It is designed to assess your individual ability to present a relevant, coherent, convincing and succinct argumentative response to your chosen viva topic : Individual Viva Assignment, NTU

INDIVIDUAL VIVA ASSIGNMENT

The individual viva (presentation) is an individual assignment. It is designed to assess your individual ability to present a relevant, coherent, convincing and succinct argumentative response to your chosen viva topic.

Your viva will be 3 – 4 minutes long and will be held during class time towards the end of the semester.

Your tutorial instructor will inform you of your viva date and time.

Keep a lookout for your viva date and time.

During your viva, you will spend at least the first two minutes of your viva time to present your arguments in response to your chosen viva topic. Start your viva by outlining your thesis statement and then proceed to explain your arguments. Following which, in the next two minutes, your instructor may follow up with a short Q&A. Stick to your viva timeline (i.e. 3-4 minutes long). As there are other students who need to clear their vivas as well, your tutorial instructor will stop your viva once your time is up.

Some tips:

Know your materials/subject matter/topic inside out.
Provide a clear structure in your response to the viva question.

Offer a clear thesis statement at the start of your presentation. A thesis statement tells the audience what you’re aruging (your position) and why, but doesn’t give any other detail. For example: ‘I argue NTU is the best technical university as it puts out the most brilliant graduates’

Tailor your response to the viva question and address it directly.
Speak clearly and concisely.
Practice beforehand.
Avoid reading from a script.
Be enthusiastic and passionate.
Stick to your Viva timeline

Choose ONLY ONE topic out of the following list of topics provided:

TOPIC 1 – Human Trafficking

UNODC joins regional crime fighters to tackle scams and human trafficking in SE Asia

Nations in the southeast Asian region joined the UN crime-fighting agency in Bangkok on Tuesday to launch a new strategy tackling organised crime and human trafficking. The focus of the plan is on criminal activity associated with casinos in the region, and other scams including money laundering and cybercrime.

The plan of action was announced in the Thai capital by officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) together with partner China, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The new plan aims to strengthen prevention measures and improve the capacities of crime fighters to investigate international organised crime and human trafficking across the whole region.

“Trafficking in persons connected to casinos and scam operations run by organized crime has mushroomed across Southeast Asia, particularly in the Mekong” remarked Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative to Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

“There is an urgent need for regional cooperation to address these increasingly integrated and interlinked crimes in the region, as well as the ecosystem they exist in.” Human trafficking to recruit victims into criminal activity, is just one aspect of transnational organised crime, according to a policy report issued by UNODC.

It is often connected to the operations of border casinos, large scale money laundering, cybercrimes, and a range of other criminal offences. There have also been credible reports of torture and extortion in these operations over the past year, the report notes.

For more, read: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141492  

Viva question:

What is the most significant ethical challenge facing governments in fighting human trafficking? In addressing this question, remember to use ethical concepts that are taught in our course to support your arguments

TOPIC 2-Ethics of Death and Dying

“The American biologist Andrzej Bartke recently showed that a combination of genetic alteration and nutritional restriction can increase the lifespan of a laboratory mouse by around 70 per- cent. While control mice withered and died, the test animals were still zestfully scurrying about, fleet of foot with glossy fur and unclouded eyes, and apparently as full of ‘joie de vivre’ as any young rodent. Discoveries of this sort are now far from rare. I recently found that alteration of a gene called daf-2 can increase the maximum life span of male nematode worms from 31 to 199 days-a 6.4-fold increase. If a nematode life were translated into human terms, this would represent a lifespan of around 700 years.

Common sense tells us that aging is universal, inevitable, and associated with gradual physical decline. But in this case, common sense is wrong. Some animal species, such as tiny betentacled hydra, do not appear to age at all. There exist, for example, individual colonies of corals that are over 20,000 years old. What is more, within the last decade biologists have found that the rate of aging is remarkably easy to alter in laboratory animals such as nematodes, fruit flies, and mice. It is no longer far-fetched to think that one day it will be possible to retard the aging process in humans and extend the human life span.

Do we really want this research to succeed? Some bioethicists have professed horror at the thought of dramatic life extension. Many recoil at the notion of extending the lives of people undergoing irreversible physical decline, like the senile and decrepit Struldbruggs in Gullivers’ Travels. Yet recent research shows it may be possible not just to extend life, but to extend youth. What if each of us could live a longer life, in peak physical and mental health, then suddenly shrivel away at the end, like Dracula when he is exposed to the sunlight? Would bioethicists still be so dour? Perhaps so, yet it would no longer be quite so clear why.”

