Values and Ethics (HUMN330)

This course focuses on the process of practical ethics as a way of resolving moral conflict and of understanding professional responsibility in a culturally diverse society without devaluating specific viewpoints of ethical or metaphysical theory, ideology, or religion. Students will use proposals, value judgments, observation statements, assumptions, and alternate-world assumptions in arguing contemporary issues of moral importance. With this basic moral logic, students will resolve issues in terms of rights, responsibilities, and the community of rational beings; in terms of consequences and contingencies; and in terms of habituated virtues and character. Free and unrestricted discourse will be encouraged so as to let students find common ground in diversity.

• Introduction to Values and Ethics (I)
• Introduction to Values and Ethics (II)
• Ethical Relativism (I)
• Ethical Relativism (II)
• Utilitarianism and Deontology (I)
• Utilitarianism and Deontology (II)
• Personhood, Rights, Justice, Socrates, Plato and the Good Life (I)
• Personhood, Rights, Justice, Socrates, Plato and the Good Life (II)
• Virtue Theory and Contemporary Perspectives (I)
• Virtue Theory and Contemporary Perspectives (II)
• Case Studies in Virtue.
• Gender and Ethics.
• Applied Ethics.

• Recognize and write about the role and importance of ethics in personal, professional, and social life.
• Demonstrate in writing an understanding of the psychological, sociological, historical, and philosophical background of ethics.
• Discuss the role of reason, happiness, personal responsibility, personal freedom, choice, and consequence in historical and contemporary ethical systems.
• Explain the various arguments for and against the major historical and contemporary ethical systems.
• Identify and apply ethical principles to contemporary ethical problems.
• Engage in organized debate regarding the various solutions to contemporary ethical problems using differing ethical systems, for example, through participation in an Ethics Bowl.
• Respond to contemporary ethical problems in the media by critically analyzing the problem and applying various ethical systems to suggest a resolution to the issue.
• Conduct research on a topic in ethics and generate a written analysis using a standard documentation system;