Ethics and Economics - JEM020

• Title: Ethics and Economics
• Czech title: Ethics and Economics
• Guaranteed by: Institute of Economic Studies (23-IES)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2016 to 2018
• Semester: winter
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: winter s.:
• Hours per week, examination: winter s.:2/2, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: 97 / 97 (97)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Additional information: http://dl1.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=3695
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
• Teacher(s): doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc.
• Class: Courses for incoming students

Annotation

English

Last update: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. (09.11.2023)

There are no required prerequisites for this course.

This course is interdisciplinary: different concepts from moral and political philosophy, methodology, social sciences, economics and finance are used for discussing many relevant topics. Used concepts are explained in lectures, relevant topics specified in the syllabus are discussed in seminars.

This course is also part of the inter-university programme prg.ai Minor. It pools the best of AI education in Prague to provide students with a deeper and broader insight into the field of artificial intelligence.
More information is available at https://prg.ai/minor.

Literature

Last update: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. (30.07.2022)

Required readings for each week are specified in the syllabus, homeworks are based on required readings.

 

Recommended videos:

Harvard Justice course:   justiceharvard.org

Yale open course "The Moral Foundations of Politics":   https://oyc.yale.edu/political-science/plsc-118/lecture-1

 

Recommended Readings:

Buchanan, James: The Limits of Liberty (Between Anarchy and Leviathan)

Mappes, T.A., Zembaty J.S., DeGrazia, D.: Social Ethics - Morality and Social Policy. McGraw Hill 2012

Rachels, J., Rachels, S.: The Elements of Moral Philosophy. McGraw Hill 2015

Rachels, J., Rachels, S.: The Right Thing to Do. McGraw Hill 2015

Rosenberg, A: Philosophy of Social Science

Requirements to the exam

Last update: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. (30.11.2023)

Grading:

• Homeworks (40 %, related to required readings, 8% for each homework). There are five homeworks: in the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th week. You put the pdf file with your homework into the SIS UK (starting menu, part Education, icon with four persons), till Sunday 23:55 of the relevant week. Homeworks sent by e-mail are not accepted. The SIS does not allow you to enter your homework after the deadline. In each homework, you write two critical appraisals of required readings from previous two weeks. Each critical appraisal is structured into 4 paragraphs as follows: Paragraph introducing your appraisal, paragraph with strong (what you agree with) poins of appraised reading, paragraph with weak (what you do not agree with) points of appraised reading and paragraph concluding your appraisal. The expected length of each appraisal is 1 page, but feel free to write more.

• Three online midterm tests (10 % each) and online final test (30 %) in Moodle. You must be registered in Moodle on:

https://dl3.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=547

1st midterm test: October 31st, 2023 (the whole day)

2nd midterm test: November 28th, 2023 (the whole day)

3rd midterm test: January 2nd, 2024 (the whole day)

Final tests will be on January 4th at 2:00 p.m., on January 18th at 2:00 p.m., on February 1st at 2:00 p,m, and on February 15th at 2:00 p.m.

There are no retakes for midterm tests, you just lose the points. According to our study rules, you have two retakes for the final test.

After summarizing all points, our standard grading scale will be applied:

0-50 (F), 51-60 (E), 61-70 (D), 71-80 (C), 81-90 (B), 91-100 (A)

Syllabus

English

Last update: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. (14.11.2020)

• • • Week 1

      • Introduction to the course (Linking Ethics and Economics.  Institutions, Organizations and Ethics)
      • Consequentialist x Categorical Reasoning
      • Ethical Pre-Understanding of Real Situations
      • Empiricist Ethics (Empiricism. Hedonism. David Hume. Utilitarianism)
      • Moral reasoning: sound and valid arguments
      • Utility in Economic Models
      • What is Ethics? (Ethics as Practical Philosophy. Forms of Ethics)

      Required Reading:

      Max Weber: Politics as Vocation (Can be found on web) e.g. http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf

