Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Conventions Used in This Book 2
What You’re Not to Read 3
Foolish Assumptions 3
How This Book Is Organized 4
Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 4
Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 4
Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life 4
Part 5: The Part of Tens 4
Icons Used in This Book 5
Beyond the Book 5
Where to Go from Here 6
Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 7
Chapter 1: Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care? 9
Knowing the Right Words: The Vocabulary of Ethics 10
Focusing on should and ought 10
Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality 11
Putting law in its proper place 12
Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical 14
Why be ethical 101? It pays off! 14
Why be ethical 201? You’ll live a life of integrity 15
Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life 16
Taking stock: Know thyself 16
Building your moral framework 17
Seeing where you need to go 18
Chapter 2: Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion? 21
Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person’s Opinion 22
Right for me and wrong for you: The subjectivist position 22
Recognizing that subjectivism can’t handle disagreement 23
They’re always right: Subjectivists make bad houseguests 25
Determining what subjectivism gets right 26
Cultural Relativism: Grounding Ethics in the Group’s Opinion 27
Discovering what it means to be a cultural relativist 27
Understanding why cultural relativism is always so popular 28
Living in many worlds: Some problems with cultural relativism 29
Looking at cultural relativism’s lack of respect for tolerance 30
Noting cultural relativism’s successes 32
Emotivism: Seeing Ethics as a Tool of Expression 33
Expressing yourself: Booing and cheering in ethics 33
Arguing emotionally: A problem for emotivists 34
Getting motivation right: A victory for emotivism 36
Chapter 3: Exploring Connections between Ethics, Religion, and Science 37
Clarifying the Relationship between God, Religion, and Ethical Codes 38
Knowing the difference between God and religion 38
Contemplating the diversity of religious ethical codes 39
Because God Said So: Understanding Divine Command Theory 41
God’s authority: Considering why God gets to be in charge 42
Figuring out what happens when divine commands conflict 43
Plato’s big challenge: Questioning what makes something ethical 45
When Ethics Gets in the Way of God: Introducing Kierkegaard 47
The Abraham dilemma: When God tells you to kill your child 47
Embracing a God who’s beyond ethics 49
Overcoming your despair: Can faith take you beyond ethics? 49
When God Gets in the Way of Ethics: Introducing Nietzsche 51
Portraying religion as an ethics of weakness 51
Leaping over faith: Ethics as inner strength rooted in self-creation 52
Examining Nietzsche’s new idea: The ethics of inner strength 54
The Age of Science: Figuring Out If Ethics Can Exist in a Secular World 55
Staying silent on the spiritual 55
Defining ethics in a materialistic world 56
Establishing good behavior without heaven or hell 57
Evolution and Ethics: Rising Above the Law of the Jungle 58
Seeing how selfish genes can promote unselfish behavior 59
Noting the irrelevance of (most) evolutionary theory to ethics 61
Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 63
Chapter 4: Being an Excellent Person: Virtue Ethics 65
The Lowdown: Virtuous Character Matters 66
Discovering why character matters 66
Connecting character with action 67
Seeing character as a way of life 67
Virtue: Settled habits towards the good 68
Linking Virtue to Cultivating Your Human Nature 69
How virtue is linked to human nature 69
Cultivating your nature is good and good for you 71
Examining what cultivated human nature looks like 72
Virtuous immersion in your social world 73
Responding virtuously to the universe itself 75
Asking Whether Virtue Guarantees Happiness 76
Aristotle: Virtue is not enough for human flourishing 77
Aurelius: Virtue is all you need to flourish 78
Figuring Out How to Acquire the Virtues 79
Can virtues really be taught? 79
Apprenticing yourself to a virtuous master or two or three 80
Aristotle: Shaping how we experience the world 81
Aurelius: Correcting how we see the world 85
Assessing Criticisms of Virtue Ethics 88
It’s difficult to know which virtues are right 89
Virtues can’t give exact guidance 90
Virtue ethics is really self-centered 91
Being virtuous is a lucky crapshoot 92
Chapter 5: Maximizing the Good: Consequentialist Ethics 95
Paying Close Attention to Results: Consequences Matter 96
Consequences matter to everyone 96
Consequences ethically trump principles and character 98
Surveying What Makes Consequences Good 99
Utilitarianism says: More pleasure, less pain (please!) 100
Beethoven or beer: Recognizing why some pleasures are better than others 102
Putting Utilitarianism into Action 104
Whose happiness counts? 104
How much happiness is enough? 105
Focusing On Two Different Ways to Be a Successful Utilitarian 106
Directly increasing the good through your actions 106
Indirectly increasing the good by following the rules 109
Exploring Traditional Problems with Utilitarianism 112
Challenge 1: Justice and rights play second fiddle in utilitarianism 112
