Ethics assignment (due Feb. 8)

In class today, we will watch a TED talk by Michael Sandel, moral philosopher, which helped you to learn some techniques for analyzing moral philosophy.  Using the "Problem/Claim/Reason/Principle" structure we will discuss and workshop in class, please take the same case you used for last week (one of the cases referenced in the documentary) and analyze it in a more developed way.

In your post, briefly explain the problem.  Summarize the situation, give your reader some background (links are useful here, to point your reader to other resources), and identify the moral issues at stake.  Then make a claim about what you think is the right thing to do.  Put forward some reasons supporting your claim.  Why is it the right thing to do?  Then, dig deeper and excavate the principle(s) that underlie your reasoning.  Why are those reasons valid?  What are the values that support or inspire those reasons?

Make your post no later than 9pm on Monday, February 8.  Between 9pm on Monday and when class begins on Tuesday afternoon, read your classmates' posts, and come to class ready to discuss them.

In addition, for Monday, there will be two readings linked in the post "Laws and Ethics part 1", which I will post soon.  Please spend some time reading and taking notes on them.