    • Week 2
      

      • Philosophy - Selected Topics
      • Philosophy of Science
      • Philosophy of Social Science
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on Legality of Drugs

      Required Reading:

      John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism (e.g. https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/mill1863.pdf )

      Optional Readings:

      http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/viceCrime/m6/nadelmann%20-%20the%20case%20for%20legalization.htm

      https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/against-the-legalization-of-drugs/

       

    • Week 3
      

      • Philosophy of Social Science - Continued
             Macrosocial Science and Functionalism
             Moral Questions and Social Science
      • Philosophy of Economics
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on abortion

      Required Reading:

      Milton Friedman - The Methodology of Positive Economics (e.g. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0c3puZ2F3b25nfGd4OjE3MDM2MDQ3OWRmZWE1NTY )

      Optional Readings:

      http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

      http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf

       

    • Week 4

      • From Personal to Social and Economic Ethics

                     Human Person in Human Relations
                     Human Relations in Institutional Intermediation

                     Social and Economic ethics

      • Comparison of methodological and theoretical bases of Neoclasical Synthesis and Postkeynesian Economics
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on migration

      Required Reading:

      Ludwig von Mises: Human Action - Introduction (Economics and Praxeology, The Epistemological Problem of a General Theory of Human Action, Economic Theory and the Practice of Human Action, Résumé) (e.g. https://cdn.mises.org/Human%20Action_3.pdf )

      Optional Readings:

      http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/living_on_a_lifeboat.pdf

      http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-solution-to-world-poverty.html

       

    • Week 5
      

      • Theory of Choice
      • Immanuel Kant and Categorical Reasoning
      • Thomas Aquinas and Conscience
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on "helping to the poor"
      • Comparison of different approaches: Ethical Egoism, Social Contract approach, Utilitarianism and Christian approach

      Required Reading:

      Friedrich August von Hayek: Law, legislation and Liberty - Chapter 7 (General Welfare and Particular Purposes) (e.g. https://libsa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hayek-law-legislation-and-liberty.pdf )

      Optional Readings:

      https://www.jefftk.com/rachels-2013-immorality-having-children.pdf

      http://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/425/Sen,%20PropertyHunger.pdf

       

    • Week 6

      • Four Levels for Judgement of Rules
      • Iterative Relation between Individual Rules and Social Norms
      • Psyche – Psychological and Philosophical Insight
      • Social Stability - Giving Reasons to Ethical Norms
      • Are there some universal human rights?
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on the ethics of war and peace

      Required Reading:

      CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conducts (just 2 pages) (please find on https://www.cfainstitute.org/pages/index.aspx  under EthicsAndStandards)

      Optional Readings:

      http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/14.%20The%20Ethics%20of%20War%20and%20Peace.pdf

      https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1428085978JohnRawls.pdf

       

    • Week 7

      • Constitutional Economics I
        • Origin
        • Constitutional Contract
        • The Contractarian Birth of State
        • Postconstitutional Contract
        • Public Goods and Common Resources
      • Selfrealization and Freedom I
      • Exercising of financial analysts ethics: Ethics Codes, CFA Ethics Code, CFA Standards of Professional Conduct
         

      Required Reading:

      Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) (e.g. https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blog.nus.edu.sg/dist/c/1868/files/2012/12/Kant-Groundwork-ng0pby.pdf )

    • Week 8

      • Constitutional Economics II
        • Status Quo
        • Contractual Changes in the Status Quo
        • Dual Capacity of State
        • Order as Public Goods
        • Order as Public Capital Goods
        • Are we not governed too much?
        • What can we do with that?
      • Redistributive Role of the State
      • Selfrealization and Freedom II
        • Guilt and Shame
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on terrorism and torture

      Required Reading:

      Karl Raimund Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 - Chapter 1 (Historicism and the Myth of Destiny) and Chapter 9 (Estheticism, Radicalism and Utopianism) (e.g. on https://epdf.pub/the-open-society-and-its-enemies-the-spell-of-platoa93dec0c92690f48572982c5940e421739524.html (download as Full Text)