Challenge 2: Utilitarianism is too demanding 114
Challenge 3: Utilitarianism may threaten your integrity 115
Challenge 4: Knowing what produces the most good is impossible 116
Chapter 6: Doing Your Duty: The Ethics of Principle 119
Kant’s Ethics: Acting on Reasonable Principles 120
Defining principles 120
Noting the difference between principles and rules 121
Making sense of Kantian ethics: The struggle between nature and reason 122
Autonomy: Being a law unto yourself 125
Living by the Categorical Imperative: Reasonable Principles 126
Looking behind actions: Maxims are principles 127
Examining imperatives 130
Surveying the Forms of the Categorical Imperative 132
Form 1: Living by universal principles 132
Form 2: Respecting everyone’s humanity 135
Applying the Categorical Imperative to Real-Life Dilemmas 136
Using the Formula of Universal Law to distinguish imperfect from perfect duties 137
Applying the Formula of Humanity to ethical topics 141
Scrutinizing Kant’s Ethics 142
Unconditional duty: Can you lie to a murderer? 143
Guiding actions in real moral dilemmas 143
Making enough room for feelings 144
Accounting for beings with no reason 145
Chapter 7: Signing on the Dotted Line: Ethics as Contract 147
Creating Ethics with Contracts 148
Reviewing Hobbes’s state of nature: The war of all against all 149
Escaping the state of nature: Enter the sovereign! 151
Moving to the modern form of social contracts 152
Restructuring Social Institutions According to Rawls’s Theory of Justice 153
Taking stock of the original position and its veil of ignorance 154
Arriving at the liberty and difference principles 155
Beyond the Dotted Line: Criticizing Contract Theory 158
But I never signed on the dotted line! 159
Libertarianism: Contracts make people lose too much liberty 160
Communitarianism: Challenging the veil of ignorance 161
Chapter 8: Turning Down the Testosterone: Feminist Care Ethics 163
The Feminist Challenge: Traditional Ethics Is Biased toward Men 164
De Beauvoir: How socialization shapes our thinking 164
Getting a grasp on the feminist approach 166
Seeing how bias seeps into your life 168
Exploring how bias infects ethics 169
A case study of male bias: Kohlberg’s theory of moral development 170
Considering Gilligan’s criticism of Kohlberg’s model 173
Surveying a New Feminist Ethics of Care 178
Putting relationships first 179
Letting feelings count: Cultivating care 180
Embracing partiality 182
Care avoids abstraction 183
Further Developing the Notion of Caring 183
Caring requires a deep and reciprocal bond 184
Jumping into another’s skin: Engrossment 185
Moving from me to you: Motivational displacement 185
Closing the loop: The need for reciprocity 186
Considering the Politics of Caring 187
Assembling the basic components of caring 188
Embracing the political dimension of care 189
Reviewing Criticisms of Care Ethics 190
Care ethics and public life: An uneasy fit 190
Do some relationships really deserve care? 192
Could care ethics harm women? 193
Chapter 9: Global Morality: Examining Non-Western Ethics 195
Thinking Differently: Why Cross-Cultural Ethics Matters 196
Avoiding Ethnocentrism: Seeing Ethics as Embedded in Cultural Contexts 196
Cultivating Relationships: Confucian Ethics 197
Why relationships? Understanding the big picture 197
Embodying ren: Building excellent relationships 199
The ethical importance of learning 199
Mirroring good role models 200
Developing the virtues to support ren 202
Confucian dedication to developing others 204
Reducing Suffering: Buddhist Ethics 206
The significance of life before becoming Buddha 207
Emergence of the Buddha and Buddhist doctrine 208
The ethical cure to suffering: The eightfold path 211
Cultivating virtue: Joy, kindness, and compassion 212
Harmony with Nature: Daoist Ethics 213
Tackling the inexpressible Dao: Life as a mystery 214
Cultivating an ethics that rejects ethics 218
Reawakening the Spiritual: Hindu Ethics 221
Atman and brahman: Finding your eternal self 221
Dharma: The ethical path to enlightenment 223
Achieving liberation: The final aim of the system 227
Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life 229
Chapter 10: Dealing with Mad Scientists: Biomedical Ethics 231
Examining Some Principles of Biomedical Ethics 232
Paternalism: Does a doctor always know best? 232
Autonomy: Being in the driver’s seat for your own healthcare decisions 233
Beneficence and nonmaleficence: Doing no harm 235
Taking a Closer Look at the Intractable Issue of Abortion 236
Deciding who is and isn’t a person 237
A right to life from the beginning: Being pro-life 238
The freedom to control one’s body: Being pro-choice 238
A 21st Century Problem: Attack of the Clones 239
Understanding the growing use of cloning in medicine 240
Determining whether cloning endangers individuality 241
Anticipating Ethical Problems with Genetic Technologies 243
Testing to avoid abnormalities 243
Finding cures for diseases with stem cell research 244
Considering genetic privacy concerns 246
Manipulating the genome to create designer people 246
Dying and Dignity: Debating Euthanasia 248
Dealing with controversy at the end of life 248
Making autonomous choices about death 249
Killing the most vulnerable 250
Thinking beyond the West: Palliative care 251
Chapter 11: Protecting the Habitat: Environmental Ethics 253
Canvassing Environmental Ethics 254
