Zander L.-Contemporary Morals and Ethics

My name is Zander Lu, and for my Senior Project, I studied contemporary philosophies of morals and ethics. I’ve enjoyed entertaining ethical dilemmas and thought experiments; the kind that raise questions that are near impossible to definitively answer. So for my project, I wanted to search for a universal value that all cultures share.

In these interviews I conducted, I wanted to bring up discussion questions that would reveal personal ethics, and really draw out key beliefs of my interviewees. I found that more than answers, I ended up with additional questions. These questions were both posed by myself and my interviewees, and were rhetorical in nature. The interviews I conducted were the end goal I had intended to reach. I wanted to apply the theoretical knowledge I had gained while researching into a practical, interpersonal context.

The purpose of my interviews was to gather different perspectives on similar topics. I wanted to see what values people held, and if there were any similarities between them. In order to do this, I approached these interviews with a common question: the trolley problem. I asked each interviewee how they would approach the trolley problem, in which one must choose whether to kill a person to save five lives.

In my interviews, a common theme emerged: morality is not black and white. Discussion went back and forth on whether or not a given action was moral, with strong arguments both for and against. While interviewees may have agreed on an action or a principle, the motivations behind that reasoning differed from person to person. Read or listen to the interviews to come to your own conclusions.

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Interview with Chris Aflague on his experience at the University of Hawaii and his life as an amateur philosopher.

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