Ethics & Society

Catalog description

Philosophy has aptly been described as "the attempt to tackle questions that come naturally to children, using methods that come naturally to lawyers". In this course, we investigate some of these questions and work on developing some of the tools used by those methods. Our topical focus is some of the main questions in moral philosophy, especially as they apply to certain pressing ethical problems. The course focuses extensively on ethical problems of great importance to our current situation, from climate change to abortion to donating to aid organizations. In addition, we use these debates to understand and test more general ethical theories.