is there a case — from this chapter or from earlier ones — where you find the frameworks genuinely unhelpful, where your intuitions pull you in one direction and the arguments pull you in another?

  4. How has your thinking changed? Is there a position you held at the start of this ethics section that you now hold differently? What changed it?

  5. What do you most want to continue thinking about? Environmental ethics? Corporate responsibility? Bioethics? The relationship between personal ethics and political action?

This document will become part of your final Ethics Portfolio if your course uses the Progressive Project structure. Keep it somewhere you can return to it.

Quick Practice Questions

These can be used for discussion or written reflection.

  1. A self-driving car's control system must be programmed to make decisions in unavoidable crash scenarios. Apply the categorical imperative: what maxim for the car's behavior could you universalize? Does the result match your intuitions?

  2. Beauchamp and Childress identify four principles of bioethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Choose a bioethical controversy not discussed in this chapter. Which of the four principles is most in tension, and why?

  3. Milton Friedman argues that corporate social responsibility beyond profit-seeking involves managers taxing shareholders without their consent. Construct the strongest possible objection to this argument.

  4. The non-identity problem suggests that future people who will live in a climate-changed world cannot be said to have been "harmed" by climate change because they would not exist in the counterfactual world where we acted differently. Does this argument trouble you? Why or why not?

  5. Peter Singer argues that speciesism — the arbitrary privileging of human interests over the equivalent interests of other species — is morally analogous to racism and sexism. Evaluate this analogy. Is it apt? What are its limits?