Description:

This course provides a systematic and critical study of values related to human conduct. It focuses on both traditional standards of ethical conduct and qualities of personal character. What we hold to be right or wrong, the basis for believing so, and what we consider to be virtues or vices are examined with an eye to understanding our current ethical situation. 3 hrs./wk.

Supplies: Refer to the instructor’s course syllabus for details about any supplies that may be required.

Prerequisites: NONE

Textbook(s): For information see - http://bookstore.jccc.net

Course Fees: NONE

Course Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this course the student should be able to:

1. Display an informed understanding of the ethical situation in America.
2. Explain and assess the historically significant standards of ethical conduct that lie behind our contemporary ethical positions.
3. Locate the important points of divergence involved in our disagreements on contemporary ethical issues.
4. Identify the basis for her/his own ethical choices.
5. Display the ability to read with understanding.
6. Display habits of character contributive to academic and philosophical excellence.

Content Outline & Competencies:

I. Contemporary Moral Culture
   A. The nature of ethics
      1. The nature and content of ethics.
         a. Identify the origin of the word ‘ethics’ and explain how it
relates to morality.
         b. Identify and describe the three main divisions of ethics.
      2. The social development of ethics.  Identify the four domains of
ethical standards and describe what each is based upon.
      3. The historical development of ethics.
         a. Explain the meaning of the two key concepts that dominated the
ethics of classical Greece, and explain how they were connected with civic
life.
         b. Describe the responses made by cynics, stoics, and hedonists
in interpreting the goal of life.
         c. Describe the shift in ethical emphasis during the medieval
period, and identify the new goal and the virtues necessary to attain it.
         d. Explain the shifts in concerns in ethics fostered by humanism,
the emergence of empirical science, and industrialization during the modern
period.
         e. Describe how cultural relativism, particularism, and feminist
ethics each contributed to a loss of confidence in the possibility of
establishing an objective ethic in the 20th century.
         f. Describe the important change in the basic form of social
communication that may be seen as contributing to the decline in the
influence of moral systems, and explain how it has changed the way values
are formed.
   B. Cultural relativism
      1. The role of folkways and social customs.
         a. Explain what folkways or customs are and how they become
mores.
         b. Explain what makes a custom right, and the implication this
has for cultural values.
         c. Explain the argument from cultural differences used to support
ethical relativism and evaluate the argument’s adequacy.
      2. The clash of values.
         a. Explain the role of laws in enforcing and reforming cultural
values.
         b. Explain the role of personal conscience in enforcing and
reforming cultural values.
   C. Particularism
      1. Rejection of moral principles.
         a. Describe the traditional pattern of moral reasoning used by
principlists that particularists wish to challenge.
         b. Identify the objections that particularists make to this
pattern of reasoning.
      2. Ethics without principles.
         a. Describe how particularists see ethical choices being made.
         b.  Explain the roles particularists see principles serving in
ethics.
      3. Principlists’ response.
         a. Explain the principlists’ objection that particularists
distort the portrait of moral decision making.
         b. Explain the advantage principlists have over particularists
regarding moral dialogue.
   D. Feminist ethics
      1. The bias in traditional ethics.
         a. Explain the bias feminists see operating in traditional
ethics.
         b. Identify the moral perspective that traditional ethics
overlooks.
      2. Caring.
         a. Explain the natural sentiment of care in terms of its
paradigmatic expression.
         b. Explain how basic human moral sentiments become ethical
mandates.
         c. Explain the importance of relationship in care ethics and why
it makes ethics particularist and concrete rather than abstract and
universal.
      3. Problems with care.
         a. Explain why the need to resist evil might pose a problem for
an ethic based on care.
         b. Explain how moral responsibility toward strangers poses a
problem for care.
         c. Explain why some feminist ethicists see care as potentially
limiting and exploiting of women.
   E. Visual culture
      1. Impact of visual media.
         a. Explain how the shift from typographic communication to visual
communication has affected both intelligence and ethical judgments.
         b. Explain the preference for television testimony and the role
it plays in postmodern culture.
         c. Explain how television promises to alter human consciousness
as well as our cultural situation.
      2. Shaping values visually.
         a. Explain how the lack of visual syntax is actually an advantage
in visual persuasion rather than a deficiency.
         b. Explain how social identity display through consumption of
goods and experiences plays an important role in visual persuasion.
         c. Explain the residual role of traditional ethics in
contemporary culture.
         d. Explain how particularism and feminist ethics can be seen as
forms of expression of the new visual culture.

