Importance of Plato for Plumbers - Assignment Example

PLATO FOR PLUMBERS Student’s Name Class Instructor Institution of Affiliation City Date Task 2 As players in the tech industry understand more about moral decision-making and human values, they will become more important in their developments. Some of the concepts that were previously confined to Philosophy students will become integral in the day to day running of these Silicon Valley companies. It may even one day become a major facet in sector on its own right. The engineering syllabus encourages innovation, while largely ignoring the importance of philosophy. This needs to be changed to teach engineers how to be more philosophical and instill humanism into technologies. Despite the challenges that come with each task, the engineers will have to consider these philosophical questions at every stage to prevent coming up with technologies that may be harmful to humans and the environment in general. As newer technologies such as Virtual Reality and autonomous cars are developed, the engineers will have to overcome newer challenges with their knowledge of science as well as philosophy (Bessoudo, n.d). However, there is a risk it might all come to nothing as technology may itself find a way of bypassing the engineers’ attempts at instilling humanism in them. Task 3 Q1 The author has in the first paragraphs attempted to engage the reader by describing in detail the basis of the whole article. This familiarizes them with the topic and prepares them for what is to come next. He writes in an expository style and therefore may have been motivated to use the word truism and eliminate ‘and’ between ‘technical and exponential’ as doing so give his words more weight. Q2 In the opening paragraph, the author continues to engage the reader by describing everyday activities that would not be possible without the technology developed by engineers. As the reader visualizes things such as using their smartphone or flushing a toilet, whose working they may not always think about. This prepares them for the oncoming paragraphs which delve into the concept of philosophy in engineering. Q3 We are both active and passive participants in our social environment mainly due to the widespread availability of technological developments. People have been able to engage in several activities that they previously could not thanks to their mechanization, digitization and automation by engineers. At the same time, however, it has become unnecessary or impossible for one to do some activities as they have been taken over by technology. In such a situation, human skill is no longer needed at the basic level. The developments have therefore enabled humans to engage in more activities while simultaneously locking them out of others. Q4 The landscape described in the first paragraph is, in my opinion, conducive for human well-being. This is because it depicts the things that technology has enabled humans to do with relative ease. For instance, one can easily access all sorts of information conveniently from their smartphones. In addition to this, they can maintain high levels of hygiene through the relatively simple technology of flushing toilets. Such developments have helped to improve the human quality of life to a level that would not be possible without such a landscape. Q5 The author states that engineers are the ones responsible for the creation of the landscape described in the first paragraph. This period in time is ecologically viewed as the Anthropocene since human activities play the major role in shaping the global climate and environment. Whereas in the past the environment and climate were mainly affected by natural forces such as the wind, today’s world is heavily influenced by technological advancements developed by engineers. Future archaeologists may therefore identify this period with the widespread use of various technologies that may have far-reaching consequences on the natural environment. Q6 The problem with the education of engineers is that it does not significantly incorporate philosophical concepts into the curriculum. Engineering students barely have the opportunity to reflect upon themselves, the general public, and on important concepts such as justice, value, virtue, and beauty. The syllabus does not afford them the chance to think critically about what effects their creations might have on the collective good of the society. This restricts their thought process to the theoretical knowledge and technical aspects such as the efficiency and cost of their developments while barely giving any attention to the human and environmental aspects. Q7 The questions of value, virtue, beauty and justice have traditionally belonged within philosophical areas of study. However, they are critical to the practice of architecture and building engineering. These practitioners in these fields hold public trust and are expected to develop structures that offer their clients the best service and value for their money. They therefore have to consider whether they are using ethical building technologies to achieve this end. Additionally, they should ask themselves whether what they are building is justifiable in terms of usage of resources. Finally, they need to factor in the beauty of the structure before setting it up to achieve the aesthetic goals set out by clients. Q8 It is important to fuse the tactile and the intellectual in architectural engineering due to a number of reasons. One of these is the fact that the engineers have to be intellectually capable of designing and developing structures that re not only effective for their purpose but also safe and beautiful. Secondly, they need to have a tactile know-how of their creations to enable them design sound structures with the background knowledge of their heavy responsibility towards their clients and the general public. Combining the two offers the engineers a strong foundation from which they can design sound structures without limiting their creativity. Q9 The message passed in the paragraph is that although engineers make use of the concepts developed by those before them, they should not spend too much time concentrating on these people or their place in history. Instead, they should mainly focus on innovating and creating better technologies to facilitate things such as efficiency, economic growth and material progress. Contemporary