To teach ethics implies setting rules, guidelines, and rational decision-making but it also requires creativity and acknowledgement of the affective aspects of our decision-making processes. Usually, ethical inquiries become involved in emotions that cannot be ignored but included in the learning process. The authors relate their experience with a pedagogic model involving film clips to prompt and frame discussions that might foster a more holistic approach to ethics education. Teaching with movies is also an innovative method for promoting the sort (...) of engaged learning that education requires today. By allowing reflections on emotions, participants in these sessions can learn to develop their reflective abilities and attitudes. Life stories derived from movies fit well with the learners’ context and expectations and could serve as a launching point for discussions of both the emotions and ethical scenarios. Using film clips in a structured way allows for new opportunities in ethics education. (shrink)

Science is a discipline defined by empiricism and reliable methodologies that result in predictable outcomes. Yet, cutting-edge experiments inevitably involve an element of the unknown, an aspect which science fiction exploits for dramatic effect. Furthermore, fictional science is freed from the ethical constraints that regulate real-world experimentation and is therefore often transgressive. Even as films capitalize on unethical practices and cutting-edge scenarios for dramatic and commercial reasons, the origin of the filmmaker and/or place of production may affect a film’s content. (...) A film is also obviously subject to legal constraints, according to the country of origin, and classification codes in its place of exhibition. Thus, while the very nature of science fiction may cause it to appear morally unbridled, there are nonetheless multiple inhibitions entrenched in such depictions. By drawing on relevant cinematic examples, including Prometheus, The Hunger Games and District 9, and scientific scenarios on which these films are based, this essay explores how the unpredictable nature of advances in science, in combination with a lack of ethics, foregrounds the dangerous dimensions of science fiction. (shrink)