II. Standards of Conduct
   A. For each of the following traditional ethical theories of values –
ethical egoism, divine commands, natural law ethics, utilitarianism, duty
ethics, rights theory:
      1. Describe the moral standard the theory uses to determine right
and wrong, good and bad, and moral obligations.
      2. Specify the sorts of acts the theory would approve or disapprove
of according to its moral standard.
      3. State the major supporting arguments and evidence advocates of
the  theory use to justify it.
      4. Explain the main objections critics make to the theory.
      5. Identify the moral insights the theory contributes to ethics.
      6. Identify the theories at work in the key social ethical issues of
our time.

III. Virtues and Vices of Character
   A. Virtue ethics
      1. The classical foundation.
         a. Explain how Aristotle’s notion of the good for mankind results
from his metaphysical thesis on entelechy and his empirical thesis on
happiness.
         b. Describe the two types of virtue Aristotle distinguishes and
explain how each is acquired.
         c. Explain the role the mean plays in virtue and how it is to be
determined.
      2. Being and doing.
         a. Explain how an ethic of being differs from one of doing.
         b. Describe the advantages of virtue ethics over conduct centered
ethics.
         c. List the seven deadly sins and explain how any of them pertain
to our culture.
         d. List the virtues and their moral precepts that Franklin
believed were necessary to overcome vice.
      3. Vices of virtue ethics.
         a. Explain how indeterminacy is a problem for virtue ethics.
         b. Explain why virtue ethics must be assisted by law which
requires some other ethical foundation than virtue.
         c. Explain how changes in character count against virtue ethics.
         d. Explain why virtue ethics is thought to encourage moral
backsliding.
   B. Pride, humility, and self-respect
      1. Pride and humility.
         a. Explain how Aristotle used pride as a means to realization of
other virtues.
         b. Provide a working definition of humility and indicate what it
requires regarding self-respect, the needs of others, jealousy, and envy.
         c. Explain how humility is related to pride.
      2. Despair.
         a. Explain how despair threatens established authority more than
the other deadly sins.
         b. Explain why contemporary despair is regarded as misguided
politics.
      3. Self-respect.
         a. Explain why the origin of self-respect is in overcoming
self-deception.
         b. Explain how the absence of self-respect affects our
relationships with others, and how it leads to alienation.
   C. Honesty
      1. Honesty and hope.
         a. Explain the conflict between hope and honesty embedded in the
claim that hope contains an inherent lie.
         b. Explain how hope produces a ‘white lie’ through production of
an unconscious falsehood.
      2. Lying and deceit.
         a. Identify what it is that makes lying wrong.
         b. Identify the most common motives behind lying.
         c. Explain why lying is an integral part of the decency of
everyday life and thus a virtue of practical intelligence.
         d. Explain why a true friendship involves a degree of deceit.
   D. Anger and violence
      1. Vigilantism.
         a. Explain why an angry mob is more dangerous than a mob of angry
people.
         b. Identify the five principal characteristics of vigilantism.
         c. Explain why vigilantism is more likely to occur now in
America.
      2. Anger and vengeance.
         a. Distinguish between natural and voluntary anger.
         b. Explain how anger is related to both self-importance and
righteousness.
         c. Explain the main difference between righteous and unrighteous
anger.
         d. Identify the purpose for which vengeance may be held to be
lawful and virtuous.

Methods of Evaluation of Competencies:

Evaluation of student mastery of course competencies will be accomplished using the following methods:

A minimum of three essay exams which will constitute no less than 60%
of the student’s grade. Additional exams, papers, reports, projects and
quizzes may be used at the instructor’s discretion to assess mastery of
the competencies and to facilitate achievement of the course
objectives.

Caveats: NONE

Disabilities:

If you are a student with a disability, and if you will be requesting accommodations, it is your responsibility to contact Access Services. Access Services will recommend any appropriate accommodations to your professor and his/her director. The professor and director will identify for you which accommodations will be arranged.

JCCC provides a range of services to allow persons with disabilities to participate in educational programs and activities. If you desire support services, contact the office of Access Services for Students With Disabilities (913) 469-8500, ext. 3521 or TDD (913) 469-3885. The Access Services office is located in the Success Center on the second floor of the Student Center.