If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
I am royally pissed. I am forced to take this stupid Ethics and Epistemology course, which is rehash of an advanced course that was part of my core curriculum few semesters back. In a lighter vein, it might seem as if I wouldn’t be a ethical person if I didn’t have the credentials to show for it. But considering that this is my last academic requirement, I will hang in there and give it my token attention.
But getting caught up in such basic preliminary stuff can be extremely frustrating especially when I want to get things moving on a quick trot, instead of the lazy amble that it is being going at right now.
Nevertheless, as soon as I entered the over-crowded class falsely touted as a seminar class, a disinterested Desi face instantly light up as though he had attained nirvana. Giving off an air of a freshman at the graduate level, he seemed to overly eager to introduce himself. Maybe the unexpected meeting of a Desi in a policy class usually chock-a-block with Americans and Chinese had raised his enthusiasm level to a new high. His joys knew no bounds when he found a fellow Maharashtrian in me and upon further investigation, I found that he was abashedly honest in admitting that he was a unemployed computer science graduate and hence the plunge into the unknown waters of policy science. I muttered a quick prayer for him.
His rational engineer mind was soon evidently displayed when he volunteered with a totally scientific example when asked for a simple synthetic-analytic statement. After the class, he admitted that this stuff was way beyond his league and never had he considered the normative angles in the fact-filled world of engineering sciences. I scared him further by warning him that this was merely introductory basic stuff and the worst was yet to come. The look on the poor guys’ face was delightful but I guess few days in the normative confused world of policy science, he would be fit as a fiddle to argue on unarguable issues.
This however made me think (Gosh! Am I thinking too much lately…must be off my rocker) - are the highly educated Indians, which incidentally are in the technical scientific fields, qualified enough to reflect on normative aspects of life?
I do not recall any reference to the value system apart from the preachy Moral Science class in elementary school. I find this seriously lacking in the Indian education system that we often do not consider the far-reaching implications of our rational actions. I am often reminded of the Rotary International’s Four-Way test of the things we say or do: a) Is it the truth? b) Is it fair to all concerned? c) Will it build goodwill and better friendships? d) Is it beneficial to all concerned?
Sometimes even the right thing is in not doing the right thing. Facts often rule over values. I may be over generalizing here but maybe in the future, an introductory ethics and epistemological class shouldn’t be all that difficult to comprehend even for a college dropout , much less a graduate engineer.
by Patrix | on Sunday, January 11th, 2004 at 7:23 pm | 
Science . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
