Teaching Notes 

VII.2&3,Spring&FaIl1985 
Informal Logic 

Technoethics 

Monterey Peninsula College DAVID CLEMENS 

I was correcting 1000 word argu-
mentative essays. One student wrote 
that "disagreeing with a U.S. govern-
ment position is proof that you have 
been brainwashed by the Russians." 
Another stated that Cable News Net-
work has proved that it "has what it 
takes." A third relied on evidence of 
organic brain differences between the 
sexes to prove sexual discrimination 
against girls in classroom computer 
use, then concluded that boys and girls 
should be treated exactly the same. 
Clearly, although mine is an English 
Composition class, I need to teach argu-
ment, not just mechanics, sentence 
structure and style. In fact, after 14 
years it has become clear to me that 
my most important job is to teach ethics 
and reasoning and their relationship 
to language. 

This does not mean I should preach 
particular doctrine or values. Instead, 
I must make students aware of the sys-
tems of ethical belief they employ in 
the process of opinion formation, the 
foundation of the argument which ulti-
mately appears on paper, and make 
that value system accessible for scru-
tiny. Writing mechanics are skeletal; 
the flesh of an argumentative essay is 
passionate conviction, and a clear 
awareness of what the position is and 
where it comes from. Then the students 
can proceed to design an appropriate 
argument and command language to 
express their belief. 

Yet most students not only don't 
know why they think as they do, they 
don't know what they think at all until 
they try, as Billy Budd, to frame their 
words, usually with the same result. 
As Leon Botstein, president of Bard 
College, has said," ... one rarely knows 
precisely what one thinks before one 
tries to formulate it. "[1] The result is 

inevitably bad writing because the lan-
guage itself is being strained to per-
form two functions simultaneously: 
to allow the student to discover what 
he thinks as he searches for language 
appropriate to express his feelings, 
that is, translate feeling into thought, 
and also to persuade others to adopt the 
thought which is not even yet clear to 
the writer. Student dismay at their 
poverty of idea content is expressed as 
generalization, ambiguity, incohe-
rence, and abstraction. Students fre-
quently leave class feeling they know 
less than when they entered because 
now they realize that they donlt know 
what they thought they did. And once 
you rule out the various informal fal-
lacies, rhetorical questions, and ab-
stractions, many students no longer 
know how to express anything at all 
because these have been their only 
models. As the semanticist Edward 
Sapir said, we "are very much at the 
mercy of the particular language which 
has become the medium of expres-
sion for [our] society. "[2] 

It is vital to remember that this prob-
lem is not one of a lack of mechanics 
or ignorance of argument construction; 
it is from lack of a clear idea, position, 
judgment, before the pen ever hits the 
paper, or the daisywheel hits the fan-
fold. 

The reasons for this vacuum are 
many. For one, how often in daily life 
are we forced to make ethical judg-
ments which engage our most deeply-
held beliefs, to clarify for ourselves 
what goes against our nature and what 
is congruent? These times are painful, 
excluding others and forcing our inner-
most selves to the surface for public 
exposure. We must declare who we 
are, and conversely who we are not. 
We cut oursleves out of the herd. So, 



164 Informal Logic 

more and more I especially among the 
young, we adopt the language of tele-
vision or advertising or journalism; 
we talk of "computer whizzes" and 
"slayings" and "yuppies" and we are 
"baffled" by the "feats" of "burgeon-
ing industries." We are up to our necks 
in language sludge that clogs our chan-
nels of thinking because how we con-
ceive something linguistically controls 
how we can think about it. When that 
language is debased by electronic 
media, thinking changes. Donna Wool-
folk Cross reports that "there is a grow-
ing body of evidence that long-term 
exposure to the language of TV news is 
detrimental to a person's thought 
processes. Seven out of ten people now 
get their information about the world 
exclusively from TV. Yet one recent 
study revealed that these people can 
no longer give even one reason to just-
ify their choice of a particular candidate 
or policy ./1[3] 

The education system may be the 
most inflexible language bureaucracy 
of all, spending years perfecting cur-
sive writing while its students gallop 
home after school to thei r keypads 
and VDT's. Exposed for years to that 
enclosing and rigid an environment, 
students are not prepared for the flash 
and quicksilver of contemporary adult 
experience. 

Today, technology defines the ethical 
questions and places them suddenly 
before us. How do you define "pri-
vacy" in a world increasingly inter-
connected by modems, personal com-
puters, and data ban ks? A conference 
at the Monterey Institute of Interna-
tional Studies decided that the concept 
of privacy has become obsolete. 

