Spring 2015 Ethics Course Study Questions

Return to Ethics

JAN 13

First Day -- no study questions

JAN 15

1. What do Ariely's matrix tests show us about human behavior related to honesty and cheating?

2. What must be true or is more likely to be true about humans given these results?

3. What must be true or is more likely to be true about morality, given these results?

JAN 20

1. What, if anything, does the Zimbardo Experiment tell us about the nature of ethics?

2. How do each of the four aspects of the "divided self" suggest features of the nature of ethics?

JAN 22

1. How do Piaget and Kohlberg reflect the mainstream view of rationalists in developmental psychology of the 60's and 70's?

2. How do Turiel, Schweder, and Haidt's research challenge the view of rationalist developmental psychology?

JAN 27

1. Connect Haidt's criticisms of Piaget and Kohlberg (rationalist psychology) to the more detailed account of their theories in Cooper Chapter 5. Are these and/or Cooper's criticisms justified? What insights, if any, should be saved from the work of these famous psychologists?

2. What sorts of cognitive abilities does "doing ethics" require?

3. Does Kohlberg's theory increase or decrease your confidence in the possibility of an objective developmental scale for moral development?

4. What are Singer's arguments against relativism? Evaluate them.

5. What does Singer propose as a universal condition of ethical justification?

JAN 29

How does Aristotle think about the nature of human happiness?

How does this lead him to connect happiness to virtue?

What is "virtue ethics"?

FEB 3

1. What is philosophy's "rationalist delusion," according to Haidt?

2. How does an evolutionary approach to moral reasoning differ from traditional approaches? Give examples of how results in evolutionary psychology can tell us about moral psychology. What does Haidt think they tell us?

3. What is the Social Intuitionist Model? What is it a model of?

FEB 5

1. How does psychological research support the idea that "intuitions come first"? What does the research in this chapter (Haidt ch. 3) tell us about the role of reason in decision-making?

2. How does this research support the claim that social relationships are important in moral life?

FEB 10

1. What is Aristotle's account of virtue?

2. How does Haidt's discussion of virtue ethics correspond with Aristotle's? In what ways is his focus different?

FEB 12

1. How do the concepts of ignorance, voluntariness, choice, and deliberation enter into Aristotle's account of virtue as a the excellence of the rational soul?

2. Based on Bloom's discussion of disgust in "Bodies" why is it difficult to say whether we should trust a disgust reaction as a reliable moral perception? Are there clear cases in which we should or shouldn't?