There is a new method for teaching moral reasoning, and it does not require a traditional classroom. The Ethics Bowl began in 1993 when Professor Robert Ladenson organized a competition in which several teams debated resolutions to moral dilemmas. This first event, held at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was a success due to the fact that students not only achieved a deep and nuanced unde...

Ben Eggleston’s comment nicely weaves together several strands of the approach to normative ethics that informs the essays in Part II of Facts, Values, and Norms. I quite agree with what he says concerning how and where the strands might reinforce one another, so I will concentrate in my reply on the places he finds strains and gaps especially his questions concerning the nature of valoric cons...

If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicists—and political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicists—voted in eight years’ worth of e...

As a law student with some background in moral philosophy and applied ethics, naturally I was drawn to thinking about the big ethical questions facing lawyers. “Read Lawyers and Justice, by David Luban,”1 my legal ethics seminar professor suggested. I did, and I was immediately hooked. Lawyers and Justice was a powerfully argued, elegant, and persuasive refutation of the view that the obligatio...

GENERAL CONCEPTS One should generalize moral and ethical ideas since morality/ethics are fuzzy sets that deal as biogradients in the evolution of the dawn of mind. Thus, no absolutes exist for the ideas of right and wrong. Morals and ethical behavior are involved with situations that are a function of time, e.g., ethics of that era or considerations of the situation of that moment, etc. Choices...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a four component model of ethical behavior that integrates literature in moral psychology, computing ethics, and virtue ethics as informed by research on moral exemplars in computing. This is part 2 of a two part contribution, part 1 having appeared in Vol. 6 No. 3. Design/methodology/approach – This psychologically based and philosophically inf...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a four component model of ethical behavior (PRIMES) that integrates literature in moral psychology, computing ethics, and virtue ethics as informed by research on moral exemplars in computing. This is part 1 of a two-part contribution. Design/methodology/approach – This psychologically based and philosophically informed model argues that moral a...

Do human beings act morally because they obey socially defined rules and norms as the result of a routine of inculcated behaviors, or an embodied fear of sanction, or perhaps both? Conversely, do they act morally because they decide to do so as a consequence of a rational evaluation, or transformative endeavor, or inseparably both? In other words, do they follow a Kantian ethics of duty or an A...

During medical training, students obtain enough skills and knowledge. However, medical ethics accomplishes its goals when, together with training medical courses, it guides students behavior towards morality so that ethics-oriented medical practice is internalized. Medical ethics is a branch of applied ethics which tries to introduce ethics into physicians' practice and ethical decisions; thus,...