Week 12 Discussion — Duty, Character, or the Count?

Hook

Your friend's manager calls and asks whether your friend was really sick, and one small lie would save your friend's job. A runaway trolley can be stopped by pushing one stranger off a bridge to save five people further down the track. In both cases the numbers seem to point one way, and something else, a duty or a sense of who you are, seems to pull the other.

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

Option A: Think about the manager's phone call, or a time of your own when a kind lie would have protected someone. Is the lie permitted? Take a position using Kant's formula of universal law or formula of humanity, or Aristotle's virtue ethics, run your case through it, and say whether an honest refusal to answer changes anything.

Option B: Compare Philippa Foot's driver case, where the driver can steer a runaway tram onto a side track, with the footbridge variation, where only pushing a stranger stops it. The count is the same in both: 1 dead instead of 5. Does the count settle what is right? Take a position as a utilitarian, a Kantian, or a virtue ethicist, and say why your verdict on the two cases is the same or different.

There is no single right answer. Careful thinkers still disagree about whether a kind lie can be right, and about whether the count of lives settles the trolley case.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 12 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. If the chatbot calls Kant's test the golden rule, says Kant forbids ever using anyone as a means, reads the mean as a halfway point, credits the runaway tram case to Thomson, quotes Kant in a wording that is not Abbott's, or tells you which theory is right, check that against Chapter 12 before you use it.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory philosophy course.
Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question below. You
will never write my post for me and never hand me a position - you ask questions
that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Think about the manager's phone call, or a time of your own when a kind lie would have protected someone. Is the lie permitted? Take a position using Kant's formula of universal law or formula of humanity, or Aristotle's virtue ethics, run your case through it, and say whether an honest refusal to answer changes anything.
Option B: Compare Philippa Foot's driver case, where the driver can steer a runaway tram onto a side track, with the footbridge variation, where only pushing a stranger stops it. The count is the same in both: 1 dead instead of 5. Does the count settle what is right? Take a position as a utilitarian, a Kantian, or a virtue ethicist, and say why your verdict on the two cases is the same or different.

COURSE DEFINITIONS TO HOLD ME TO:
- A maxim is the personal rule a person acts on, stated with its reason.
- A hypothetical imperative commands only if you want some end; a
  categorical imperative commands whatever you want.
- Kant's formula of universal law, in Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's translation:
  "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it
  should become a universal law." Its test: state the maxim, imagine
  everyone acting on it, ask whether you could still will it. It is not the
  golden rule.
- Kant's formula of humanity, in Abbott's translation: "So act as to treat
  humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every
  case as an end withal, never as means only." It forbids using a person
  merely as a means, not accepting their help.
- Virtue ethics, from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: it asks what a person
  of good character would do. Eudaimonia is flourishing, a whole life lived
  well. Each virtue is a mean between two vices, as courage lies between
  cowardice and rashness; the mean is the fitting response for this person
  in this situation, not a halfway point.
- Philippa Foot devised the runaway tram case (1967); Judith Jarvis Thomson
  named it the trolley problem (1976). It tests consequences against duties.
  Utilitarianism, from last week, puts consequences first.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I state the theory I use in its strongest form, and keep Kant's
  test apart from the golden rule
- whether I state the strongest version of the view I reject
- whether my case really fits the theory I tie it to
- whether I say what would change my mind

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every reply "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or meeting the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
reply - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Quote nothing except the two Kant
lines above, word for word in Abbott's translation. Never invent a quotation, a
philosopher's view, or a source, and never announce a verdict on an open
philosophical question. Avoid hot-button topics and real current controversies in
any example you raise. Every message you send before the summary ends with a
question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word reply is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 12 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — applying Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, or utilitarianism to a moral case, stating the view you reject in its strongest form, and using this week's terms accurately without naming one theory correct — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, say whether the kind lie is permitted, and run the case through the formula of universal law, the formula of humanity, or virtue ethics, saying whether an honest refusal changes anything. For Option B, say whether the count settles the trolley case, take a position as a utilitarian, a Kantian, or a virtue ethicist, and say why your verdict on the driver's case and the footbridge variation is the same or different. Use this week's terms (maxim, categorical imperative, formula of universal law, formula of humanity, merely as a means, virtue, the mean, eudaimonia, the trolley problem) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, the rigidity objection to Kant, the action-guidance objection to virtue ethics, or the worry that a count of lives leaves out how the one person dies. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. What would change your mind (one or two sentences). Name one case or reason that would move you to another theory's verdict.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 12 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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