Introduction to Ethics [PHIL 308]
My Introduction to Ethics class is one that I took to satisfy my twelfth general education goal and taught my classmates and I how to analyze our own codes of morality using specific schools of philosophical thought. To learn more about my experience with my Introduction to Ethics class, visit the Goal 12 – Introduction to Ethics page under my General Education Courses tab.
One of the aspects of this class that made it an honors course rather than a general course (aside from the fact that there were only 11 students in the class) was our paper assignments. Twice throughout the semester, each student in the class had to pick any paper that an expert on ethical codes had written in which he or she argued for or against any topic. Our job was then to extract that author’s argument and the refute it using codes of ethics we had learned about in class.
Instead of simply learning about the schools of thought, being tested on them, and moving on with our lives, we actually were able to apply them just as a real philosopher would. Each time our class met, we had lengthy discussions and oftentimes innocent arguments about each other’s codes of morality. We learned a lot about ethics and a lot about each other as well. We had our own codes of morality challenged and had the opportunity to challenge each other’s, and I believe we all finished the class with much different outlooks on many aspects of our lives. It was interesting to discover that there are so many different schools of thought that pretty much anyone could find a way to decently justify his or her way of thinking on pretty much any ethical topic, regardless of how shocking it may seem on the surface. My professor was more than helpful and never gave up on trying to find a way to guide my classmates and me towards understanding things we struggled with. This class gave a whole new meaning to “everyone’s opinion matters” for me, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have been a student of Dr. Eric Moore.
Please see below my second term paper in which I was able to write as a true philosopher would. My first term paper was much more difficult for me to write at the beginning of the semester than this one was at the end of the semester, and I was proud to be able to see my ability to think like a philosopher improve. To compare this paper to my first one, follow this link to my Goal 12 – Introduction to Ethics page under my General Education Courses tab.
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