Source Code

This week, the Source Code was watched to help us learn more about normative ethics. Captain Colter Stevens was killed while flying a helicopter in Afghanistan, but his brain and part of his body was saved for the purpose of Source Code. Source Code was created to be a way to perform time reassignment, and they put their resources to use to evaluate a horrible train crash that was caused by a bomb. Colleen Goodwin was the one instructing Stevens through his eight minute missions back into the train as Sean, a man who was killed because of this crash. They were able to revisit the crash over and over again to hopefully prevent the future arrack.

The main character, Stevens, was at first just concerned with himself. He wanted to know why he was there and what happened with his men from Afghanistan. He was even using the eight minutes in the train to research who source code was and what happened to him. As he learned more and more information about himself, he finally began thinking of others. He tried many times to find out who the bomber was or even to just try and save one person, Christina. Because of Stevens behaviors, I would say that his attitude towards this situation changed after time which in turn changed his ethics. In the beginning, when he was concerned with himself, he was displaying ethical egoism. This is a type of consequentialist ethical standpoint were the action is good if it only benefits the one acting. So Stevens was only doing things to benefit himself in the beginning and he wasn’t thinking of the other people. When Stevens’ behaviors changed, he was displaying another form of consequentialist ethics; Stevens was displaying ethical altruism. Ethical altruism is when everyone except the one acting benefits, and that’s exactly what Stevens wanted. He wanted to try as hard as he could to save the people on the train as well as other people from a future attack. After that he wanted his life support to be turned off, and he didn’t ask for any recognition for his actions.

Another main character was Dr. Rutledge, the one who was in charge of Source Code. He displayed utilitarianism, which is another form of consequential ethics. He wanted the sum of his actions to be good, so he still did things that were wrong but the good actions outweighed them. I think Dr. Rutledge wanted to help fight terrorism, but he also wanted to make a name for himself. He began to use Stevens as just another piece of equipment in his lab, but in his mind it would help even more people than just the one he was harming.

Lastly, Goodwin displayed duty-based ethics in the beginning. She would just listen to everything that Dr. Rutledge told her to do in regards to Stevens. She would always make sure with Dr. Rutledge that Stevens could know the information she wanted to give him, or that it was okay to continuously put him back into the train. But after a while, Goodwin began to feel bad for Stevens and she went against her boss, Dr. Rutledge, to help Stevens. She realized that Stevens was a human, just like her, and not another piece of equipment like how Dr. Rutledge viewed him. In the end, I think that both Goodwin and Stevens did the right thing.