class’s internet discussion board for comment.* Allow “threads” in your discussion board. Make your discussion board last for a limited amount of time—say a week. Especially solicit responses from the point of view of one of the principal ethical theories—such as virtue ethics, utilitarianism, or deontology.
Step Two: Have the group go over the responses solicited and sort them by: (a) the kinds of solutions advocated by your classmates and (b) the type of ethical theory chosen to support their solution. Using the data that you have gleaned from (a) and (b) try to draw some general trends from the class and then have a representative from the group create a PowerPoint presentation for the class letting them know the majority and minority opinions evinced. The PowerPoint should be no longer than 10 minutes.
Step Three: Break the class into the aforementioned discussion groups of 3−4 individuals each with task of each group to set out arguments supporting (pro) and going against (con) each of the general trends of the class as set out on the PowerPoint. After about 15 minutes of discussion have a spokesperson for each group make an oral presentation to the entire class summarizing that group’s findings. The group summaries should last 3−4 minutes. Depending upon the number of groups, this exercise should last 30−40 minutes.
Step Four: While the group presentations are still fresh in everyone’s minds allow each student to jot down relevant information for their between-class short essay to be completed at home. This task should last 5−10 minutes.
Step Five: Each student should write a 300-word essay between classes on the solution that seems best to them and turn it in for grading in the next class.
This exercise encourages individual response and group collaboration and forces students to make an action commitment after carefully examining the problem and possible solutions (driven by a selected ethical theory). It is best to utilize this lecture early in the class term. [Note: this is easily adaptable to synchronous online teaching.]
Conclusion
This chapter began by asking the rhetorical question: “What is the point in studying ethics?” The examination of the question took us to various places. First, it took us to prudential decision-making and the possible problems that many decision models face because of unreflective worldviews. Next, some suggestions were made to remedy this problem, including the personal worldview imperative. Finally, the chapter worked through two case studies in which difficult decisions were presented. In this context, the prudential models were supplemented with an overlay of some ethical theories that might offer a more coherent direction in decision-making. The slant of this author was toward the realist ethical theories and the swing theories interpreted realistically. However, each side was presented in order that the reader might make up his or her own mind on how he or she intends to adopt the overlay of ethics into his or her worldview and decision-making model. This is an important, ongoing task. I exhort each reader to take this quest seriously. It may just be the best investment in time that you have ever made!
Notes
1 * If your college or university does not have online discussion boards associated with each class then you can type out your problem on one side of a piece of paper, make copies for all in the class, distribute, and ask your classmates to respond on the back side of the piece of paper.
2 1 Cited in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. At an art exhibition in Stockholm, Sweden Andy Warhol is reported to have said: “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Since that time, the quotation has morphed into several different formulations.
3 2 This is particularly true of some feminist ethicists. See Rosemarie Tong (2009) “A Feminist Personal Worldview Imperative,” in Morality and Justice: Reading Boylan’s A Just Society (ed. John-Stewart Gordon), Lanham, MD and Oxford: Lexington/Rowman & Littlefield; pp. 29–38.
4 3 Another popular distinction is natural versus non-natural.This is a subcategory of realism. For example, the philosopher G.E. Moore was a realist about the existence of “good,” but he felt that “good” was an non-natural property. Thus, realists can be naturalists and non-naturalists. Anti-realists are neither natural nor unnatural: they do not think that the good (for example) actually exists at all: in or out of nature.
5 4 For the purposes of this book the words “ethics” and “morality” will be taken to be exact synonyms.
2 What is ‘Nature,’ and Why Should We Care?
MICHAEL BOYLAN
Part I: What is Nature?
Aristotle introduces our discussion in Posterior Analytics II.1 “There are four questions we can ask about the [natural] objects we know (epistametha): the fact (hoti); the reasoned fact or cause (dioti); the question about the modal existence of the entity (ei esti); and the question of definition or essence (ti esti).”1 In the context of this chapter I’d contextualize this as ultimately searching for a definition of nature that can be the basis of our discussion. But “definition” is last on Aristotle’s list. Why is that? It is because the definition must be the result of experience (empeiria) that itself allows one to have confidence in his/her beliefs about what the fact actually is (hoti) and its structure and modalities within various contexts (ei esti) in order to speculate on the causal structure that underlies its operation (dioti). As has been the case in the past, this author is greatly influenced by Aristotle’s approach to understanding nature.2 However, this chapter will use this general structure and move beyond the Stagirite’s exposition (though using this structure in Part I).
Primitive Posits. Nature is a term full of meanings.3 For our purposes here, let us begin with an understanding of nature in its contextual sense (the brute facts observed, hoti): we view nature as being outside us. But this does not mean that we, also, are not a part of nature (though some make this mistake in issues concerning the environment).4 There is an historical/religious tradition that views nature as outside of us just like children are outside of their parents but a part of the family. This is the tradition that talks about being “stewards of nature.” It goes back to the scala naturae.5 This model owes much to Aristotle’s notion of the three sorts of living enties (souls, psuche: plants, animals, and humans).6 In addition, we have two understandings of denotation: the individual and the group. It has been this author’s practice in the past to stipulate this distinction by the use of “small ‘n’” and “capital ‘N’.”7 Thus “nature” will refer to individuals and their capacities/executions while “Nature” will refer to larger groups—such as species, genera, et al. including integrated systems such as ecosystems, and more general systems such as biomes, biota, and the earth’s biosphere. By using language in this way, we can be more exact in our denotative referents (ei esti, above).
This sort of distinction helps a little in making clear the “inclusion problem” cited above: whether the individual looking around sees Nature as the other that does not include themself since they are an individual human and humans are exceptional
