Teaching Ethics

This paper explores some of the reasons why we, as a business ethics center housed at a state university, are transitioning from being a largely neutral platform on business ethics topics to becoming an advocate for specific perspectives. Comprising the topics of interest are issues such as climate change, capitalism, and certain medical and public health controversies. Presented here are four main reasons behind this move: pluralistic arguments, moral “switching,” existential crises, and combating disinformation. Two examples regarding capitalism and vaccine mandates are used to demonstrate advocacy in practice.

Rather than referring to “minorities,” “members of minority groups” or “underrepresented minorities,” we should refer to such individuals as “minoritized.” Using “minoritized” makes it clear that being minoritized is about power and equity not numbers, connects racial oppression to the oppression of women, and gives us an easy way to conceive of intersectionality as being a minoritized member of a minoritized group. The term “minoritized” reveals the fact that white males and other dominant groups minoritize members of subordinated groups rather than obscuring this agency, describes microaggressions better than the term ‘microaggressions,’ and helps explain the need for solidarity within minoritized groups. It gives us a powerful way to promote racial justice by appealing to the common experience of being excluded. While using “minoritized” risks creating a false equivalence that sees all instances of being minoritized as equal and discounting unique forms of oppression by subsuming them under a single term, using this term carefully can ensure that its advantages outweigh these risks.

Since the concept of race is scientifically nonreferential, it is tempting to think that we can simply eliminate it right away from our lexicon, from our statistical categories, from our lives. But those of us who are eliminativists about race in the long run need to take a more roundabout path in killing off this concept. Through the painstaking work of teaching our students that race, though biologically nonreferential, remains part of various systems of oppression, and engaging in open dialogue and political organization in order to make racial categories economically and politically irrelevant, the concept of race must die a slow and painful death.

Taking seriously the notion that diversifying our philosophical pedagogy is of both intrinsic and instrumental importance, this paper offers a defense of, and model for, a pedagogical approach aimed at making canonical philosophical texts more appealing—and more useful—for diverse students. Specifically, taking Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a case study, this paper considers how we might make this text more engaging for students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. It does so by offering a five-step model, which involves: situating the text in its historical context; acknowledging and addressing problematic content in the text; drawing out novel or underexplored themes and questions from the text; bringing the text into dialogue with diverse and contemporary philosophical approaches and issues (e.g., feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and non-Western philosophies); and applying issues, themes, and concepts from the text to contemporary matters or current events as much as possible. Specific examples are offered regarding how to achieve each of these steps when teaching the Nicomachean Ethics.

This essay takes Nietzsche’s remarks on ethics as springboards for developing a method of diversifying the teaching of ethics to confront twenty-first century existential crises. Prompted by Darwin’s research, Nietzsche envisioned humanity’s self-extinction through science and technology unchecked by philosophy. A curriculum for teaching ethics to confront that catastrophe includes all the intellectual disciplines and focuses on the evolution of ethics over time. The curriculum’s primary objective is to stimulate students to create new values appropriate to their changing circumstances. After focusing on Nietzsche’s early efforts to define philosophy’s role with respect to art and science, the essay advances a rationale and methodology for diversifying ethics across the curriculum. The essay then describes African American and African proposals that have the promise of transforming Nietzsche’s remarks on promoting diversity in ethics into practical instruments for guaranteeing life’s future.

In this paper, I respond to one aspect of Elizabeth Barnes’s argument in The Minority Body: a Theory of Disability. To do this, I first explain her argument as it applies towards children: in order to have a genuine “mere-difference” view of disability, one may not cause nor remove disability. The consequence of this theory is that it is impermissible for parents to choose to remove their child’s disability. I argue this is incorrect. Barnes’s assumption relies on a non-interference framework, which is inappropriate when applied to children. When we use an interest-protection framework instead, it becomes at least permissible for parents, and in some situations obligatory, to choose to remove their child’s disability. Because the permissibility or obligation is situationally dependent, this view is consistent with Barnes’s overall argument for the mere-difference view of disability.

In the spring 2020 semester six students enrolled in a topics course in the philosophy department at my institution titled, “The Poverty Game.” We created this article by collaboration based on fourteen weeks of writing assignments and class discussions. All of us participated in an on-campus poverty simulation “game” sponsored by the Teacher Resource Center. Our objectives in the course were to critically analyze the game by asking questions and challenging assumptions about goals, rules, narrative profiles, and solutions to poverty that were implied by the simulation. We then set about to revise the game. Our suggested revisions highlighted structural conditions as part of an explanation about why populations and subgroups are poor. Identifying these inequities positioned us to recommend justice solutions to poverty and, further, to empower players of the simulation to become agents of change.

