Ethical Reasoning

Ethical questions concern judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, as well as matters of justice, fairness, virtue, and social responsibility. An ethical reasoning course is one that integrates ethical questions into the intellectual work required in the course. A substantial part of the course should be devoted to exploring the range of ethical issues associated with the central topic of the course. The course should move students beyond mere reactions to ethical issues and toward discussions of various frameworks for thinking systematically about them.

Full Description:

Courses emphasizing ethical reasoning will foster the ability to reflect rigorously on ethical issues and to apply ethical reasoning to choices in private and public life. Courses in ethical reasoning will not require that students adopt any particular ethical position, but will encourage students to begin to develop a defensible ethical position of their own. This may be achieved by:
– giving serious consideration to more than one side of personal or policy dilemmas
– teaching students how to distinguish ethical claims from descriptive and other sorts of claims, how to evaluate the evidence used in support of such claims, and how to test the consistency of a position and its coherence with other moral commitments
– helping students to identify conflicting values in order to assess and employ various strategies for resolving value conflicts
– identifying good, compelling reasons from personal, arbitrary or prejudicial reasons
– exploring ethical reasoning in a historical or cross-cultural perspective.