Bill

It may be impossible to avoid combining.

Practically, I would think that for the educational purposes, purposefully combining the two approaches may be the best way to teach ethics. Some time (20%?) should be consecrated to casuistry and applied ethics during the first part that you called "Ethics Looking Backwards". Otherwise the students just do not see what you are talking about. And inversely, some (also 10-20% of time) consecrated to the history and the principles of ethics again during the second part, of what you call "Ethics Looking Backwards". May be those should be permanently kept in mind and referred to all the time.

Wow, what a great question, Bill! Even in my feebled condition (Shingles still with me), this question excites me.

Hi Gwen, I'm sorry to hear that you are still not feeling yourself. This has gone on for quite a while, hasn't it? Having experienced it myself, I know it is really unpleasant. I hope you recover soon.

The handwriting appears to be on the wall: philosophy departments around the country are slowly ceasing to teach ethics proper, and moving towards teaching applied ethics in specific fields. It is good for a nurse or a lawyer to know the ethical codes of their respective fields, but there is a depth and richness to the teaching of ethics itself. I find it noteworthy that the father of philosophy, Socrates, taught on ethics alone. That suggests its inherent significance for our consideration to me.

Bill,

Do not give too much credit to the professions teaching "the ethical codes of their respective fields". Speaking as a member of four state bars (NY, MA, NJ, FLA), my experience has been that 95% of "professional legal ethics" is concerned with avoiding conflicts of interest (e.g., a law firm representing two sides of a dispute) that are likely to end up in malpractice lawsuits being filed by a law firm's clients. Indeed, many of the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminars in Ethics are offered by malpractice insurance carriers who -- as an incentive for attorneys to take their seminars -- offer discounts of up to 25% of the annual premium charged to solo attorneys or law firms that regularly enroll in their "Ethics Seminars" or in similar "professional liability seminars" offered by various bar association groups. Of course, avoiding malpractice lawsuits may be an indication of the strength of an attorney's moral compass; but, on the other hand, it could just be a reflection of the extent of an attorney's risk aversion. Gwen

Hello Rebecca,

The trend today is to jump right into the issue of ethical dilemmas without addressing ethical theory. The word "casuistry" has negative connotations here in the States, but not so elsewhere. For some mistaken reason we believe it infers dishonesty. It actually is a word that has to do with rulings about ethical matters. It is, in judicial terms, "case law". Quite a few of the newer Intro to Ethics courses jump right into casuistry because it makes the class exciting and raises the level of emotional engagement of the students with the subject matter. In times gone by one studied the history of ethics, what Boston College Professor Peter Kreeft calls "Ethics Looking Backwards", before one attempted to engage casuistry. In my courses I spend the first half of the semester getting the students thoroughly acquainted with Utilitarianism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics, Social Contract Theory (Contractarianism & Contractualism), various other forms of Consequentialism and Deontology), Natural Law, and the Ethics of Care. We do this for the first half of the semester, with a view towards helping the students situate themselves in the world of ethics, and really discern what sort of ethical reasoning they find to be most persuasive. This is "Ethics Looking Backwards". The second half of the semester we then use what we've learned to look at and assess the issues which raise dilemmas: Abortion, Physician Assisted Suicide, Suicide, Capital Punishment, Animal Rights, Just and unjust War, Terrorism/Tribalism/Genocide, Ecological Justice, Economic Justice, Same-sex Marriage, Sexual Morality, and the like. This is "Ethics Looking Forwards". The student has been given tools in the first half of the semester which give weight and significance to how they interact with the topics in the second half of the semester. They get to see the bases of their own ethical reasoning. They see whether they are reasoning from theories of conduct (both Utilitarianism and Deontology) or are they reasoning from a theory of character (Virtue and also Ethics of Care). Natural Law is in a class of its own.

My concern is that students will be ignorant of Ethical Theory and have an ethics which amounts to mere compliance with industry specific ethical standards. In my estimation this doesn't give them a rich enough base from which to work in the whole of life.