There are striking points of affinity between Hannah Arendt’s concept of a politico-moral variety of allusive thinking, and Stanley Cavell’s concept of aversive thinking characteristic of Emersonian Moral Perfectionism (EMP). Although both Arendt and Cavell’s EMP are pessimistic if not hostile to the suggestion of the redemption of a vibrant public sphere, their thought suggests possible moves toward a practical politico-moral philosophy—political philosophy as provocative moral practice recognizable in Socrates and Diogenes of Sinope. The paper teases out threads of thought in Arendt and Cavell toward an account of a quasi-public perfectionist philosophical practice—call it moral friendship—supportive of political-moral judgment in response to social conditions of its repression. Moral friendship is ultimately the cultivation of moral taste that enables one to notice moral phenomena susceptible to one’s judgment whose failure to be noticed is an occasion for regret.

In order to effectively prepare students for medical decisions with complex, ethical disagreements and value-laden conflicts, a progression from simpler case analysis to multi-layered conflicts is often helpful. Presented here is a unique case of pregnancy in a true hermaphrodite from recent medical literature. The case is artificially layered with additional, medical and discoverable contextual issues to help analyze three distinct questions in medical ethics: 1) Is it ethically permissible to perform an elective termination of pregnancy (ETOP) on a minor, 2) Is it ethically permissible to keep this information from the parents, and 3) are additional and complicating medical features included in confidentiality agreements involving minors? The pedagogical goals include introducing and effectively utilizing the Orr-Shelton, four box method of clinical ethics assessment, demonstrating the need to uncover/discover important contextual (cultural, religious, family, etc.) features not usually incorporated fully into patient charts, to prepare medical students to research and become familiar with the local legal environment, and to illustrate that what appears to be a single a single ethical dilemma is likely far more complex requiring a multi-focused assessment.

Our research addressed an increase of unethical practices in professional settings identified in the literature, and this increase coincides with a shift in U.S. culture from principle-based ethics to one trending toward moral relativism. We discovered many programs lack comprehensiveness to deal with the complexities of culture in graduate education. The purpose of this instrumental case study was to explore and develop a conceptual framework for a comprehensive teaching model targeting graduate-level educators, administrators, and educational boards across disciplines. Data were collected over 13 years from a doctoral professional ethics course at a private, faith-based university in South Texas. Using a Design Based Research process following Reeves’ (2006) guidelines, we developed a multi-disciplinary graduate theoretical teaching model for ethics: Comprehensive Professional Ethics Teaching Model (CPET model), grounded in our data analysis and findings. Recommendations include implementing and testing the efficacy of the CPET model in subsequent studies.

In response to the challenges of teaching a course in environmental ethics to engineering majors at a technological university, I have developed an approach that emphasizes the role of moral imagination in conjunction with systems imagination in responding to problems that arise in shared environments. The course is set out on a model of problem-based learning, conceived as a cognitive apprenticeship: by working together to understand and consider responses to problems that are of interest to them, with guidance and tools provided by the instructor, students develop their capacity to notice, respond to and think about systems and values with greater sophistication. After setting out the rationale and the design of the course, I note the challenge that remains: developing a systematic assessment of the course, which would involve detecting and tracking subtle changes in student cognition.

Higher education continues to see a shift toward online course delivery. Many professional graduate programs offer online courses when content does not necessarily require face-to-face contact. The use of movies to teach ethics and professionalism to medical students is not a new pedagogical approach. At a university in the United States, a shift in a tracked physical therapy curriculum triggered a course in ethics and professionalism to be delivered earlier in the program, leaving students without prior clinical experience before starting the course. The instructor revised this online course using movies to provide context for the topics covered making them relatable to physical therapy practice. This article describes student reactions to the implementation of movies into this course. Students valued the addition of the movies as they provided context using relevant health care situations, ultimately helping them relate the concepts to the physical therapy profession.

