Ethics is making a pause to think on your life

The Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (MARL) had the opportunity to interview Antoine Cantin-Brault, Ph.D. He works for St. Boniface University in Winnipeg, where he is Professor of Philosophy. He delivered a motivational presentation to high school students who participated in the Ethics Cup Training Day at the Museum of Human Rights on November 28, 2024.

Hello, Antoine, and thank you for this interview. I’ve been thinking about philosophy ever since I had the opportunity to take part in the Canada Ethics Cup. In this competition, students have to answer deeper questions. However, now everyone is looking to go to university or college to study careers that will help them make more money in the future. So, what’s the point of studying those subjects, like Philosophy, that don’t have a kind of practical side in life?

Well, there’s no doubt that philosophy and ethics are extremely useful for developing critical thinking skills. So, what is critical thinking? It’s not about saying no to everything, and then being closed to the world. Critical thinking is about being able to sort information, to sort what we receive. Philosophy is very good at enabling us to do this. By applying it, we’re able to manage the information we receive, to ask ourselves questions about whether we can accept information like that, or whether we should do some research to check out a little more behind it, what it means.

We can also analyse the logic of certain lines of reasoning. So, when we receive information in the form of reasoning, we can ask ourselves questions about the premises, the way it works and the conclusion. There are sometimes strange things, and then there are things that we accept a little too quickly that philosophy allows us to analyse in depth. Now, this has practical implications, especially for what I would call civic life. Philosophy prepares you for life as a citizen. Because we’re going to be citizens; everyone is a citizen, and we have to participate in collective life, in community life with others. And philosophy enables us to sort through this civic life, critically and intelligently.

In addition, one of the great strengths of philosophy is its ability to make connections, to take problems and see their complexity; not to make them too simple or simplified, but to untangle their complex knots. So, for me, these are obviously essential disciplines. And ethics in particular, as we saw in the presentation I gave, is that it ultimately helps us to have the best life we could possibly have. So that’s important too.

Do you think the development of technology today has made us more critical of government and problems, or on the other hand, has it made us more obedient?

I think it’s a bit of both. It depends on the context, but certainly there’s a kind of technology that encourages us to keep our old habits, that sends us always the same messages, that makes us live in an echo chamber where we think we’ve got new information, but all we hear is the same thing that we’ve heard before, over and over again. So, I think this is a technology that is actually detrimental to civic life, detrimental to critical thinking.

On the other hand, it’s true that there are certain uses of technology that enable us to develop critical thinking, because obviously, we have faster access to information today. The big problem is knowing how to sort it out. That’s the big problem. The fact that we have much greater access to information means that we can see the complexity of problems even more quickly, but then again, you have to know how to sort it out. So that’s why philosophy is important, because it provides us with a critical thinking filter.

So, how important would it be to think about philosophy, or to have a philosophical approximation, not just towards technology, or about technology, but in general for students, high school students who are not yet, perhaps, very engaged in big philosophical debates?

Indeed, I think there’s no age limit to philosophizing. It’s a discipline that can be practiced at any age. In fact, there are things…, not at our university in particular, but there are philosophy courses for children, for example. You can do philosophy with very young children. You can do philosophy at any age. But why is this useful for someone in high school? I think it’s even more useful than at any other time in life, because you’re in a process of transformation, and then you start asking questions about the world.

And indeed, I think it’s true, they’re not necessarily involved in the great philosophical debates, they don’t know philosophical schools, they don’t know that there are great current trends perhaps. But I think they’re much more intelligent than you might think, because they’re very much involved in their world. They live the world, see these problems, think about the future, and then, they prepare themselves a little bit for that future, which in some ways is pretty frightening.

And for this reason, I think it’s even more useful for them to think about these things. To position ourselves in the world, in the first place, to know how we’re going to position ourselves, what posture will best enable me to, perhaps, succeed in my life, to find the right life in this increasingly complex world. Of course, today’s high school students have benefited from the advantages of technology. But on the other hand, technology is moving very, very fast, and they’re still trying to find their rhythm, or to find it again, and then to get involved on this process.

So that’s why it’s important. I’d say that philosophy, at this level too, is a step back. You take a step back, you pause, you look at the times, at your life, at how you live, at how your friends live. Then, these are really essential questions, very important to get prepared for life as a citizen, for life as an adult. In high school, we may have less responsibilities, but later on we’ll have more. So far, we’ve never thought about these big questions, about how I can position myself in the world, how I can interact with others, what’s the best way to succeed in life, where good life lies; it’s hard to do that as an adult. So, for me, it’s essential; and that’s why the Ethics Bowl brings philosophy right into their lives, without getting into the history of philosophy, the theories and all of that. It makes for a pretty interesting picture.

If you could give some sort of advice to young people on how to use social media, what would it be?

It’s a good question because I’m not an expert on the subject. I think it would be interesting to ask these young people the question, to see how they think this is the best way to interact with this, because they see their problem. But I’d definitely emphasize the idea of taking a step back, in the sense that it’s still virtual. And that’s the problem today; the virtual and the real are so intertwined, so mixed up, it’s hard to tell them apart. But this world remains virtual in the sense that it’s somewhat possible, not necessarily the real world. So, you don’t have to think that your whole life is about that, because ultimately, you’re still a person located in a time, in a body that interacts with other individuals, with other bodies. Emotional contact is still very important, just as direct interaction with some people and the feedback you can get from them.

