The first annual Tufts Ethics Bowl, a debate-style competition on ethical dilemmas, was held this past Saturday at Miner Hall.
During the event, co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Experimental College, five teams of a minimum of three members presented arguments for a set of 15 real-world cases, according to Ethics Bowl coach Anthony Adrian.
I think it went really well, Adrian, a second year student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said. There was a great turnout and everyone was really excited.
According to Adrian, the winning team of the tournament, called Megaminds, had four members freshmen Jonathan Sirota, Sylvia Ofoma and Henry Jacqz and sophomore Shanice Kok. Each member received a baseball cap inscribed with the words Winner of the Tufts Ethics Bowl and a signed book from different faculty members of the Tufts philosophy department.
Adrian, along with classmate Kevin Dupree, has been working to train students for the competition twice a week since preparations began at the beginning of the year, according to Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy Susan Russinoff, who was the events coordinator.
Adrian said that the idea for the competition first came from Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy Erin Kelly, who met the Morehead-Cain Alumni Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill Geoffrey Sayre-McCord at a conference.
[Sayre-McCord] runs a center for ethics ... and this was one of the things they do over there, he said. [Kelly] got really excited about it, so last semester she approached myself and [Dupree] to sort of get this thing going.
Teams at the Ethics Bowl prepared their arguments for cases created by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics , the organization that sponsors these intercollegiate ethics tournaments, Adrian said. The cases were designed around real-world topics, such as the question of whether to criminalize transmission of HIV or where the elder Boston Marathon bombing suspect should be buried.
A number of faculty in the Department of Philosophy, including Kelly, Professor Daniel Dennett, as well as some graduate students served as judges, according to Lecturer Monica Link, one of the Ethics Bowl organizers.
Adrian explained that Ethics Bowl judges check for the competitors skill in presenting arguments in order to choose a winner.
One of the interesting features of the Ethics Bowl is that when you compete against another team, you dont necessarily have to take an opposing view, Adrian said. Traditionally, debates have a pro or con assignment, but in this case were just looking for a well presented argument. Two teams might be defending the exact same position and argue for it in very different ways with varying strength of the argument.
Link explained that Adrian and Dupree also worked with teams from local high schools like Medford High, who held a special demonstration tournament at the competition.
Before the final competition, Dennett, a renowned philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist also gave a short speech titled Free Will as Moral Competence, according to Link.
Originally, Link said, she planned to teach Philosophy 91: Ethics Bowl Boot Camp, an applied ethics course that would serve as preparation for students participating in the Ethics Bowl and help them think critically about ethical dilemmas. Due to low enrollment, though, the class was canceled.
Russinoff explained that, while the course was canceled this semester, there is no reason to think that there will never be a formal course.
We may very well offer an Ethics Bowl class in the future, Russinoff told the Daily in an email. Since we received the grant that supports the competition quite late in the spring semester, we didnt have adequate time to advertise the course for this fall.
In order to motivate students to join the bowl, Link and fellow Lecturer David Denby gave their philosophy students an opportunity to forgo one of the short papers required for their class if they participated in the tournament and attended some of the coaching lessons, Link explained.
Most of the people involved in the Ethics Bowl [were] students who are currently enrolled in a Philosophy 001 class or Introduction to Ethics, she said.
Link hopes to attract students outside of the philosophy department for future bowls.
The level of interest in the tournament was great, considering that the Ethics Bowl was a new initiative at Tufts, Russinoff said. She added that she hopes to send two teams to the New England Regional Ethics Bowl in late November.
The goal is that students will take the critical thinking skills that they used to analyze the various ethical cases and be able to apply them to other situations in their lives, according to Link.
Whether they become a scientist, whether they become a lawyer or a teacher, all of us are going to face certain kinds of dilemmas where we wonder what the right thing to do is, how to fairly treat this person, et cetera. she said. We want to get people from all walks of life to understand how to reason through.
