In this paper, we propose some ways in which teaching thought experiments in an ethics classroom may result in marginalizing or excluding students underrepresented in philosophy. Although thought experiments are designed to strip away details and pump intuitions, we argue that they may reinforce assumptions and stereotypes. As examples, we discuss several well-known thought experiments that may typically be included in undergraduate ethics courses, such as Bernard Williams’s Gauguin and Derek Parfit’s The Young Girl’s Child. We analyze the potential value and dangers or teaching these thought experiments. We conclude with some practical suggestions for how to teach thought experiments in ways that encourage students to expand their moral imaginations and think critically about their own assumptions and the assumptions built into thought experiments.

Many introductory ethics courses focus narrowly on the cultivation of moral reasoning. A review of introductory ethics textbooks, for example, finds that most focus either on exploring moral theories and approaches in detail or on describing moral theories and then applying them to contemporary issues. I argue that these approaches fail to recognize humans as biologically driven, psychologically shaped, and sociologically constrained beings. I examine the factors influencing thinking and action in each of three areas—the role of emotion in moral decision-making, the problem of unconscious bias, and the influence of social structures—and argue for a broader approach to teaching introductory ethics that takes these factors into consideration. The article describes some classroom approaches for fostering understanding of these factors, as well as strategies students can use to act more effectively.

Over the past two years, the College of Business (COB) profiled in this article spent time reflecting on where it had been, what it was doing, and where it needed to go in terms of teaching ethics. Based on this analysis, the COB developed an initiative to teach ethics to students, faculty, business people, government employees and officials, and others across its state so all of key stakeholder groups would have a greater appreciation for the benefits of ethical decision-making, the need to exhibit ethical leadership, and the role that business and the free enterprise system can play in promoting the need to earn one’s reputation by doing the right thing. The current article discusses the process the COB followed to implement their ethics initiative.

Science fiction is gaining academic recognition as a tool for teaching ethics and engaging potentially resistant students in communication and critical thinking, but there are not many lesson plans available for how to implement science fiction in the classroom. I hope to address that gap by sharing a successful lesson plan I developed while teaching a first-year composition and ethics course at the Colorado School of Mines. “Stand Where You Stand on Omelas” combines writing, communication, and ethical decision making by asking students to defend what they would do as a citizen in Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” where a young child’s torment ensures the prosperity and happiness of society as a whole.

Holistic ethics education in the professions is never fully served by a reliance on regulatory compliance alone. Data obtained from penalties due to corporate non-compliance in specific professions rarely describe the underlying ethical failures that are the foundation for “rule-breaking” in the professions. However, “violations” data may serve as a springboard for an educational discussion and approach that helps professionals (and those studying to become professionals) to understand the basic moral reasoning that underlies the “good” that is served by adhering to professional Codes of Conduct, Codes of Practice, Codes of Ethics, and the professional regulatory environment. We here use data obtained from the US FDA, US DOJ, and from Violations Tracker and compare these data with the IFPMA (International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association) Ethos and guiding principles. These side-by-side linkages serve as a mechanism to help students assess which ethical principles are at the core of each such violation in the pharmaceutical industry. We further recommend that this approach be incorporated into ethics education, especially beginning at the undergraduate level, as prophylaxis to ethical lapses in later professional life.

I develop a taxonomy of various approaches to leadership which I label the ethical decision-making, managerial obligation, role typology, and creativity conceptions of leadership. Each approach makes distinctive assumptions about the task and educational responsibilities in educating for ethical leadership. Although each of these approaches are extremely valuable, I find them limited in that they all rely on what I call an agentic model. Using the concepts of choice architects and choice architecture from nudge theory, I argue for a new metaphysical model—a systems-design model—that captures the complex and interactive dynamic of a host of metaphysical entities and contextual factors. This new metaphysical model of the context of leadership and the function of leaders within it yields a theory of leadership, which I dub the ethical systems-design conception of leadership.

It seems commonly assumed that presenting data is value-neutral. The data is what it is, and it is for those assessing it to make judgments of value. So a chart of earnings just tells us what a company has earned. The chart does not tell us whether the earnings are a good or bad sign. That valuation is to be made by those looking at the chart and is independent of the chart itself. This view of the relation between presentations of data and value judgments is mistaken. Presentations are value-laden in at least two ways. How we choose to represent data is itself an ethically loaded value-judgment, and, second, presentations cause responses, including value-laden judgments. We shall first look at how hard it can be to get inside a profession to be able to understand the problems those in that profession face so we can represent it properly. We shall then examine a case where a failure to understand the problem led to a mistaken moral judgment that has taken on a life of its own because of the power of how the problem is mistakenly presented.

