Bob
Fischer, ed. College Ethics: A Reader on
Moral Issues that Affect You, Oxford University Press, 2017, ISBN: 978-0190498658, 659 pages, $69.95.
Teaching Ethics
Volume 17, Issue 2, Fall 2017
Nathan Nobis
Pages 259-262
DOI: 10.5840/tej201717250
Teaching Ethics
Volume 17, Issue 2, Fall 2017
Nathan Nobis
Pages 259-262
DOI: 10.5840/tej201717250
For better or worse, people tend to have greater interest in ethical issues that affect
them personally. Given that, it’s surprising that it took until now for someone
to develop a reader for college students in ethics classes on ethical issues
especially relevant to college students. What a great idea! Bob Fischer
is to be congratulated on having the idea, for working to bring it to fruition,
and seeking input from the online community about how to improve the book and
advance the overall project of more engaged and engaging college ethics classes
(see “A
Surprisingly Overlooked Gap in Philosophy,” Daily Nous blog
(September 29, 2016)).
The
book sets forth a unique and worthwhile teaching program of focusing on issues
especially relevant to college students. “Students,” it should be noted, is
understood mostly as late-teenager to early twenty-somethings:
traditional college students. Surely there are overlooked ethical issues that
uniquely confront adult learners and other non-traditional college students.
Instructors should be inspired by this book to find those issues, teach those
issues, and share these ideas with Fischer and others so instructors can better
meet students where they are at, with ethical issues of more personal concern.
I
used the book in an upper-division special-topics course aptly entitled
“College Ethics: Moral Issues that Affect You” in the spring of 2017. My course
involved about 10 students simply working through many readings of the book and
having them discuss, present and write about the readings and the issues of the
book. There are 55 readings, each 7-10 pages or so, plus Fischer’s excellent introduction to arguments and moral reasoning divided into
these eleven parts:
1.
Sex
and Relationships
2.
Abortion
3.
Sexism,
Gender and Racism
4.
Affirmative
Action in Admissions
5.
Speech
and Protest
6.
Drugs
and Drinking
7.
Consumer
Ethics
8.
Sports
9.
Gaming,
Music and Humor
10.
Dishonest,
Enhancement and Extra Credit
11.
The
Aims of Education.
The
complete Table of Contents is available
online at Oxford University Press’s site where there are also several online
supplements available for instructors, including Fischer’s guidance on how to
use the book, various possible orderings of readings, and sample syllabi. Each
chapter has Comprehension Questions and Discussion Questions that are well
worth assigning. And there’s also an extra page or two very interesting “Case”
at the end of each chapter to extend the discussion.
Some
of the readings were, of course, far better than others: some are clearer and
more direct in their analysis and arguments than others. All the readings,
however, raised interesting and important questions.
Sometimes the question(s) asked was better than the reading’s answers,
especially if the reading was a bit indirect, or long-winded, or had some other
vice that I think makes it too hard for many college students to read. The questions that the readings addressed
though were so good that I developed a questions-based
Table of Contents for the book (see “College Ethics,” Nathan Nobis’s
blog (May 16, 2017)). Asking the
questions first before turning to the readings is likely a useful strategy for
teaching the book, especially if an instructor’s main goals concern the
development of critical thinking skills. These questions can be added to any
ethics class to make it more relevant to college students, whether this book is
used or not.
After
assigning Fischer’s Introduction, we read the chapter by John Corvino on
homosexuality (Ch. 1). Some students will find this a more controversial issue
than others, but I find it be a good one to practice basic moral reasoning
skills, such as making arguments in logically valid form and thinking about the
meanings of words. This essay focuses only on two types of arguments about
homosexuality: that it is “unnatural” and against the Bible. Students with the
skills to evaluate these arguments rationally should be able to extend those
skills to many other common arguments on the topic. The other chapters on
sexual ethics were interesting and centered on questions that students, and
other adults, tend to find very interesting (e.g., When is it wise and unwise
to have a sexual relationship with someone? What is it to ‘objectify’ someone
and is that wrong, and why? How persistent can one be in seeking a
relationship? What personal information of a
sexual nature is wrong to share with others? and more). Engaging these
questions directly is surely worthwhile.
