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Unit: Fundamental Issues in Morality
Issue: Is Moral Relativism Correct?
YES: Torbjörn Tännsjö, from “Moral Relativism,” Philosophical Studies (2007)
NO: Louis P. Pojman, from “The Case Against Moral Relativism,” in The Moral Life:
An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Torbjörn Tännsjö distinguishes among several types of relativism and argues in favor of
one of them, which he calls “ontological relativism.” According to this view, two people
may disagree radically on a moral question, and yet both may be right, because each of
them inhabits a different socially-constructed moral universe. Louis Pojman carefully
distinguishes what he calls the diversity thesis—that moral rules differ from society to
society—from ethical relativism. The diversity thesis is a straightforward description of
what are acknowledged differences in the moral beliefs and practices of various human
groups. But he argues that moral relativism does not follow from this diversity.
Issue: Does Morality Need Religion?
YES: C. Stephen Layman, from “Ethics and the Kingdom of God,” in The Shape of the
Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundations of Ethics (University of Notre Dame
Press, 1991)
NO: John Arthur, from “Religion, Morality, and Conscience,” in Morality and Moral
Controversies (Prentice Hall, 1996)
Philosopher C. Stephen Layman argues that morality makes the most sense from a
theistic perspective and that a purely secular perspective is insufficient. The secular
perspective, Layman asserts, does not adequately deal with secret violations, and it does
not allow for the possibility of fulfillment of people’s deepest needs in an afterlife.
Philosopher John Arthur counters that morality is logically independent of religion,
although there are historical connections. Religion, he believes, is not necessary for moral
guidance or moral answers; morality is social.
Unit: Sex, Marriage, and Reproduction
Issue: Must Sex Involve Commitment?
YES: Steven E. Rhoads, from “Hookup Culture: The High Costs of a Low ‘Price’ for
Sex,” Society (December 2012)
NO: Raja Halwani, from “Casual Sex,” in Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical
Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2005)
Steven Rhoads offers evidence drawn from a variety of sources, including surveys of
sexually active college students as well as research in evolutionary anthropology, to
support his two main contentions: (a) casual sex is bad for society in general, and (b)
casual sex is especially emotionally damaging for women. Raja Halwani first discusses
the difficulties involved in defining casual sex precisely. He next examines a number of
objections to casual sex, and concludes that casual sex need not be morally wrong
because each of these objections involves factors that are not, for the most part,
specifically intrinsic to casual sex.
Issue: Is Abortion Immoral?
YES: Mary Meehan, from “Why Liberals Should Defend the Unborn,” Human Life
Review (Summer 2011)
NO: Amy Borovoy, from “Beyond Choice: A New Framework for Abortion?” Dissent
(Fall 2011)
Meehan argues that the unborn are exactly the kind of vulnerable population traditionally
defended by liberals. She discusses a number of factors in support of this connection,
such as scientific claims about when life begins, the obligations that arise from the act of
conception, the disproportionate impact of abortion on poor women and women of color,
and issues relating to disability rights and the environment. Borovoy argues that the
traditional defense of abortion, which opposes the choice of the woman against the life of
the fetus, does not effectively capture the unique experience of pregnancy, and finds
inspiration for a more satisfying approach in Japanese culture, where the decision
whether or not to have an abortion is contextualized in the woman’s responsibility not
only to her fetus but to her family.
Issue: Is It Morally Right to Prohibit Same-Sex Marriage?
YES: Helen M. Alvaré, from “Brief of Amicus Curiae Helen M. Alvaré in Support
of Hollingsworth and Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group” in Hollingsworth v. Perry,
U.S. v. Windsor, Supreme Court of the United States (January 2013)
NO: David Boonin, from “Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument from Public
Disagreement,” Journal of Social Philosophy, (Summer 1999)
Law professor Helen Alvaré argues that the state’s interest in promoting opposite-sex
marriage stems from its interest in the procreation of children by opposite-sex married
couples. Moreover, Alvaré traces the decline of marriage to the loss of traditional
connections among marriage, sex, and children. State recognition of same-sex marriage
would further undermine these connections and thus contribute to the destabilization of
marriage, with negative repercussions to society, especially among the poor. Therefore,
she argues, the state has an interest in prohibiting same-sex marriage. Philosopher David
Boonin argues directly against positions taken by Jeff Jordan, a philosopher who opposes
same-sex marriage. According to Jordan, the government should accommodate
conflicting public views regarding homosexuality by refusing to sanction marriage
between same-sex individuals. Boonin disagrees, asserting that government prohibition
of same-sex marriage does not accommodate all public views regarding homosexuality,
but favors views that oppose homosexuality. Both Jordan and Boonin address the analogy
between marriage of mixed-race couples and marriage of same-sex couples, with Boonin
asserting that this analogy actually supports government recognition of same-sex
marriage.