engineering courses reinforce this notion by concentrating on teaching innovation rather than the history behind concepts being taught. This trains the student on the solitary goal of coming up with better solutions rather than thinking about why the solution is needed in the first place. Q10 The essay proposes that architectural and building engineers should strive for certain noble ends. They should question whether their creations would be of any harm to other people and the natural environment. If so, they should look for less harmful solutions or any other way of overcoming it. They need to critically evaluate their designs and check whether they are of benefit to the general public by carefully analyzing facto5rs such as their beauty, morality, and value. Q11 There are multiple instances where engineers have been fully or partially responsible for the harmful second hand smoke. One is the 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge that resulted in 13 deaths. The sinking of the Titanic is also one of the major engineering failures, as is the Hindenburg Disaster that killed 36 people. Global warming can also be considered as a secondhand smoke as it is engineers who design the machines that cause pollution. Finally, there is the Bhopal Disaster in India which claimed not less than 3700 lives due to leaks from a faulty storage tank. Q12 The current engineering syllabus has to be changed if the schools of engineering are to produce wisdom-loving graduates. This is because the current ones sorely focus on the technical knowledge. Though important for the practice, it is not the only thing that should be taught. A new curriculum that incorporates several concepts in philosophy should be developed to produce a generation of philosophical engineers. This will enable them to avoid the narrow vision associated with only focusing on the technical aspects and hence develop better technologies with a human touch. Q13 The paragraph means that the concepts that were previously left for students of philosophy may soon become a major part of the tech sector. These include the questions on human existence and morality. Players in the engineering and technological world may find themselves using more of these thought experiments in their developments. The author even goes further to state that it may become a cornerstone in the sector as time goes by. Q14 The trolley problem is one of the most popular philosophical questions and it comes as no surprise that engineers will have to include it in the control algorithms of autonomous vehicles as they become more common. In the codes, the engineers will have to command the vehicle to take the action that would cause minimum loss of lives. For instance, if it is moving dangerously towards five people and the only alternative is steering towards a single person, then it has to go towards him to save a het of four lives. However, this may not be necessarily the case and some industry standards will have to be set with regard to such a situation. Q15 The fat man problem is analogous to the problem trolley problem as it entails risking the life of one person to save one or the other way round. Another situation would be where a firefighter is torn between rescuing a pregnant woman and a crippled man from a burning building. He is only in a position to save one and is therefore in a similar dilemma as the person in the trolley problem. The third such scenario is where both the wife and mother of a person are drowning and the rescue boat he has can only fit two people. He therefore has to quickly choose who between the two women he will save. Q16 Virtual reality (VR) is only at its early stages of development but has already evoked serious debates within philosophical circles. It has significantly impinged on epistemology as the lines between what is real and what is not will become more blurred as advancements in VR are achieved in the coming decades. Such developments will also lead to the question of what reality is and whether the experiences one gets in a VR world can be equated to ‘real world’ situations. It leads a lot of room for debates and they are bound to get more intense in the forthcoming years. Q17 VR is already being used significantly in areas such as the training of pilots and is bound to become more useful in the architectural and building engineering as more advancement is made. One of the areas that will be significantly affected is design and testing. Rather than using computer simulations only, the engineers can make full scale models on the VR equivalent of the site and its conditions to test all parameters before construction begins. Furthermore, the engineers may give clients a virtual tour of their buildings or structure without physically having to go there. These and other applications will undoubtedly improve service provision in the field. Q18 Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) poses an existential risk to humans since it might reach a level where computers are capable of outsmarting humans. They will be capable of solving more problems may be able to use that power against the people who built and programmed them. That is why the engineers should find a way of including aspects of human moral thinking and emotions such as compassion, benevolence, and goodness. By doing so, they will make the AGI systems more human-like and thereby less likely to pose a serious harm to people. Q19 According to Mark Bessoudo, the engineers can appreciate more what being human is by being more philosophical in their thinking. When they are developing the technologies, they have to think about important philosophical questions such as those on morality and the general good. With this in mind, they will be able to come up with the most appropriate techniques to solve real world problems using their knowledge. Q20 The last paragraph illustrates the author’s pessimism. He concludes by saying that however much engineers might try to instill humanism in their craft, the technology may finally have its way. This means that despite all the efforts made at thinking philosophically, technology may move at a pace that would make it impossible for engineers to use these philosophical concepts. In his opinion, it might all be in vain as technology will at the end have an upper hand. Reference Bessoudo, M (n.d). Plato for Plumbers. Print. Read More