Our dictionaries are filled with new 
words, too. One is "bioethics." Tech-
nology forces us to deal with complex 
ethical questions that arise only be-
cause the technology creates the situa-
tion. For example, today when a preg-
nant woman dies it is sometimes pos-
sible to keep her body functioning for 
weeks as a host for her foetus until the 
child can develop enough for a Caesar-
ean section. This is a complex ethical 
dilemma for the doctors and the family, 

one which is presented only because 
the technological capability is there. 
Dr. Willard Gaylin, president of the 
Hastings Center, says, "Everyone 
is confused. No one is quite sure what 
the rules are. Doctors get into trouble 
when one virtue conflicts with another 
virtue. People of good will can come 
down on opposite sides."[4] And 
Hastings director Daniel Callahan says, 
"My general impression is that people 
who make actual decisions base it on 
religion if they have a strong faith, or 
else they grab a principle from the cur-
rent culture that they can use for their 
purposes. This is rarely preceded by 
systematic thinking."[5] 

Is it any wonder, then, that students 
writing argumentative papers have 
trouble formulating a clearly identifi-
able judgment around which to build a 
thesis statement? As a teacher, some of 
the most valuable experiences I can 
give my bewildered students are access 
to meaningful facts, prior knowledge 
of imminent issues, and the necessity 
of applying their value systems to new 
ethical predicaments. 

The tool I've devised I call Techno-
ethics. It's simply a listing of several 
ambiguous situations, some specula-
tive, some actual, about which the stu-
dent is forced to make a choice. Once 
the choice is made, the student must 
then trace back what ethical value he is 
expressing and where it came from. 
For example, the students are asked, 
II If you could save your unborn child 
from a genetic disease, would you allow 
genetic alteration of it? Why or why 
not?/I The next question is "If you 
could improve your unborn child's 
talents or abilities, would you?" In 
other words, where do you draw the 
line and why? Frequently, students 
will answer yes to the first question 
but no to the second on the grounds 
of "tampering with nature" or "let-
ting nature take its course" or the de-
sire not to "play God." The contra-
diction can help a student illuminate 
a murky value system. 

Other questions can defamiliarize 
emotional issues and make them more 
accessible for examination. At a con-



ference on critical thinking at Sonoma 
State University, one participant ex-
pressed frustration about the difficulty 
of tackling hot issues without provoking 
unconscious, prefabricated positions. 
Asking about abortion in a classroom 
is to ask for a half-hour psychodrama. 
But you can ask "What should be done 
with the orphan embryos?" The stu-
dents can then rationally engage the 
questions of when life begins without 
the hindrance of cultural and emo-
tional blocks. 

Some other useful questions: 
If you had an incurable disease, 

would you allow yourself to be frozen? 
How about just your head (for future 
cloning)? 

Should there be restrictions on direct 
sate II ite broadcasting? 

If conflict could be eliminated 
through subliminal commands, should 
it be done? 

Would you accept a xenotransplant? 

If a person has a renewable body part 
which could save someone's life, should 
the person be notified? 

If college course content were in pill 
form, would you take the pill? 

New evidence suggests chemical 
and genetic bases of behavior. How do 
you then define "freedom"? 

If homosexuality is a function of 
which hemisphere of the brain is 
dominant, can it then be considered 
abnormal? Might it be treatable? 
If so, should it be treated? 

Naturally, Techno-ethics is an 
evolving exercise. You can add new 
issues to it constantly just by opening 
the morning newspaper. Observing 
students gain insight into their own 
value systems can be a serious and 
instructive enterprise. One student's 
opinions about genetic modification 
were formed by his employment as a 
nurse on a ward with genetically 
diseased children. Another student 
pointed out that xenotransplants are 

Teaching notes 165 

a good idea because there would be 
less chance of someone "dying sooner 
than necessary so somebody could get 
their organs." He noted that the deter-
mination of death in Louisiana must be 
made by a doctor who is not part of a 
transplant team. Of course, another 
student objected to xenotransplants 
because of the potential cruelty to 
animals. 

The hardest part of the exercise is 
getting the students to find the sources 
of their values. Most students find 
their values to be indistinguishable 
from themselves. But in one case, that 
unity was literal. The question was on 
artificial insemination. One young 
woman wrote, "I am definitely in favor 
of artificial insemination because with-
out it, I wouldn't be here./I For her to 
argue against artificial insemination 
would be to argue against her own 
existence. And for the teacher, nothing 
can make the consequences of tech-
nology more real than when one of 
them gets up and hands in her paper. 

Notes 

[1] Leon Botstein, "Why Jonathan 
Can't Read," The New Republic, 
Nov. 7, 1983,pp.22. 

[2] Edward Sapir, quoted in Speaking 
of Words, eds. James MacKillop 
and Donna Woolfolk Cross, (New 
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), 
p.82. 

[3] Donna Woolfolk Cross, Media-
speak, (New York: Coward, Mc-
Cann and Geohegan), p. 68. 

[4] Barry Seigel, Los Angeles Times, 
J an. 6, 1985, p. 1. 

[5] Ibid. 

Professor David Clemens, Monterey 
Peninsula College, 646 Alice Street, 
Monterey, CA 93940 0