Issue: Should Human Cloning Be Banned?
YES: Michael J. Sandel, from “The Ethical Implications of Human Cloning,”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Spring 2005)
NO: John A. Robertson, from “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” The
New England Journal of Medicine (July 9, 1998)
Political philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that much of the talk about cloning
revolves around a few limited concepts (e.g., rights, autonomy, and the supposed
unnaturalness of asexual reproduction) that are inadequate and fail to express what is
really wrong with cloning. We need, instead, to address fundamental questions about our
stance toward nature. Law professor John A. Robertson maintains that there should not be
a complete ban on human cloning but that regulatory policy should be focused on
ensuring that it is performed in a responsible manner.
Unit: Law and Society
Issue: Is Cloning Pets Ethically Justified?
YES: Autumn Fiester, from “Creating Fido’s Twin: Can Pet Cloning Be Ethically
Justified?” Hastings Center Report (July/August 2005)
NO: Hilary Bok, from “Cloning Companion Animals Is Wrong,” Journal of Applied
Animal Welfare Science (July 2002)
Autumn Fiester argues in support of cloning animals (in partic-ular, people’s pets). She
emphasizes the point that pet owners really care about their pets. One result of this is that
they spend large amounts of money on veterinary care for their pets. Cloning their pets
could serve as a useful extension of this idea—and also serve as a positive demonstration
of society in general that individual pets have intrinsic value and cannot simply be
replaced by new pets. Hilary Bok argues that cloning pets is immoral first of all because
it causes great harm to animals. The animal that results from cloning, for example, is
much more likely to have physical defects than the animal from which it was cloned.
Moreover, the process of cloning itself necessarily involves harm to other animals (e.g.,
the animal that will carry the new pet to term). Finally, the end result simply does not
provide pet owners with what they were looking for.
Issue: Should Drugs Be Legalized?
YES: Meaghan Cussen and Walter Block, from “Legalize Drugs Now! An Analysis
of the Benefits of Legalized Drugs,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology
(July 2000)
NO: Theodore Dalrymple, from “Don’t Legalize Drugs,” City Journal (Spring 1997)
Meaghan Cussen (a student in economics) and Walter Block (her economics professor)
argue that the legalization of drugs would provide many sorts of benefits (e.g., crime
would fall, the quality of life in inner cities would rise, and taxpayers would no longer
have to pay for an unwinnable “war on drugs”). Moreover, the legalization of drugs
would promote the American value of liberty. Theodore Dalrymple stresses the harm that
drugs can do and the danger of “giving up” in the “war on drugs.” He takes issue with
most of the claims of the supporters of legalization, and more generally with Mill’s “harm
principle”: the idea that in a free society, adults should be permitted to do whatever they
please (provided that they are willing to accept the consequences of their own actions,
and those actions don’t cause harm to others).
Issue: Is Affirmative Action Fair?
YES: Albert G. Mosley, from “Affirmative Action: Pro,” in Affirmative Action: Social
Justice or Unfair Preference? (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)
NO: Roger Clegg, from “Affirmative Discrimination and the Bubble,” Academic
Questions (December 2011)
Professor of philosophy Albert G. Mosley argues that affirmative action is a continuation
of the history of black progress since the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation
decision of 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He defends affirmative action as a
“benign use of race.” Roger Clegg argues that affirmative action as it is now practiced—
which he calls “affirmative discrimination”—has contributed to unsustainable rapid
growth (“the bubble”) in higher education as well as the reduction in quality of college
education. Affirmative action in the form of preferences for minority groups, he argues, is
a form of discrimination that is unfair, has negative consequences for both white and
minority students, and fails to address the true problems that challenge minority students
today.
Issue: Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?
YES: Michael Welch, from “The Machinery of Death: Capital Punishment and the
Ironies of Social Control,” in Punishment in America: Social Control and the Ironies of
Imprisonment (Sage, 1999)
NO: Ernest van den Haag, from “The Death Penalty Once More,” U.C. Davis Law
Review (Summer 1985)
Criminologist Michael Welch argues that the death penalty encourages murder and is
applied in a biased and mistake-laden way to growing groups of people. Much of the
recent popular support of capital punishment is due to ignorance of the facts. Professor of
law Ernest van den Haag argues that the death penalty is entirely in line with the U.S.