The purpose of this paper is to outline an ethics development activity that uses scenarios in university classes to further the knowledge, engagement, and enhancement of the ethical actions of the students. By starting with a brief review of the objective and use of scenarios in ethics research, the paper progresses to explain the activity, debrief the activity, and finally to provide an analysis of the activity with examples. Included in this activity are ways to incorporate a discussion of Kant’s Categorical Imperative Theories, NCA Credo of Ethical Communication (or any professional codes of ethics), and the use of videos for Milgram’s Blind Obedience and Stanford’s Prison studies—thus making this activity useful across all disciplines.

In professional ethics, focus on ethical theory fails to offer practical advice and focus on individual cases fails to develop adequate ethical understanding. There is a wide gap between abstract moral theories and concrete professional cases. To understand professional ethics, we must pay more attention to this gap and the middle level of theory that we find there. This middle theory brings abstract principles closer to practical cases by considering and incorporating the goals, circumstances, customs and other established social practices and compromises of particular professions. Understanding the complex systems of individual professions is quite important morally as such systems can alter our ethical duties dramatically. Therefore, adequate consideration of professional ethics requires a thorough understanding of philosophical ethics and of the nature of the specific profession concerned. However, recognizing the importance of this middle area will require us to reconsider how we teach, and who teaches, professional ethics.

Since the 1990s, educators and social commentators have raised alarms regarding the moral character of successive generations of Americans. A consistent concern within those calls for alarm directs attention to teaching ethics in secondary education. A pedagogy of accompaniment recognizes the timeliness (when it is the right instructional time) for objective and subjective approaches to learning social ethics, transcending the either/or of subject-object, content-skill educational conflicts as well as the disordered distractions of a performance-merit based assessment of learning. In secondary education, the praxis of accompaniment through social ethical discernment creates an occasion wherein students hear and take seriously for the first time their moral voices and imagine their social ethical horizons.

This paper explores care ethics and the roles that power, trust, and stereotypes play in establishing and building caring relationships. The work is the result of the evolution of collaboration between teacher and student as that teacher/student dichotomy evolved to one of shared trust and respect and considers the oft-neglected aspect of respect in an ethic of care. By tracing the evolution of the authors’ relationship, we argue that mutual respect in an ethic of care has the potential to enrich our interactions and reshape the way we think about care from primarily unilinear to a more reciprocal model. We propose a modified ethic of care based on mutual trust as a working model for ethics of care-based relationships, particularly with regard to student-teacher interactions, but also perhaps to more broadly extend into our daily interactions with others.

As a way to assist in teaching business ethics to undergraduates, this paper applies Sally Haslanger’s philosophical method for analyzing the social meanings of concepts to the social meaning of business ethics. The paper views a range of social meanings of the concept business ethics, arrayed along Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Using another dimension of Haslanger’s method, that social meanings can be changed, it then argues that the social meaning of business ethics should change. The social meanings of business ethics at the lower Kohlberg stages are thin and superficial, and do not take into account the depth and complexity of the actual practice of business ethics.

Creative influence, be it in the form of subtle inspiration or unequivocal imitation, has impacted the development of artistic styles and schools of thought for millennia. Since the late twentieth century, appropriation artists have drawn attention to these customs by intentionally borrowing or copying from preexisting sources with little or no transformation, despite these practices running into direct conflict with United States copyright law. Indeed, recent decades have witnessed several noteworthy lawsuits involving prominent artists who have challenged the boundaries between copyright infringement and fair use, raising questions regarding the ethical creation and consumption of art. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ethical responsibility to teach students of the visual arts about the purpose, theory, and parameters of copyright law, including its inherent ambiguities and risks, in order to foster moral creative practices. Because of the complex nature of copyright law, the author advocates both traditional instruction on copyright principles and applications as well as the encouragement of personal self-regulation on the part of students with regard to their own professional work.

One important aim of moral philosophy courses is to help students build the skills necessary to make their own well-reasoned decisions about moral issues. This includes the skill of determining when a particular moral reason provides a good answer to a moral question or not. Helping students think critically about religious reasons like “because God says so” and “because scripture explicitly says so” can be challenging because such lessons can be misperceived as coercive or anti-religious. I describe a framework for teaching about religion and moral reasons that I have found overcomes these challenges while also building generalizable skill at analyzing and evaluating moral reasons.

Although research integrity practices in institutional settings is not a new area of study, because of its foundational importance in university settings it remains a topic worthy of study. In addition, rarely are all members of the university community included as participants in studies focused upon research integrity and ethics. Thus, to add to the existent literature, the authors investigated research integrity practices in a medium-sized Midwestern polytechnic university setting, including 467 participants from across all divisions of the university community. This mixed data survey study was comprised of six sections; presented is information for two sections—sample demographics and research integrity. The demographics appear reflective of those of the larger survey, as well as the university setting of study. In the research integrity section there were two parts—one qualitative and one quantitative. Implications with regard to research integrity and ethics in the institutional setting of study are presented.