      Optional Readings:

      http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2002/11/27/0000184966

      http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub

       

    • Week 9:

      • Virtue
      • Fairness, Labour Market and Inflation
        • Mainstream Approach
        • Postkeynesian Approach
          • Labour Demand
          • Labour Supply
          • Competing Claims Model of Inflation
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on animals and environmentalist ethics

      Required Reading:

      Aristotle: The Politics - Book 1 (e.g. http://files.libertyfund.org/files/819/0033-02_Bk_SM.pdf )

    • Week 10

      • Justice
      • Happiness
      • Sense
      • Selected Economic Topics  with Stressed Ethical Dimension" (System of Natioonal Accounts and Distribution of GDP,Measuring Income, Job and Wealth Distribution, Economics of Happiness, New Institutional Economics and Trust, Economics and Family, Economics and Gender)
      • Exercising of moral reasoning on family, marriage and household

      Required Reading:

      • Alisdair MacIntyre: After Virtue (e.g. https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf ), Chapter 14: "The Nature of the Virtues"
        

        Optional Readings:

        https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5933&context=lalrev

        https://newrepublic.com/article/103297/for-better-or-worse-gay-straight-marriage

         

      • Week 11

        • Democracy

        Required Reading:

        Hannah Arendt: Philosophy and Politics (https://zetesisproject.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/arendt-phi-and-politics.pdf)

      • Week 12

        • Miscellaneous
          • Marxist Ethics
          • Psyche once more
            • Psychoanalysis
            • Etology and Konrad Lorenz
          • Nietsche and his hammer
          • Material value ethics
          • Existentionalist Ethics
          • Ethics of discours
        • Exercising of moral reasoning on ICT development

        Required Reading:

        Bertrand Russel: The Elements of Ethics (1910) (http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-elements-of-ethics)

Czech

Last update: doc. Ing. Tomáš Cahlík, CSc. (14.12.2023)

Week 1: What is, What I/We want to be and What ought to be

• Introduction to the Course
• Ethical Pre-Understanding of Real Situations
• What is Ethics?
• Human Person in Human Relations
• Human Relations in Institutional Intermediation
• Social and Economic Ethics
• Seminar:
• Required Reading – Promotion
• Moral Reasoning
• Sound and Valid Arguments
• Consequentialist x Categorical Reasoning

Required Reading:

Plato: The Republic. 2nd Book. (Can be found on web)

Week 2: Justice and Coordination

• Where the Notion of Justice Comes from
• Virtues
• Coordination
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Legality of Drugs”

Required Reading:

Alisdair MacIntyre: After Virtue.  Chapter 14: "The Nature of the Virtues"

(https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf )

Optional Readings:

http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/viceCrime/m6/nadelmann%20-%20the%20case%20for%20legalization.htm

https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-wilson/against-the-legalization-of-drugs

 

Week 3: Utilitarianism and Justice

• Empiricist Ethics
• Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism  in Economics after the Marginalist Revolution
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Discussion of the 1^st homework
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Abortion”

 

Required Reading:

Jeremy Bentham: An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation. Chapters 1-4.

(https://www.econlib.org/library/Bentham/bnthPML.html)

 

Optional Readings:

http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/45.marquis.pdf

 

Week 4: Economics as Social Science

• Individuals and Social Structure
• Philosophy of Economics
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Helping to the Poor” and “Migration”

 

Required Reading:

Ludwig von Mises: Human Action. Introduction  and Chapter I "Acting Man" 

 (https://cdn.mises.org/Human%20Action_3.pdf )

Optional Readings:

https://www.jefftk.com/rachels-2013-immorality-having-children.pdf

http://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/425/Sen,%20PropertyHunger.pdf

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/living_on_a_lifeboat.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/magazine/the-singer-solution-to-world-poverty.html

 

