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This course considers some of the significant normative ethical theories in the history of moral philosophy and examines how their principles may be applied to ethical issues of practical concern. There is a wide range of topics that are typically understood to come under the category of applied ethics. This course will focus on the ethics of effective altruism, animal welfare, self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence, killer robots, social media, and issues in environmental ethics.
This book is a moral reflection on the subject of “justice”. Both classical philosophical considerations by utilitarianism, libertarianism, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls and Aristotle, as well as contemporary political controversies such as abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, patriotism, dissent and affirmative action, are refreshingly examined and discussed. Michael Sandel argues that justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good, prospects a new politics of the common good, and eventually reveals how an understanding of philosophy can help to make sense of politics, religion, morality - and our own convictions.
This is the third edition of Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics, a classic introduction to applied ethics. Questions discussed in this book include rich and poor, killing animals and humans, equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, abortion, the use of embryos for research, and euthanasia, political violence and terrorism, and the preservation of our planet’s environment. Singer argues that people should act morally, but he also thinks that people will probably always need the sanctions of the law and social pressure to provide additional reasons against serious violations of ethical standards.
