The Epistle of Q — Chapter Sixty-Eight (Part C-1)

And what about the conference itself? How did it all unfold under the leadership of the new host institution — Depauw University?

The conference, the 27th Annual International Conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics to be exact, was very well organized in large part because APPE has a good professional staff (which has come over to Depauw from Indiana U). Without going into the nitty-gritty and bearing in mind there were sometimes nine current sessions, here are some of the main highlights from my perspective…

There was a discussion on “Why Tolerate Religious Claims of Conscience?” backstopped by an examination of “Forgiveness and Humility”. These two conversations seemed like a good way to really get into the conference. The author of the first part of this conversation was quite convincing in arguing that we need to keep our current evidential system wherein we accept claims of conscience. The second discussant pushed forward the contention that humility is necessary for forgiveness. It was interesting in this conversation to hear a reference to Martha Nussbaum — her argument is that Christian forgiveness is not really forgiveness at all but “unconditional love and generosity”. My own interest was piqued by obvious references to Stage Five moral reasoning when it was suggested that one needs to love the other, before one can even hope for the other to love in return, let alone forgive.

Another session got into the “ethical case against football in schools”. Unfortunately there was little time to have a full conversation on this issue and the authors were not very sensitive to any other perspective. Some of the statistics that were used were rather extreme and in many ways I found the presentation almost too typical of many academics: no real experience outside the research community and not willing to consider other aspects of the situation. There were comments like, “linemen are called big dumb oafs for a reason” (the reason, too many concussions — when I asked why then would a former linemen who is no longer a teacher but is a leader in search and rescue be able to do such a job — an exception, and don’t bring up such examples as they are distractions). They also didn’t want to consider that kids get concussions from all types of activities, including falling off bikes — they just wanted to stop football. And there was no comparative analysis done between schools that offer football and those that don’t. In the end it was “same old, same old” and colleges wonder why the general public finds the academy too much “ivory tower”. It was rather interesting to discover the second presenter in this session wanted to talk about meditation as a way too enhance moral reasoning and decision-making. I also wanted to recommend the earlier presenters should take up the challenge and perhaps meditate a bit more on their issues!!

There was a new feature at this conference, the Vivian Weil Lecture. This plenary session is held to honour the memory of Dr. Weil who was a founding member of APPE. She had been a pioneer in the field of engineering ethics (she should have taught at the University of Regina!!). The special guest was Eleonore Pauwels and she was presenting on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence and Converging Technologies: Promises and Perils in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Obviously a very bright and knowledgeable person who is interested in issues of privacy and security. Well she maintained a high degree of privacy in her talk — she was not easily understand: each of her powerpoint slides had more information written on them, than the entire instruction package on a bag of oatmeal (and in about the same font size). Forget three or even four lines per screen — one screen had over twenty lines, plus a graph; the others, even more. The writing was so small that it looked from where I sat that we were inside an historic cave and we were to decipher the hen-scratchings. Rather more unsettling, she read her speech. After ten minutes, not only was I lost, I was bored and my eyes needed a break (and I wasn’t sleeping)!!

It did give me an opportunity to go join some colleagues in the wonderful lobby bar at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel where the conference was being staged (this magnificent two story atrium-like room has been restored to the splendor of the 1920’s in Chicago — Conrad Hilton would be impressed). The conversation there was more animated, without any needed powerpoint, and I learned somethings!! In fact, discussions were so engaging that we all missed the reception opening the APPE Book Room…

I did make it to the final plenary for the day — “Queen: Dramatic Reading and Discussion”. The cast from the Victory Gardens Theatre performed, as you may have guessed by now, a dramatic reading of Queen which is a wonderful play detailing series of ethical dilemmas faced by two young academics who discover an error in their career-defining research project. While the actors were good, and normally I am not all that enamored by play reading, the overall impact of this presentation was stark and enthralling all at the same time. It was so realistic and so revealing of what can happen within the academy that one quickly forgot about the conference room and instead felt right inside the fictional college where the conflicts were raging. It held the audience spellbound — the only tragedy? Too many stayed at the reception aftermath.

The audience was significant though and, in addition to a standing ovation from all of us, the consensus during the Q+A afterward was that this should have been the Vivian Weil presentation. This was practical and applied and professional, everything that APPE is supposed to stand for… This particular part of the program lasted almost two hours, and yet everyone that I talked too thought it was too short — a real tribute to the playwright (Madhuri Shekar) and the director and actors. It should be filmed and made available on DVD (or streaming) for every ethics class that undergrads take (across north america for starters).

It was a great way to end the day…and certainly made up for the one presentation I found so disappointing…

g.w.