From David Gems, Is More Life Always Better? The New Biology of Aging and the Meaning of Life [full text available on JSTOR]

VIVA QUESTION: should ageing be treated as a disease to be cured, like smallpox or COVID-19? Why or why not? Whichever position you take, advance an argument in its defence.

In addition to the above journal article by Prof Gems, I’d recommend reading Bernard Williams’ classic The Makropoulos Case in preparation for this topic:
https://www3.nd.edu/~pweithma/Readings/Williams/Williams%20on%20Immortality.pdf

TOPIC 3 – Equality & Meritocracy

Meritocracy based on narrow metrics will hinder Singapore from building resilience: Chan Chun Sing

A NARROW meritocracy will not allow Singapore to build a resilient society with diverse strengths, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing on Tuesday (Apr 18), as he laid out strategies to keep the country’s meritocracy “sustainable and resilient”.

These include valuing diverse abilities by moving away from “single, narrow and static” metrics of evaluation, as well as creating more diverse education pathways.

“Heart” and “hand” work – sectors such as special education and essential services, for instance – must also be fairly rewarded and remunerated, in a way that is commensurate with “head” work.

Chan was speaking on the second day of the debate on President Halimah Yacob’s address at last week’s opening of Parliament, in which she called for a “broader meritocracy” and more inclusivity.

Another strategy is investing in Singaporeans “throughout life”, said Chan. The government plans to make training more accessible for working adults with competing commitments, and provide more training support for mid-career workers, including SkillsFuture Credit top-ups.

These ideas have emerged from the Forward Singapore exercise, with details to come “in due course”, he added.

For more, read:

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/singapore/meritocracy-based-narrow-metrics-will-hinder-singapore-building-resilience-chan-chun-sing

https://www.forwardsingapore.gov.sg/stories/revisiting-meritocracy

VIVA QUESTION:

How does the concept of meritocracy reinforce or undermine efforts to achieve equality and/or justice?

TOPIC 4 – Free Speech

The term ‘fake news’ was popularized during the presidency of Donald Trump in America (2016-2020) when he used the term to delegitimize (defame) his political opponents. However, the term ‘fake news’ simply implies the intentional dissemination of misinformation in order to gain political leverage. Often, the dissemination of fake news has very negative outcomes. For example: (1) Trump’s fake news of the ‘Asia virus’, which suggested that covid was brought to American by Asian immigrants, led to random violence against Asians in America; (2) Hitler’s Nazi Germany (1933-1945) disseminated the misinformation that Jews were the reason for Germany’s economic deterioration, which came to justify Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ policy of the extermination of Jews; (3) “In 2018, the New York Times [newspaper] reported that the Myanmar military had been spreading fake news over Facebook for more than a decade as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya population.”1  An argument can be made that dissemination of fake news is most likely in: (1) liberal democracies (such as the United States) with loosely regulated (though not un-regulated) freedom of speech and where citizens and politicians have more freedom of expression, and in (2) totalitarian political systems where the government controls everything and is not held accountable for its dissemination of fake news.  However, dissemination of misinformation can also be argued to have good outcomes in some situations and under certain circumstances if the aim is a larger good. For example, if a government downplays the threat of war from an enemy state and tells its citizens that war is very unlikely, despite information from their intelligence agencies to the contrary, then it can be argued that reducing mass panic is a larger benefit than the harm of disseminating fake news.

Regardless of who is dispensing misinformation, the intentional dissemination of misinformation (fake news), with very few exceptions, can often be argued to violate all three major ethical theories we’ve studied in class: deontological ethics (because it violates the duty of truth telling), virtue ethics (because it violates the principles of good character needed for a virtuous life), utilitarian ethics (because it can be argued that the net cost likely outweighs the net gain of fake news). However, some disagree with this contention, arguing instead that the dissemination of ‘fake news’ is always based on a necessity and therefore satisfies a larger good. These people may argue that dissemination of misinformation may be ethical on grounds of consequentialism (where morality of an action is defined by its desired consequences).

Viva Question:

Even when ‘Fake News’ serves a larger good, it is always un-ethical.

Argue for or against this contention, making sure to outline the context (situation) within which your argument holds.

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