Deck 7: Contemporary Alternatives to Modernist Ethical Theories

Question 1

Modernist thinking is characterized by belief in progress and certainty of knowledge.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Modernist thinking sometimes makes it difficult to recognize the limitations of our ethical judgments.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Modernist thinking recognizes the importance of tradition.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Modernist thinking is characteristic of all cultures.

Question 5

Efforts to understand violence of the twentieth century contributed to questioning modernist assumptions of progress, certainty, and rationality.

Question 6

Post-modern theories of ethics developed, in part, in reaction to the violent excesses of modernist thought.

Question 7

The failure of Germany to resist Nazism is an example of the limitations of modernist thought.

Question 8

Postmodern theorists claim that modernist theories can rationalize inequality, oppression and violence.

Question 9

If coercion and violence is embedded in modernist thinking, then it is possible that some forms of coercion and violence are rationalized in modernist ethical theories.

Question 10

Modernist values of objectivity, rationality, and universality contribute to an emotional sense of certainty in thinking.

Question 11

Postmodernism offers a single, consistent critique of modernism.

Question 12

Three themes of postmodernism relevant to communication and the decentered self, justified truth, and moral rights.

Question 13

Postmodern shows that there are clear and unequivocal ways to end modernist practices that support violence and to promote ethical communication, such as removing the historical marker commemorating 19^th century abolitionist and feminist Elizabeth Swisshelm.

Question 14

Postmodernist thinkers claim that all thinking has a point of view, so modernist objectivity is impossible.

Question 15

The idea that knowledge only exists in relation to others is an important idea in postmodern thinking.

Question 16

The idea that all understanding is partial is a fundamental assumption in modernist thinking.

Question 17

Postmodern approaches to communication study how communication acts and processes support covertly or overtly the violent practices of modernism.

Question 18

Emmanuel Levinas claims that the Self arises in our relations to others.

Question 19

For Levinas, the self depends on the call of the other.

Question 20

The idea that individuals are autonomous and independent is central to Levinas' theory of the decentered Self.

Question 21

The call of the other occurs before you know that the other exists.

Question 22

For the decentered self, relationship exists before knowledge.

Question 23

Ethical response to the call of the others involves focusing on the other and not on Self.

Question 24

When you think you understand the other and know what she wants without listening to her, you treat the other as the Same as your Self.

Question 25

For Levinas, we eventually reach a point in our relationships with another person where we really understand her.

Question 26

The infinity of the other is the idea that there is always more to the other than you can ever know.

Question 27

The communication act of acknowledgment is a communication practice of the decentered Self.

Question 28

Traditional practices of justice are important in practicing the decentered Self.

Question 29

Practicing the decentered self involves setting aside traditional ideas of interpersonal fairness.

Question 30

When we are not ethically responsive to the infinity of the other, we risk treating the other as an object and denying her humanity.

Question 31

For postmodernists it is possible to completely know the truth.

Question 32

For postmodernists, truth is always partial and open to multiple interpretations.

Question 33

Justified truth is the idea that people always present arguments or justifications in support of what they consider true.

Question 34

Justified truth is always open for examination by others.

Question 35

Standards for evaluating truth have little or no importance in justified truth.

Question 36

Justified truth recognizes that moral intuition plays a key role in identifying what is true.

Question 37

Standards for justification vary, for example standards for science are different from standards for politics or religion.

Question 38

Standards for justification are the same for western and non-western cultures.

Question 39

Agreement about what is true depends on sharing at least some standards for justifying truth.

Question 40

The practical challenge of broad based discussions of truth is how or whether to include different standards for truth in the discussion.

Question 41

Without some notion of truth, deception becomes acceptable and communication eventually becomes meaningless.

Question 42

Modernist certainty assumes that complete knowledge is possible and cannot be disproven. The criticism of justified truth that all knowledge is partial and must be justified, points out how certainty weakens our curiosity about the world.

Question 43

The postmodern idea of justified truth encourages us to examine our thinking for overconfidence that our knowledge is true, making others automatically wrong.

Question 44

The idea of justified truth encourages us to recognize the limits in what others know.

Question 45

Modernist certainty encourages quick and decisive decision making.

Question 46

A grand narrative explains how everything fits together.

Question 47

Belief in a grand narrative encourages certainty.

Question 48

Postmodernism encourages us to think about overt and covert power

Question 49

For Foucault, power organizes relationships that create knowledge

Question 50

All power has disciplinary force.

Question 51

Foucault recognizes that both has creative for to create knowledge and disciplinary force to coerce us to accept one set of knowledge and reject another.

Question 52

To question or resist power a person must question practices that create relationships of power.

Question 53

Covert disciplinary power supports social practices that we take for granted.

Question 54

Postmodern thinking discourages either/or binary thinking.

Question 55

Skeptical critics of postmodernism argue that it is a new version of relativism.

Question 56

Sympathetic critics of postmodernism argue that it points out limitations of modernist thinking.

Question 57

The paradox of postmodernism heightens a communicator's sense of responsibility for ethical issues, while pointing out that communicating will perpetuate harms or create new ones.

Question 58

The paradox of modernism limits communication options to withdrawing from relationships and public life or listening to understand.

Question 59

Postmodernism identifies rationalizing tendencies in modernism caused by certainty.

Question 60

Postmodern criticisms of modernism encourage awareness of how our understanding and thinking is partial.

Question 61

A dialogical moment is a moment of mutual understanding.

Question 62

Communication scholars have clearly defined and described dialogue and how to achieve it.

Question 63

Dialogue is a method for arriving at consensus.

Question 64

Dialogical communication is characterized by openness for mutual understanding.

Question 65

In monological communication, communicators treat the Other as equal subjects.

Question 66

I-Thou relationships characterize dialogical communication.

Question 67

In monological communication, communicators use the Other as a means to achieve a goal.

Question 68

Dialogical theorist claims that we should avoid all monological communication.

Question 69

The experience of dialogical communication in an I-Thou relationship encourages our humanity.

Question 70

Three ethical values of dialogical communication ethics are presentness, tensional mutuality, and authenticity.

Question 71

Presentness is the practice of paying attention.

Question 72

Focusing attention on the immediate now of communication characterizes presentness in dialogical communication

Question 73

Openness to the flow of communication in the dialogical moment of communication means that anything goes.

Question 74

Acknowledging the humanity of the Other in the dialogical flow of communication is an important to dialogical presentness.

Question 75

Drawing attention to how your conversational partner does or does not reciprocate your listening, is a method for encouraging dialogical communication.

Question 76

Presentness focuses on the Other, not on what you want or expect from the Other.

Question 77

Simultaneous tension and cooperation characterize tensional mutuality.

Question 78

Mutual understanding of dialogue focuses on how you and the Other are the same.

Question 79

Acknowledging differences between you and the Other are essential to practicing tensional mutuality.

Question 80

"Strange otherness" requires that we do not presume we know or understand everything that the Other means, even if the Other is a family member or friend.