Some engineering educators recognize the necessity and challenges of teaching students moral sensitivity. As recently pointed out by some scholars, along with moral sensitivity, promoting “self-knowledge” is significantly lacking in engineering curricula. We suggest that the “ethics autobiography” employed in some health and psychological science programs can serve as a useful tool for helping engineering students develop moral sensitivity and self-reflective competencies. First, this paper briefly discusses some unique potential strengths of introducing ethics autobiography as a tool for moral pedagogy to engineering education. Second, this paper provides five specific examples on how to implement ethics autobiography in the classroom. Among the five examples, two are directly related to engineering education and the other three can easily be adapted to meet the needs of engineering education. Finally, this paper concludes with some discussion of the implications of ethics autobiography for engineering ethics education reform and the limitations and ethical considerations of using autobiography in moral pedagogy.

This article gives a broad sense of existing debate about Global Citizenship Education (GCE) to help situate and contextualize a novel case study. Scholars for Syria originated at a small university in southern Indiana. This grassroots response to the turmoil in Syria bridges the gap between a seemingly distant crisis and a midwestern city in the United States. The unique pedagogical and curricular dimensions of the case study work as a helpful framing device for facilitating exploration of debates about the shape of GCE, as well as providing new ways in which to imagine GCE curriculum, pedagogy, and embedding ethics into wider university initiatives.

Noting that issues raised during clinical bioethics consults at a southeastern US hospital involve the application of basic ethical principles, the Clinical Bioethics Consultation Service developed and piloted an interprofessional ethics immersion. The goal of this 4-week immersion was to improve teamwork and collaboration, support resolution of basic ethical dilemmas, and develop on-site ethics scholars who apply basic ethical principles to challenging clinical situations. The impact of the immersion on ethical environment, team communication, and confidence in resolving of basic ethical dilemmas for interprofessional clinical teams was examined using follow-up interviews with seven of the eight participants from two ethics immersion offerings. Findings support that an interprofessional ethics immersion training is a valuable strategy to improve ethics knowledge and resolve common patient care dilemmas. The unique aspects of this ethics immersion, team-based and interprofessional, are important considerations for ongoing development of clinicians to address the daily challenges encountered in healthcare.

In-course marks and final grades each have their own nature and purpose and conflating the two does a disservice to both. Final grades represent a fixed and final statement about how a student did in the course in the end. They are a communication between the professor and anyone who will pick up that student’s transcript someday. In-course marks, by contrast, are a communication between the professor and student alone, and ought to be representative of an ongoing conversation about how the student is currently doing in the course. They are subject to change with each lecture, assessment, and conversation, and should embody that dynamism and potential for progress. Building upon the pedagogical concepts of differentiated learning, growth mindset, and backward course design, this paper will examine the advantages of differentiating between the two types of grades and present three grading models that incorporate the distinction.

Ethics training is becoming increasingly common in pre-professional contexts to address ethical misconduct in business, medicine, science, and other disciplines. These courses are often taught by philosophers. The question is whether such ethics training, which involves philosophical reflection, is effective in cultivating ethical behavior. This paper takes a closer look at the goals of teaching ethics and how our current methods are ineffective in achieving the affective and active goals of teaching ethics. This paper then suggests how experiential learning and, specifically, service learning may be one way forward in achieving these goals. While some pre-professional programs have implemented service learning, the ethics courses offered by philosophers also may be improved by giving students more opportunities to engage their communities through service learning.

This paper argues that business ethics would enhance its relevance if it is ceases to be a moralizing discourse and instead becomes a mediating discourse between conflicting and multiple interests. Yet business ethics can be relevant as a mediating discourse only if it acknowledges the “embedded” nature of market. To clarify this point, the paper draws from Freeman’s theory of narrative cores, Rehg’s Problem-based Approach and De George’s vision of business ethics as an interdisciplinary field composed of descriptive, managerial and normative components. Finally, we argue for the relevance of the case study, whose juxtaposition of “bi-polar” or irreconcilable dichotomies makes it a vital pedagogical tool for our proposed reconfiguration of business ethics as an interdisciplinary, mediating field of enquiry.

This paper describes a newly-developed course titled Philosophy of Censorship. Developed out of materials covered in an applied ethics course, this course seeks to improve the students’ understanding about the rights to free expression, and the ways in which these rights are—sometimes necessarily—curtailed in the contemporary society. In studying J. S. Mill’s prominent argument for freedom of thought and expression, the course analyzes the argument for its strength and applicability, when it comes to frequently challenged forms of expression, such as pornography and hate speech. Moreover, the course looks into alternative arguments that aim to safeguard individuals’ right to free speech, including non-consequentialist arguments. The course also strives to keep current with contemporary discussions of freedom of expression and censorship.