Star Trek Midterm Concepts

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Authoritarian Systems

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A system that is more concerned with behavior than thought, order than crushing all dissent or differences. Privacy tolerated and loyalty and allegiance to subgroups, such as: family, church, is allowed when it does not contradict the system and/or produce deviant behavior.

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Totalitarian Systems

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As system that demands obedience in thought and behavior. It is not enough that one is compliant, one must believe in the legitimacy of the system and no dissent or differences, even in thought, are tolerated. In order to control thought, all forms of input to the mind must be controlled.

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Absolute Models of law and Justice (God Model)

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This model rejects absolutes and is premised on the idea that justice can only occur when the particulars of the situation are considered. People in similar situations can be treated differently and the fairness of the result is deemed more important than how the decision was made.

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Equity Models of Law and Justice

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This model rejects absolutes and is premised on the idea that justice can only occur when the particulars of the situation are considered. People in similar situations can be treated differently and the fairness of the results is deemed more important than how the decision was made.

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Due Process Models of Law and Justice (Participatory Model)

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This model rejects absolutes as too simplistic but also questions whether unbiased people of sufficient intelligence exist to do “Individualized justice.” The fairness of the process of reaching a decision is stressed.

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Social Contract Theory

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According to Hobbs: “a set of laws designed to ensure maximum freedom combined with personal security.” But Hobbs also believed that “without the fear of some coercive power” (enforcement of he contract) that man is no better off then they were in the state of nature. “The problem with Hobb’s social contract theory is that it doesn’t guarantee that everyone will have a chance to participate equally in framing the rules of morality.”

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Social Benefits of Technology

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A concept involving a Human Rights perspective that holds that reasonably unrestrained access to technology is required before widespread social benefits can be had. Implicit in the concept is that private ownership of technology generates vast systems of law to protect property rights and economic benefit.

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Cultural Relativism

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No one culture’s customs can ever be evaluated as right or wrong because, ethical judgments do not have a standard of morality (since there is no universal standard of morality independent of opinion) any belief about right or wrong is entirely arbitrary and therefore relative. Cultural relativism has some points as a concept, e.g., warning of the dance of ethnocentrisms, but it also becomes a ‘nonstandard by which all conduct becomes tolerable.

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Thrasymachus, Justice and Law

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“Justice” (or the law as we know it) is really nothing more than a set of arbitrary rules imposed on us by people stronger than we are.

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Moral, Amoral, and Immoral

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Moral refers to the capacity of being to make judgments about what is right and good – or a person who complies with an ethical system. Amoral refers to a being who is unable to judge what is right and wrong. In contrast, an immoral being knows what is right and wrong, but chooses to do wrong.

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Epicurus, Three Kinds of Desires

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Epicurus distinguished between (1) natural and necessary; (2) natural and unnecessary; (3) and unnatural and unnecessary.

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Federalism

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Sharing of political power/jurisdiction among a central authority and component authorities. The U.S. is federalistic, as is the United Nations and the United Federation of Planets. A major point to examine is how the strong or weak the federation is. If the central authority has no real power to enforce and parts may leave, then it is weak. If components have little say or legal jurisdiction then it is strong. At a certain point, it ceases to be a federation. This is bet thought of on a continuum.

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Three Principle Causes of Quarrel

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Described by Hobbs as “competition, diffidence, and glory. The respective objects or goals of these drives are gain (profit), safety, and reputation.

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Duty

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According to Kant one should “always act from duty, not according to it.” Since ethical principles “apply to anyone who acts through deliberation and reason” there is a universal standard. Acting in accordance to duty is not really ethical conduct because one is really acting out of self-interest. It is not just what we do that counts, it is why we do it.

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Liberal Feminism

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This ideal holds that historically women were denied “equal opportunity and participation in the public world of politics, economics, religion, science, and education because of institutionalized sexism.” However, laws and policy changes can ‘break down barriers’ and if giving the chance, women can compete with men in most if not all endeavors, and be “true equals to men.”

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Radical Feminism

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This ideal involves the idea that “attacking inequality is insufficient because patriarchy is the root of women’s subordination and oppression.” Radical feminists are more likely to “celebrate” physical differences between men and women and acknowledge that “biological differences contributed to the enslavement of women and patriarchy itself.”

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Classic Rationalist Perspective

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This perspective stresses the supremacy intellect over other human faculties and holds that true knowledge is that which is achieved by the mind in some way independently of information provided by the senses. One problem of rationalism is that ‘transcendent’ or ‘universal’ truth can be politically manipulated to justify totalitarian means to enforce truth, another is that of the curriculum or ‘core’ knowledge.

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Empiricism

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Is a reaction and rejection to the mysticism and metaphysical vagueness of rationalism. The fundamental tenant as expressed by Locke (considered the founder of the movement) is that “no knowledge comes into the mind except through the gate of the senses.” The new born infant is a tabula rasa, a blank tablet and acquires knowledge through experience, there is no a priori knowledge. A problem is that evidence of our senses is often unreliable and thus, subject to political manipulation. For example, in rejecting the transcendent and universal, empiricism can become cold and valueless as a standard for developing laws.

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Virtue is Knowledge

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“For Socrates, Virtue is knowledge (knowledge of the good); the two are equated. A good person who knows what is right will, by virtue of such knowledge, do what is right.