Objectives of the Course

Some specific aims of our ethics course are

1. What are the differences among folkways, mores, morals, ethics, and metaethics?
2. What are the distinctions among moral, nonmoral, amoral, and immoral concerns?
3. What are cultural relativism, ethical relativism, ethical absolutism, ethical nihilism, and ethical skepticism?
4. How do we distinguish contributing, necessary, and sufficient conditions for a good life?
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages to various criteria of truth, such as authority, consensus gentium, legality, conscience, revelation, intuition, science, and reason?
6. Why be moral?
7. What are the varieties of egoism and hedonism? Are these philosophies mistaken?
8. What are the central tenets of some classical theories of ethics?
9. What are the aims of duty ethics, religious ethics, naturalistic ethics, the ethics of self-realization, and utilitarianism?
10. What are the relations between individual ethics and societal ethics?