Meat, Markets, Medicines, and Other Moral Issues

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course introduces students to important concepts, positions, and debates in applied ethics. The course begins with a primer on normative ethics. Students are introduced to two major views in normative ethics: consequentialism and deontology. These positions reflect two contrasting answers to the question as to what makes our actions right or wrong, and what we owe to one another, morally speaking. The remainder of the course tackles real-world ethical issues, and proceeds in four parts. PART I: We engage with questions concerning the ethics of eating meat. Given the huge amounts of animal suffering found in the meat industry, are we morally required to become vegans? PART II: We critically consider the moral problems raised by certain kinds of markets, including the black market in human organs, and the use of surrogacy, and sweatshops. PART III: In the third part of the course, we investigate core issues in the ethics of medicine. One such issue concerns the shape that a state’s organ donation system ought to take; should such systems be opt-in, or opt-out? PART IV: The course concludes by examining matters of justice; for example, issues of global justice raised by widespread poverty, and justice in the distribution of educational opportunities.