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Lecturer(s)
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Manhire Ryan David, Dr.
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Jamieson Lesley Paige, Ph.D.
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Fredriksson Antony Johannes, doc. Ph.D.
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Course content
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Readings will be circulated a week in advance of each seminar. Week 1 - Introduction and course overview. Animal Ethics: Week 2 - Singer, "All Animals are Equal" Week 3 - Anderson, "Animal Rights and the Values of Non-Human Values" Week 4 - Diamond, "Eating Meat and Eating People" Climate/Environmental Ethics: Week 5 - Morgan-Knapp & Goodman, "Consequentialism, Climate Harm and Individual Obligations" Week 6 - Wallace, "A Kantian Perspective on Individual Responsibility for Sustainability" Week 7 - Tejedor, "Conditioned Responsibility, Belonging and Vulnerability in Our Ethical Understanding" Social Exclusion and Knowledge: Week 8 - Fricker, Excerpts from Epistemic Injustice Week 9 - Pohlhaus, "Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance" Week 10 - Bufkin, "Racism, epistemic injustice, and ideology critique" AI Ethics/Moral Machines: Week 11 - Allen, Wallach, & Smit, "Why Machine Ethics?" / Anderson, "Philosophical Concerns with Machine Ethics" Week 12 - Sparrow, "Why Machines Cannot Be Moral"
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Learning activities and teaching methods
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unspecified
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Learning outcomes
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Objectives: In this course, we will discuss contemporary debates and research in ethics. We will explore specific moral issues via traditional and non-traditional philosophical approaches, as they relate to non-human animals, the environment, social exclusion, and AI. Students will not only consider these approaches from the problem-based perspective of applied ethics, but will also be invited to consider how approaches to these topics are shaped by certain ethical and metaphysical presuppositions. The course has two major goals: (1) to learn to identify and assess a variety of argumentative strategies as they pertain to concrete moral issues; and (2) to critically examine the ethical and metaphysical presuppositions that shape these argumentative strategies.
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Prerequisites
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Each seminar will focus on a paper which you will be expected to have read. I will begin by making some introductory remarks before inviting you to raise clarificatory or critical questions about the text and make connections with previous readings from the course. You will be asked to prepare question sheets in advance and submit them electronically before the start of class. You will be responsible for submitting 3 problem analyses. Two will be due during the semester (worth 25% each), and the third during the exam period (worth 40%). Additionally, 10% of your final grade will be based on the timely submission of question sheets.
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Assessment methods and criteria
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unspecified
Each seminar will focus on a paper which you will be expected to have read in advance. I will begin each seminar with some introductory remarks about the paper before inviting you to raise clarificatory or critical questions about the paper, and how the paper might connect to, or contrast with, previous readings from the course. As well as reading the selected paper before each seminar, you will also be expected to prepare and submit question sheets electronically before each class. This will provide the basis for each seminar discussion.
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Recommended literature
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