Video Lectures

• Lecture 1 : Moral Reasoning and the Normative Ethical Theories. This video gives a review of the three major normative ethical theories. 45 minutes.
• Lecture 2: Moral Reasoning and the Capstone course. This video discusses how to apply the normative ethical theories to your capstone paper. 15 minutes.

MP3 Lectures:

• What is Philosophy?
• What is Philosophy of Religion?
• Why Argue for God?
• The Problem of Evil
• Language and Discourse
• History of Business Ethics
• Sexual Harassment
• Job Discrimination
• Morality v. Ethics
• Ought-to-be-Values
• Higher / Lower Goods
• Character Ethics
• Rawls’ Theory of Justice
• Euthyphro – Apology

An important distinction in moral reasoning is between normative (value laden) and descriptive claims (facts). There are different kinds of descriptive and normative claims. For example, Economics, Sociology, Management, and many other disciplines have normative and descriptive assertions, but your focus is on the normative and descriptive moral and ethical claims. Your discussion will contain both kinds, but they have very different characteristics when it comes to using them in arguments.

The first step is to get all of your facts straight and confirmed to be true (primarily through research). You are then, to some degree, done with them and can turn to the more challenging task of persuading your reader that certain normative claims are better than others — in other works, by justifying your position through arguments using a normative ethical theory..

created by Professor Jennifer Greene, Spring 2004 and modified by Professor Danney Ursery, Fall 2004