Week 5:  Justice in Neoclassical Synthesis and Postkeynesian Economics

• Neoclassical Synthesis x Postkeynesian Economics, Epistemological and Methodological Differences
• Theory of Choice
• Mainstream Approach
• Uncertainty, Substantial and Procedural Rationality
• Post Keynesian Approach
• Labour Market and Justice
• Mainstream Approach
• Post Keynesian Approach
• Inflation and Justice
• Mainstream Approach
• Post Keynesian Approach
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Discussion of the 2^nd  homework
• Exercising of moral reasoning on “The Ethics of War and Peace”

Required Reading:

David Hume: The Treatise of Human Nature. Book 3 “Morals”, Part 2 “Justice and injustice”, from 1 to 6

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1740book3.pdf

Optional Readings:

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/14.%20The%20Ethics%20of%20War%20and%20Peace.pdf

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1428085978JohnRawls.pdf

 

Week 6: Psyche, Transcendentality and Immanuel Kant

• Immanuel Kant and Transcendental Philosophy
• Psyche
• Sigmund Freud
• Karl Gustav Jung
• Immanuel Kant and Categorical (Deontological) Reasoning
• Thomas Aquinas and Conscience
• Seminar:
• Required Reading – Promotion
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Terrorism and Torture”

Required Reading:

Immanuel Kant: Toward Perpetual Peace. Introcduction, Section 1, Section 2.

https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1795_1.pdf

Optional Readings:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2002/11/27/0000184966

http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1163&context=facpub

Week 7: Happiness, Selfrealization and Freedom

• Happiness
• Easterline Paradox
• Sense of Life
• Selfrealization and Freedom
• Guilt and Shame
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Discussion of the 3^rd  homework
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Family, Marriage and Household “

Required Reading:

Friedrich August von Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty - Volume 1, Chapter 4 "The Changing Concept of Law"

(https://libsa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hayek-law-legislation-and-liberty.pdf )

Optional Readings:

https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5933&context=lalrev

https://newrepublic.com/article/103297/for-better-or-worse-gay-straight-marriage

Week 8: Social Stability, Order and Liberty

• Four Levels of Assessing Behaviour
• Iterative Relation between Personal Rules and Social Norms
• Social Stability - Giving Reasons to Ethical Norms
• Order x Liberty
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Language, Freedom of Speech, Censorship, Hate Speech and Violence

Required Reading:

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty. Chapters 1 and 2. (https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html)

Optional Readings:

https://bigthink.com/thinking/is-speech-violence/

Week 9: Constitutional Economics

• Constitutional Economics  
• Origin
• Constitutional Contract
• The Contractarian Birth of State
• Post constitutional Contract
• Public Goods and Common Resources
• Status Quo
• Contractual Changes in Status Quo
• Roles of the State
• Seminar:
• Required Reading - Promotion
• Discussion of the 4^th  homework
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Animals”
• Ethology and Konrad Lorenz

Required Reading:

This time, it is about listening to James Buchanan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=178aognlYHA

Optional Readings:

https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf

https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/cohen.pdf

Week 10: Justice and Democracy

• Justice as Fairness
• Libertarianism
• Democracy: development of the idea
• Majority Voting
• Democracy: insight of economists
• Seminar:
• Required Reading – Promotion
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “Environment”

Required Reading:

Jurgen Habermas: Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy: Chapter 3.2 "Moral Norms and Legal Norms: On the Complementary Relation between Natural Law and Positive Law" 

https://teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/jc3bcrgen-habermas-between-facts-and-norms.pdf

 

 

Week 11: Democratic Justice

• Democratic Justice Theory
• Democratic Justice Applications
• Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
• Seminar:
• Discussion of the 5th homework
• Exercising of Moral Reasoning on “ICT and AI development”

Week 12: Ethics, People and Society

• Marketing, Sophists and Socrates
• Postmodern World, Stoicism and Epicureanism
• Godness, Goodness and Christianity
• Seminar
• Ethics Codes
• CFA Ethics Code
• Charles university Code of Ethics

Optional Reading:

CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conducts (just 2 pages) (please find on https://www.cfainstitute.org/pages/index.aspx  under EthicsAndStandards)