Constitution and that although studies of its deterrent effect are inconclusive, the death
penalty is morally justified and should not be abolished.
Issue: Is Torture Ever Justified?
YES: Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, from “Not Enough Official Torture in the
World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable” University of San
Francisco Law Review (Spring 2005)
NO: Christopher Kutz, from “Torture, Necessity, and Existential Politics,” California
Law Review (February 2007)
Bagaric and Clarke remind us, first of all, that torture, although prohibited by
international law, is nevertheless widely practiced. A rational examination of torture and a
consideration of hypothetical (but realistic) cases show that torture is justifiable in order
to prevent great harm. Torture should be regulated and carefully practiced as an
information-gathering technique in extreme cases. Christopher Kutz examines the
reasoning intended to justify torture in a memo produced by the Bush administration and
concludes that even in extreme hypothetical cases, such reasoning is not valid because the
right not to be tortured is a pre-institutional right that cannot be revoked under any
circumstances.
Issue: Is Physician-Assisted Suicide Wrong?
YES: Richard Doerflinger, from “Assisted Suicide: Pro-Choice or Anti-Life?” Hastings
Center Report (January/February 1989)
NO: Anthony Back, Robert Baker, et al., from Appellate Brief of Amicus Curiae
Supporting Respondents in Vacco v. Quill, WL 709337, Supreme Court of the United
States (1996)
Admitting that religiously based grounds for the wrongness of killing an innocent person
are not convincing to many people, Doerflinger argues on mainly secular grounds having to
do with inconsistencies in the arguments of supporters of physician-assisted suicide. He
examines the idea of autonomy, and the tendency for something like physician-assisted
suicide to spread once it becomes initially accepted in a limited way. Back, Baker, and
their co-authors argue that the physician’s ethical duty to relieve pain and respect patient
autonomy not only justifies, but sometimes even requires, physician-assisted suicide. In
order to avoid negative connotations associated with the term “suicide,” they propose
using the term “physician-assisted death.” Physician-assisted death, they claim, is a right
that should be available to mentally competent, terminally ill patients, while safeguards
must be enacted to ensure that it is not practiced on anyone else.
Unit: Humanity, Nature, and Technology
Issue: Does Morality Require Vegetarianism?
YES: Nathan Nobis, from “Vegetarianism and Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand
Too Little?” Social Theory & Practice (January 2002)
NO: Beth K. Haile, from “Virtuous Meat Consumption: A Virtue Ethics Defense of an
Omnivorous Way of Life,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture (Winter
2013)
Nathan Nobis argues that utilitarianism, an ethical theory in which the moral worth of an
action is determined solely by its consequences, requires us to be vegetarians and avoid
the consumption of meat. According to Nobis, meat and other animal products are
produced under cruel conditions, and utilitarian principles require that we should not
participate in or support activities that are cruel or inflict unnecessary pain on animals.
Beth Haile argues that the consumption of meat can be part of a life that seeks to cultivate
virtue and avoid vice. Although the way in which our society produces meat for
consumption is morally unacceptable, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about the
consumption of meat. Once meat is produced in a morally acceptable way, a virtuous life
can include the consumption of meat.
Issue: Is It Right to Produce Genetically Modified Food?
YES: Ronald Bailey, from “Dr. Strangelunch—Or: Why We Should Learn to Stop
Worrying and Love Genetically Modified Food,” Reason (January 2001)
NO: Michael W. Fox, from Killer Foods: When Scientists Manipulate Genes, Better Is
Not Always Best (Lyons Press, 2004)
Ronald Bailey is a strong supporter of genetically modified food (GMF). He argues that it
is feared by many activists, but there is no strong proof that there are any problems with
it. In fact, he suggests that there are great benefits that can be provided by GMFs,
especially to the world’s poor and to those suffering from natural calamities. Michael Fox
is cautious about the spread of scientism and the morally blind push for technological
development. This scientism, when combined with an aggressive spirit of enterprise,
threatens to upset the balance of nature. We may try to rearrange natural things (including
plants and animals) to serve our own purposes, but Fox believes that in this way we end
up alienating ourselves from the natural world.