Compliance, Risks, and (I guess) Ethics:

Funny, Bill, that you should bring up "Compliance," which along with training in "assessing risks" will be the extent of the pedagogical endeavor once industry experts replace Philosophy Departments as "Ethics Educators".

Before reading the following, I had thought that an emerging Check-Box mentality compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (law attempting post-Enron moral rehabilitation of Corporate America) was the biggest threat to successfully raising the moral tenor within the business sector:

"'Compliance is no longer the driver for IT risk and security. Compliance is just one of many risk domains to be addressed in a mature risk management program and approach,' Gartner analyst Paul Proctor recently wrote about the issue. 'Too often organizations still treat compliance activities as a check-box exercise with little regard for the related risks they are intended to address'."

Oh well,

Gwen

Bill

It may be impossible to avoid combining.

Practically, I would think that for the educational purposes, purposefully combining the two approaches may be the best way to teach ethics. Some time (20%?) should be consecrated to casuistry and applied ethics during the first part that you called "Ethics Looking Backwards". Otherwise the students just do not see what you are talking about. And inversely, some (also 10-20% of time) consecrated to the history and the principles of ethics again during the second part, of what you call "Ethics Looking Backwards". May be those should be permanently kept in mind and referred to all the time.

That is an interesting recommendation Dragan. It would require me to rework or re-design how I have configured the course, but I think it is a good idea. Thank you for proposing it. I am going to do an intensive version of the course in June, so, if I have time, I may experiment with doing as you have suggested. I have disagreed with the idea of just jumping into casuistry, but if one mixed the history of ethics and actual casuistry into both halves of the semester it might be more interesting for the students.

Very timely discussion Bill, and particularly so at this point in the co-development of "human rights" versus "economic rationalism" globally! There certainly does seem to be a polarization process at play, and I doubt that many have taken the time to reason the situation through to a set of reasonable logical conclusions in terms of actual, preferred outcomes. I work in education, in the Australian university system (i.e., teacher training), and we tend to work ethically within the context of child protection legislation and policy. Thus, there is a predisposition toward the legal side of ethics in this domain as well.

Personally, however, and as an educator whose primary interest is always more pedagogical than legalistic, I feel that it is very important to teach ethics from a perspective that combines theory and practice (as also seemingly suggested by Pavlovic?), especially as ethics can be approached from a variety of fundamental tenets, and in light of the fact that ethical situations always occur within a specific context. Thus, I like to ensure that students know the difference between (say) consequentialism (a la Bentham, Mills or the more modern Paul Bloom or Peter Singer) versus deontologicalism (Immanuel Kant), in order to be more enabled to think critically about any given ethical dilemma, and thereby act from a more ethically aware level of understanding. Anecdotally, I find that students tend to appreciate the theoretical side of ethics as well, and so this seems to add value to their learning in the area.

This is a personal opinion, of course, and therefore I accept that it will not be held ethically binding as an imperative for the entire USA!!

Thanks for stimulating such an important and interesting discussion, and cheers from down under...Tony

I totally agree with Tony. It is very important for students to understand both the theory and practice of ethics. Without understanding the ethical theories such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, casuistry, rights-based ethics and ubuntuology in the African setting as well as the principles of ethics, they will not be able to apply ethics in practice. The theoretical part is actually a foundation for application of ethics in different fields. I would not imagine students analyzing ethical dilemmas, for instance, in clinical practice without having the knowledge of the ethical theories and principles; how would they defend their arguments? Ethical guidelines and codes are also based on these. So, ethical theories, principles and practice can not be separated. They are part and parcel of the ethics curriculum!

Francis.

In my eyes, ethics is an applied concept. Can there actually be anything called theoretical ethics?

Ethics is both theoretical and applied. One needs to understand the theory of ethics in order to apply it. In other words, you can't apply ethics without understanding the theory!

