DAWSON COLLEGE
HUMANITIES 345-BXH-03 (ETHICAL ISSUES)
COURSE TITLE:
WORKLOAD (per week)
EFFECTIVE DATE:
INSTRUCTOR’S NAME:
CONTEMPORARY ETHICAL ISSUES
3-0-3
WINTER 2009
Nadia Khouri
STATEMENT OF THE COMPETENCY
Learning outcome: To think critically about ethical issues
ELEMENTS OF THE COMPETENCY
General Objectives Common to all Ethical Issues Courses:
Students who successfully complete the Ethical Issues course in Humanities should be able to:
1.
Understand basic ethical concepts and theories necessary for reflecting upon moral
beliefs, actions and questions pertaining to personal, professional, local and global issues
2.
Situate issues in their social and historical contexts and examine them from an ethical
perspective in a reasoned and critical manner
3.
Identify conflicts of values, and reflect on the moral disagreements, questions, and options
that emerge from these conflicts
4.
Identify and analyze ethical issues that are pertinent to each student’s program
GENERAL AIM OF THE COURSE
By the end of this course you should be able to:
- Identify the social/scientific/legal/political implications of major contemporary ethical issues,
and their historical and theoretical background.
- Explain the main principles and theories that have been generated by moral philosophy and
their application to concrete issues, such as: Kantian ethics, utilitarianism/ consequentialism,
ethical subjectivism and ethical relativism, egoism, ethical absolutism, natural law and natural
rights, virtue ethics, and the ethics of care.
- Research and critically assess clashing views on such major ethical issues as: euthanasia,
abortion, sexual morality, pornography and censorship, equality and discrimination, affirmative
action, economic justice, punishment and legal punishment, freedom of speech, stem-cell
research, cloning (therapeutic and reproductive), genetic engineering, animal rights,
environmental ethics, global inequalities, violence, terrorism and war.
- Test your memory of the cases and the arguments presented by the different sides
- Develop your own arguments by writing short essays and presenting them to the class.
- Demonstrate your awareness of the complexity of the issues under study.
- Prove that thinking, reasoning, and solid knowledge of ethical theory, ethical issues and their
contexts are inseparable from a sound evaluation of moral philosophy.
REQUIRED TEXT
Barbara MacKinnon, Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, 6th ed., Wadsworth/Thomson,
Belmont, 2009.
PROGRAM-ADAPTED ASSIGNMENT
You will be required to identify the ethical issues pertinent to your own program and to write one
major term paper on them.
SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES AND COURSE CONTENTS
1)
Ethics and ethical reasoning
Ethical theory. Descriptive statements and normative claims
Evaluating and making good arguments: ethics and other types of evaluation
Distinction between sets of beliefs tied to religion, and ethical judgment. The divine
command theory. Plato’s Euthyphro
2)
Ethical subjectivism and ethical relativism
The diversity of moral views, moral pluralism and moral uncertainty
Forms of ethical pluralism
Situational differences: arguments pro and con
Moral isolationism: Mary Midgley’s critique
3)
Utilitarianism/Consequentialism
Historical sources: hedonism, epicureanism
The intrinsic good, and the greatest happiness principle: quantitative and qualitative
The utility principle and consequentialism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
Evaluating harms
The question of ends and means. The cost-benefit equation
Act and rule utilitarianism
4)
Kant’s moral theory
What gives an act moral worth?
What is the right motive?
The categorical imperative and moral obligation
Hypothetical imperatives
Autonomy, duty, good will and universality
5)
Natural law and natural rights
Natural law and laws of nature
Aristotle and natural law
Human nature and the human good: history of different interpretations
Evaluating natural law theory and natural rights theory
Discussion of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil
Government and Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail
6)
Euthanasia
Meaning and types of euthanasia
Brain death and persistent vegetative state
The moral significance of voluntariness
Ordinary and extraordinary measures
Making moral judgments about euthanasia. Morality and the law
Consequentialist and nonconsequentialist concerns
7)
Abortion
Stages of fetal development
Abortion and the law/rights arguments: Roe v. Wade. Abortion in Canada
The moral question, consequentialism and nonconsequentialism
Fetal/Personhood issues: arguments for and arguments against
8)
Sexual Morality. Pornography
Conceptual matters: what is and is not sexual
Factual matters: consequences of certain sexual practices and their effect on sexual
morality
Sexual morality and ethical considerations: utilitarian and Kantian
Pornography and art, pornography and obscenity: free speech and the law
Pornography and liberty-limiting principles: harm, social harm, and offense
Legal paternalism/legal moralism
9)
Equality and discrimination
Civil rights law
Racism and sexism, stereotypes, racial profiling, hate crimes: historical overview
The principle of equality and considerations of justice
Affirmative action, compensation, and preferential treatment
Reverse discrimination: evaluation of social benefits and harms. Consequentialist and
nonconsequentialist arguments
10)
Legal punishment
Punishment and responsibility, distinction between punishment and legal punishment
Arguments for and against punishment
The deterrence argument
Civil disobedience and the law (Socrates, Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr,
Nelson Mandela)
The retributivist argument, revenge, and the lex talionis
The death penalty. Arguments on deterrence grounds/on retributivist grounds. Abolition
of the death penalty
11)
Stem cell research, cloning, and genetic engineering
Facts on genetic research
Therapeutic and reproductive cloning
Human cloning: ethical issues
Genetic engineering/stem cell research/gene therapy: ethical issues
Genetically modified plants and animals: ethical issues
Genetic screening, privacy, and conflicts of interest
12)
Environmental ethics/Animal rights
The environment: intrinsic value perspective, use value perspective, natural law
perspective
Anthropocentrism, ecocentrism/biocentrism, deep ecology, ecofeminism
Animals and sentience: Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer
Cruelty and predation
Animals as moral agents or moral patients
The question of moral rights
Animal experimentation: three positions
Endangered species: anthropocentric and ecocentric arguments
Sustainable development
13) Violence, terrorism, and war
Violence: causes and correlations
Terrorism: definitions
Pacifism: consequentialist and nonconsequentialist arguments
Just war theory: jus ad bellum, jus in bello
Weapons of mass destruction
War crimes and universal human rights
TEACHING METHODS/LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Lecturing
10-minute student presentations of prepared written case analysis to be shown to the
class on the overhead projector
Class work with study guides and short essay questions identifying concepts, approaches
and methods used in the analysis of specific ethical issues.
You are expected to think and express yourself clearly and critically about ethical issues.
You must avoid generalizations, be specific, and support your arguments with facts
and concepts from ethical philosophy.
BXHcourse outline2.doc