Next,
we reviewed Christopher Pynes’ “Seven Arguments Against Extra Credit” (Ch. 51). Pynes
convinced me that most types of extra credit are wrong primarily on the grounds
that grades are fair only if they are
determined by factors equally accessible to all students in a class, and many forms
of extra credit – e.g., attending guest lectures – are not. He also argues that
many forms of extra credit are not relevant to the academic content of a class,
and so again influence grades on irrelevant grounds.
We
then turned to the chapters on abortion (Ch. 9-11). I see how this issue might
be different for college students than if the issue were to arise for high
school students or independent adults at various ages and stages. Here I was
not excited with the readings (too long, too abstract) and instead reverted to
my own writings on the topic and standard DIY practice of asking the class,
“What reasons are there to think that abortion is prima facie wrong?” and “What reasons are there to think that
abortion is prima facie
permissible?”, having the class make a list
of premises and then using their logical skills to evaluate the arguments.
The
section on consumer ethics has a neat paper by Andrew Forcehimes (and a reply
by Sadulla Karjiker) that argues that since it’s not wrong to borrow books from
the library, many types of books are not wrong to illegally download (Ch. 33,
34): this discussion can be extended to music and movies. There are papers
raising the question of whether it’s permissible to buy products that were
wrongfully produced, for example, products made in sweatshops (by Lisa Cassidy)
and meat and other animal-based food products (by Alastair Norcross) (Ch.
36-39). There are two papers by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Marion Hourdequin discussing
what obligations, if any, individual
people have to try to help the environment.
A
theme of concern for this section is what individuals can and should do
regarding big problems where collective action is needed. Many philosophers are
interested in this seemingly intractable issue (“Why bother, since your own actions won’t make a difference?”), but I
wonder how many college students would be discouraged by it, especially since
this concern can be generalized to almost any social issue: why vote, why protest, why do much of anything to
try to change society for the better if it’s hard to tell if your actions will
make a difference?
College students, like many other
adults, tend to be interested in sex, drugs,
and rock-n-roll (or whatever music they prefer). I’ve mentioned that the essays
on sex and relationships are uniformly interesting. The chapters on drugs,
however, were disappointing. The chapter against drugs focused on heroin (Ch.
29), which I suspect is not a drug of choice among college students, and surprisingly
gave no thought at all to what, if any, harmful activities the government
should imprison people for engaging in. Far better is Michael Huemer’s
“America’s Unjust Drug War.” This
section also had an informative essay by Caitlin Flanagan, “The Dark Power of
Fraternities,” that reviews some of the awful things that happen in
fraternities and how these organizations are designed to avoid any liabilities
for deaths and major injuries (Ch. 32). Concerning
rock-n-roll, there is an interesting chapter (Ch. 44) on morally problematic
aspects of singing along to offensive lyrics. There are also interesting papers
(Ch. 42, 43) on the ethics of actions done in video games and virtual worlds
that would be deeply wrong in the real world. The concerns here are subtle and
interesting regarding, not actions, but taking on a mindset and perspective
that is evil: fascinating!
To
conclude, this is an excellent collection, and the idea motivating the collection is even better, and subject to much potential expansion
and development. I again encourage instructors to review the Table of Contents
for more of the details on the book’s contents and get a copy of the book to
read the chapters that interest them. The book is a good choice for both
introductory and more advanced ethics classes. By thinking about ethical issues
relevant to students, we hope that
that will improve their interest in, and skills in, thinking about ethical
issues that they may not think are immediately relevant to them, for example,
thinking about the plight of others.
Nathan Nobis
Associate Professor, Philosophy
Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA
In my opinion, everyone has to go through some phases and the Review of Bob Fischer, ed. College Ethics: A Reader on Moral Issues that Affect You is really a good example.
ReplyDeletemore space might be made to consider arguments about the morality of issues that specifically deal with marginalized folks throughout history, and their experience today. maybe like: the morality of manifest destiny hegemony and policies, moral consequences of issues of 'talented tenth'-based educational designs and systems (or class-based institutionalization of education), the morality of current goings-on on campus (the sexual harrassment suits gooing on, etc.)
ReplyDelete