Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

he highlight of this class is a semester-long, experiential project called the Ethics Project. The idea is simple: Think of something good to do and that adds value to the world. Then do it. To help you implement your project, The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics will make available to each group up to $1,000 in funding. This project gives you great freedom to be entrepreneurial, but also great responsibility. At the end you will need to justify the way you spent your time and money. How do you know you added value to the world? Why does it matter? The course content will complement the Ethics Project. In class we will think about different kinds of value, about how values might be measured, and the promise and dangers therein. We will address questions about cooperation and self-interest, as well as foundational questions about the role of business, the role of government regulation, and the role of markets. Thinking about these foundational questions and then implementing the Ethics Project is excellent career preparation. In some jobs, people tell you what to do. But as you advance in your career, you will have jobs where you have to identify what the most important problems are, and then solve them. That is what we will do in this class

Student Outcomes

By the end of this course students will

  • Be able to distinguish different ways of understanding goodness and value and the promise and limitations of measuring goodness and value
  • Have learned about the challenges and advantages that come when working cooperatively in a team
  • Have experience making a plan and seeing it through to implementation
  • Be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different economic and political systems

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