Hi Hemanta,

Nice to once again share Researchgate space with you. It is coincidental that you became active on this topic today as I am just trying to finish up a proposal about teaching ethics in the business school environment. And, apropos of your question, I am about to advocate teaching "ethical theory" (the same as "theoretical ethics"?) to enhance the "moral fiber" of business students so that they can move beyond checkbox compliance with the prevailing CSR standard for "good corporate citizenship" (as such is being touted in the business community). If I send my completed proposal to you privately (only 1 page single-spaced), does your newly demanding post allow you time to look at it within the next few days and give me feedback?

Thanks,

Gwen

Dear Gwen,

Please send it without any hesitation.

Thanks, Hemanta. I'll send it to you as soon as I'm finished (sometime later today).

Gwen

I have been doing this combination in an introductory ethics class for some time. Students may think that theory doesn't matter but really, they are all relying on a theory of some kind, usually their own ad hoc approach to whatever the moral problem is. Teaching them something about more formalized theories, what goes into them can , what they do for us, helps students understand that they need an underpinning on which to build a mature ethical approach. They are all consequentialists to some extent, for instance, but have they ever thought about the larger implications of taking that approach? It may be more suitable in one case but not so much in another. I often combine the theoretical, the practical, and an imaginary element (what if) such as Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." (also good for discussing moral relativism). The get riled up about the child in the basement room even though it's fiction. Also, they may wonder why study Kant but until they "see him" in the UN Declaration of Human Rights for instance. (they have more moral principles than they like to think)

Re: Business Students: When I taught business students I found they had little to no exposure to consideration of ethics and really took a more or less cavalier attitude toward it - as if it was something they didn't need to bother with, e.g.: "those illegal immigrants do such back-breaking work for little pay - that's their choice". It's a sad comment on our society that business students get so little focus in this way, particularly since so many times, good ethics is good business. I more recently started teaching a class on the "moral Imagination" and the last 1/3 of the class is devoted to ethics in business and how many times ethical failures in business decisions are failures of imagination - failure to think broadly, to think from different perspectives, outside a particular role, putting yourself in the other's shoes, etc.

Jo Ann

One of the biggest errors in the placing of ethics in a teaching curriculum is to treat it as a specific subject or even an abstract one. The problem appears in part to be the intellectualising of ethics. While clearly there is a place for examining ethics in a philosophical context and consequently testing it as something 'detached' from the real world practical, professional ethics must be geared towards the field or the subject.

After teaching ethics and law as it applies in medical science for many years I concluded that they should be seen in two ways. Clinical ethics are the application of ethics 'at the patents bedside' so to speak, medical ethics are the theories for the classroom. Applying the principalist ethics in medical practice can be done without any fear of reductionism. In that setting they are, and should be treated as simple. The intellectual elements can be saved for the conference debate.

JL Mackie called ethics The Invention of Right and Wrong. He was right, or should I say 'correct' in that observation.

Hello Barry,

While I respect your opinion and your right to voice it, I hold a very different view from yours. Mackie's position was the primary obstacle which I had to overcome in order to write my thesis (I am an Ethical Realist). He was brilliant and amazingly consistent, but I do, in fact, believe in Objective Moral Values. His book is, of course, the denial of Objective Moral Values altogether. His position finally translates into Ethical Egoism (near the end of the book), but as Honderich points out, he has trouble living by his claimed beliefs. He still moralizes using the language of OMV's even though he denies they exist. This indicates to me that although he truly believes what he claims, he doesn't know how to put it into practice in the real world.

I personally find it to be significant that the father of Philosophy never directly addresses metaphysics, logic, or epistemology. His one and only focus is always ethics. When Socrates does epistemology, logic, or metaphysics, he does them in the context of ethics. Seeing as he impacted human history like few others ever have, I believe treating ethics as a separate subject has good warrant and has great historic justification.

I could agree with your basic idea if I thought a holistic approach to teaching ethics across the curriculum would really work in today's academy, but life experience tells me that it will simply be omitted or minimalized if it is not purposely emphasized.