Week 10 Discussion — Why Be Moral When No One Is Watching? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Picture a wallet under a café table, with no cameras and no one looking, or a custom your community takes for granted that a neighboring community finds strange. Glaucon's ring of Gyges asks whether you would stay honest if you could never be caught, and the reformer objection asks whether a whole culture could ever be wrong.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: In Glaucon's story in Book II of Plato's Republic, a shepherd finds a ring that makes him invisible. If you had the ring for one week, would you still act justly, and is self-interest the only reason anyone does? Take a position, say whether your view sides with psychological egoism or against it, and test it against one choice from your own life when no one would have known what you did.

Option B: Is there anything a culture could believe is right that would still be wrong? Take a position for or against normative cultural relativism, say how you handle the reformer objection, and test your view against one custom you know that differs between two communities, such as how guests behave at a meal, how elders are addressed, or how debts are settled.

There is no single right answer. Careful thinkers still disagree about whether morality is relative, and about whether anyone is ever moved by anything other than self-interest. Pick the option you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether you would still act justly with the ring, whether your view sides with psychological egoism or against it, and test it on one choice from your own life; for Option B, say whether a culture could believe something is right that would still be wrong, how you handle the reformer objection, and test it on one custom that differs between two communities.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (descriptive question, normative question, the is-ought problem, descriptive and normative cultural relativism, the reformer objection, psychological and ethical egoism, enlightened self-interest, the ring of Gyges) correctly.
• State the view you reject in its strongest form, give your reason, and say what would change your mind.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Keep any example you give away from hot-button topics and any specific religion, and never name a real person in a case.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: state the strongest version of the poster's view in your own words, ask whether their example really fits the case they tie it to, or ask whether a claim they made is descriptive or normative. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. I think I would still hand back a lost phone with the ring on, and my test is a time a cashier gave me too much change at a grocery store and I gave it back, though no one would have noticed. A psychological egoist would say I only did it to feel good about myself. That is the strongest objection, and I grant that I did feel good. But the good feeling came because I already cared that the cashier's drawer would come up short; my desire was mine, but it was about her. What would change my mind is evidence that people stop doing such things the moment the good feeling is taken away.

Notice how it takes a position, states the other side at its strongest, ties the reason to psychological egoism and the objection about whose desire versus what it is for, as the course defines them, and says what would change the writer's mind. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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