Assignment task: In 4-5 paragraphs, describe your code of ethics. Define your core ethical values and how you arrived at them. You must use the course material to support your reasoning and must reference 3-5 sources from this course.
In this week, we will look at the nature of the ethical discipline as well as how we use metaethics as the theoretical bedrock of creating more problem-oriented ethical arguments.
Week 2 Introduction to Moral Reasoning
This week will begin by commenting on the nature of moral argument and giving three main concepts. Then it will proceed by diagnosing the important aspects of a "should" argument. For the second half of the week, we will be looking at different inductive argument types that are commonly used in moral discourse and how to assess them.
Week 3 Religion and Relativism
Ethics is based on the notion of defining what is "the good", or "the good life". But in order to decide what is good, we first need to establish a basis upon which good and bad can be identified. That is to say, we should look for some authority, or authoritative position, from which to determine goodness and evil. Two of the most intuitive ways to try and ground ideas about the good are in religion and cultural norms (aka Relativism). While both of these systems of ethical reflection have been developed over time, we will also see the difficulties associated with using these two methods as primary ethical theories/authorities.
Week 4 Consequentialist and Deontological Ethical Theories
This unit is divided into opposed ways of doing ethics - two competing visions of how ethics can be derived and applied in any given situation. We begin with some varieties of consequentialist ethics, which focus on creating an ethical approach with a mind to optimizing conclusions from the situation. Then we will move on to the opposed school of deontological approaches, which emphasizes method over outcomes. Many believe the adage that "the ends justify the means". Here we see one school of thought that agrees and another that vehemently disagrees.
Week 5 Virtue Ethics and Postmodernism
Thus far we have looked at ethical systems derived primarily from the assessment and mitigation of consequences, or creation and execution of rules. This unit will introduce some very different ideas of how we might imagine the development of our ethical sensibilities. Virtue ethics located ethics/morals more in the question of "what sort of people should we try to become?", rather than in consequences. Postmodern thinking, on the other hand, either outright denies the viability of a consistent ethical framework or asks us to be primarily pragmatic when different schools of ethical thought appear unresolvable.
Week 6 Socio-Political Ethics
This unit will be concerned with ethics as understood within the matrix of social and legal obligations. We will look at rights, privileges, duties, and different ideas of the social contract.
Week 7 Ethics of Wealth and Civil Obedience
This unit focuses on ethics within society. It begins by looking at issues of wealth distribution and then moves into the ideas of when we should disobey the rules of society.
Week 8 Applied Ethics Studies
In this final week, we are going to explore ethics as applied to two commonly discussed areas - Business Ethics and Animal Ethics (specifically eating animals).