The problem is that feedback on social media is always asynchronous. So, for example, you put something up and then you don’t know what’s going to happen, and then you can’t reply to the person because it’s too late, or anyway, it’s after the fact and you can’t talk to them directly. And then, to really find it again or keep it -because not everyone has lost it at all- this synchronous contact in the sense that we’re having a discussion together now. We may have different ideas, but we have to discuss them now. That’s often where politeness and dignity come into play, as opposed to social media, where you can get away with just about anything because it’s still a bit virtual. It’s like another world where you feel like you’re not necessarily involved in; but for others, you’re so involved that you don’t even realize there’s a reality beside it.

That brings me to another question. If we look at it from the other angle, i.e. at people who are already a little older, who weren’t born with these technologies, then sometimes, for them, it’s harder to keep up with this change. Do you think that this development of social media technology and artificial intelligence will eventually lead to a situation of discrimination against people who don’t have the capacity to be completely up to date?

I think discrimination has already taken place. For example, in the simple fact that now, to have access to certain tasks, courses, or even certain shows, you need a smartphone, you have to know how it works. There are already certain forms of discrimination. Once again, the problem is the importance we place on technology. If we place all the full weight of responsibility for the functioning of our societies on technology, it’s bound to become more and more discriminatory.

But I don’t know if that’s necessarily where we’re headed. Philosophy can’t look into the future. We can speculate, but we can’t really look into it; we’re not fortune-tellers. But we can at least ask whether trends are continuing. Well, it’s true that it could be discriminatory and it’s true that it would be unfair. There would be major ethical issues to consider. But on the other hand, once again, it depends on the weight you put on it. It’s only discriminatory if we’ve decided that priority should be given to technologies. If we think that the world can still be made without technology, or with much less technology, the discrimination will also be less. But has it happened so far? Yes, it certainly has, and it’s problematic.

I remember once I lost my credit card and called the bank to block it. I was talking to some kind of robot, not a human being; and it was an emergency situation!

Yes, absolutely! That’s why we sometimes call it artificial intelligence, but it’s just artificial stupidity. We are caught in a sort of endless loop, with a robot that doesn’t understand at all, that has no emotional contact. We ask him a question, but it takes language just like signals, like 1 -0-0 -1, in the case of binary, and so it analyses that, it takes that, it digests an answer and then it sends it back to us.

Artificial intelligence is a big problem: is it really intelligent? That’s where the problem is likely to be enormous, firstly because we know less and less about machines anyway. They are increasingly closed boxes. Today, to open a computer or a telephone is to break it. And the companies do it on purpose, they close these machines, to keep their monopoly, etc. But that also means that there’s nobody left who can do it. We can’t repair our own things anymore.

And so that’s very difficult, and that’s the first thing, but the second thing is that technology lacks intelligence in many ways in the sense that it’s not capable of a real choice. It’s not capable of evaluating the pros and cons, it’s just going to take a trajectory of signals and come back with a particular response. But nobody wants to interact with a machine like that. So, we’re afraid it’ll become smarter than humans.

But on the other hand, it will never, ever become smarter than humans. Maybe we’ll lose control over it, but it won’t be smarter than us. That’s for sure. In fact, there are many levels of intelligence. There’s the intelligence of the mind, the intelligence of reason, but there’s also emotional intelligence and the intelligence of the body. The body has intelligence…

Empathy…

Yes, empathy. But the intelligence of the body, for example… We already know that our body, just by someone’s posture, we’re able to read their feelings and all that. Artificial intelligence can do this too, but in a very mechanical way. That’s it, with just a response like “Oh, you’ve got that, you’re that, perfect”. Bingo!

There’s no place for nuances, for impressions that are neither black nor white. So, finally, how long have you been involved with Ethical Coup Canada?

From the very beginning. In fact, the Ethics Bowl was born in Manitoba. The English side, if I’m not mistaken, 11 years ago. And this is the sixth year we’ve done it in French. I’ve been involved since the beginning, and it’s always a pleasure to be here. This year, internally, at the Université de Saint-Boniface, we’ve created a committee, in fact, an Ethics Bowl committee, to help organize the event; and it’s pretty exciting. I’ve been involved with the Canada Ethics Bowl for two or three years, I’d say. And we’re developing a lot the Francophone level, because it’s mainly my responsibility.

And you said that we still need people who are committed to developing cases…

Yes, in fact, I mentioned that these are things we discussed at the Canada Ethics Bowl. We know that the cases are always ten, written by a unilingual team, an English-speaking team, most part of it, which develops all the cases. So, it would be interesting to allow a French-speaking team to write five of them. The English team would write the other five, and then we’d translate each other’s cases. And also, I think it would bring in a new perspective, that of Francophones, who are a minority in Canada. We’d probably bring in cases that are more related to this French-speaking minority group.

That would be very interesting. I’m also thinking of people who have recently arrived in Canada.

Yes, also, absolutely, the immigrants! The francophone community here in Winnipeg is largely built by them, so it’s very important to have their point of view. There are major housing and cohabitation issues. Absolutely, because people arrive with their values, their standards, their scales, their culture and their tradition, and that sometimes leads to friction; but at the same time, it can also lead to changes in perspective, a better way of life, maybe it could make us re-evaluate what good life means.

I wish this event will be great for the Ethics Bowl. Thank you so much for your perspectives, which are very interesting for us and our readers, at the Manitoba Association for Rights and Freedoms.

Thank you!

Nicolas Dousdebes, Communication Coordinator – MARL