Recognizing environmental problems 254
Expanding care past human beings 255
Determining Whose Interests Count 258
Getting interested in interests 258
Anthropocentrism: Only humans matter! 260
Sentientism: Don’t forget animals 262
Biocentrism: Please don’t pick on life 263
Ecocentrism: The land itself is alive 265
Turning to Environmental Approaches 269
Conservationism: Keeping an eye on costs 269
Deep ecology: Viewing interconnection as the key 270
Social ecology: Blaming domination 272
Examining Criticisms of Environmental Ethics 274
Ecofascism : Pushing humans out of the picture 274
Valuing things in a nonhuman-centered way: Is it possible? 275
Chapter 12: Looking Out for the Little Guy: Ethics and Animals 277
Focusing on the Premise of Animal Rights 278
Questioning whether humans really are superior to animals 279
Seeing why Peter Singer says animals feel pain, too 280
Being wary of speciesism 282
Experimenting on Animals for the Greater Good 284
The main rationale for experimenting: Harming animals saves humans 284
Debating animal testing of consumer products 286
To Eat or Not to Eat Animals: That’s the Question 287
Understanding why ethical vegetarians don’t eat meat 287
Responding to ethical vegetarians: Omnivores strike back! 288
Looking at factory farming’s effects on animals 290
Vegans: Eliminating animal servitude 291
Targeting the ethics of hunting animals 292
Chapter 13: Vibing with the Bots: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence 295
Focusing on AI: The High Stakes of Computing 296
Distinguishing three types of AI: The good, the bad, and the ugly 297
Regulating the robots: Goals and ethical principles for AI 300
It’s getting hot in here: The environmental impact of AI 301
Respecting the User: Manipulation and Deception 302
Training or draining? Data accumulation, bias, and privacy rights 303
Robot writers: Who owns AI-generated work? 305
Gaming the system: Using AI to ace your essay 307
Reality bytes: Deepfakes and propaganda 308
Transparency: Making AI open-source and explainable 309
Seeking the Singularity: The Day AI Outsmarts Us All 310
Seeing the Singularity as a unique ethical challenge 310
Existential risks: Autonomous weaponry 312
Sticking up for the robots: Ethical obligations to AI 314
Challenging Human Dignity: How AI Will Rewrite the Human World 314
Loving the LLM: AI that cares about you 315
Turning it off and on again: Sex robots? 316
Losing our minds: When humans no longer understand the world 318
What would you say you do here? AI and the disappearance of work 319
Chapter 14: Making Accommodations: Disability Ethics 321
Challenging Normality: Disability Trend Setter 322
Casting disability as abnormality: The common view 322
Looking under the hood and poking at normality 323
Recasting disability as difference: The contrary view 324
Deaf culture 325
Uncovering Ableism: Hidden Discrimination 326
Explaining ableism and how to spot it 327
Seeing ableism as more than an intention 328
Considering institutional ableism 329
Exposing internalized ableism 331
Interpersonal ableism 332
Combatting ableism: Nothing about us, without us 334
Locating Disability: Is It Physical or Social? 335
Dissecting the medical model: The body as problem 336
Restraining common view and medical model 338
Recognizing the dangers of eugenics 338
Considering genetic engineering and abortion 339
Turning to the social model: Society as the problem 340
Thinking biopsychosocial: The hybrid model 343
Complicating Disability: Intersectional Ethics 344
Understanding the experience of disability 345
Complicating disability with race, gender, and class 346
An ethical suggestion: Pause and ponder 349
How Disability Challenges Ethics 350
Chapter 15: Liking and Subscribing: Social Media Ethics 353
Socializing Online: Social Media as the New Ethical Frontier 354
Examining issues of privacy on the internet 355
Social media and long-term online identities 362
Hailing the Almighty Algorithm: Programming the Social Revolution 366
The hidden hand of the platform algorithm 367
Doomscrolling, addiction, and mental health in social media 370
Calling the Mods: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms 371
Part 4: the Part of Tens 373
Chapter 16: Ten Famous Ethicists and Their Theories 375
Confucius: Nurturing Virtue in Good Relationships 375
Plato: Living Justly through Balance 376
Aristotle: Making Virtue Ethics a Habit 376
Hobbes: Beginning Contract Theory 377
Hume: Eyeing the Importance of Moral Feelings 377
Kant: Being Ethical Makes You Free 378
Mill: Maximizing Utility Matters Most 379
Nietzsche: Connecting Morals and Power 379
Rawls: Looking Out for the Least Well-Off 380
Singer: Speaking Out for Modern Utilitarianism 380
Chapter 17: Ten Ethical Dilemmas Likely to Arise in the Future 381
Making Designer Genes to Create Designer Babies 381
Privacy Absolutism and Erasing Your Digital Self 382
Managing the Growing Population of Planet Earth 383
Dealing with Dramatic Increases in the Human Lifespan 383
Digital Immortality and Uploading Your Mind 384
Geohacking the Planet to Alter the Climate 384
Exploring and Terraforming New Worlds 385
Universal Basic Income — Everyone Gets a Piece of the Action 385
New Governments in Virtual Reality 386
Free, Unlimited Energy and the End of Scarcity 387
Whoa, Dinosaur! Resurrecting Extinct Species 388
Index 389
