Ashford 6: – Week 5 – Discussion 1

   Week Five Discussion

 There is only one discussion this week. Your instructor will be choosing the discussion question and posting it as the first post in the discussion forum. The requirements for the discussion this week are a minimum of four posts on four separate days. The total combined word count for all of your posts, counted together, should be over 600 words. Be sure to answer all the questions in the prompt and to read any resources that are required to complete the discussion properly. In order to satisfy the posting requirements for the week, please complete your initial post by Day 3 (Thursday) and your other posts by Day 7 (Monday). We recommend that you get into the discussion early and spread out your posts over the course of the week. Be sure to reply to your classmates and instructor. Try to attempt to take the conversation further by examining their claims or arguments in more depth or responding to the posts that they make to you. Keep the discussion on target and try to analyze things in as much detail as you can.

After completing the reading and   media for this week, please discuss the following set of questions:  

Utilize feminist ethics to examine   ONE of the applied ethics topics in the course.  To do this, briefly   describe the core principles of feminist ethics by using at least one quote   from any of the readings for this week.  Then, discuss how this core   principle would view the applied ethics topic you have chosen.  Make   sure that your post clearly identifies the core principle, and make sure that   you only focus on one of the applied ethics topics.  It can be the topic   you are using for your final paper, or it can be any of the topics examined   in this course such as:  end of life care, drones, animal ethics,   whistle-blowing, military virtues, environmental issue.
 

  To help focus your post, try to formulate a specific question and then answer   it from the point of view of feminist ethics.  For example, what does a   care ethic look like when applied to business or war?  What would be the   best way to run a business from the perspective of feminist ethics?  How   would a feminist ethic transform the way that the military functions or goes   about fighting in wars?   

(Note:  To make sure your   post starts its own unique thread, hit the “Respond” button all the   above the maroon-colored line.) 

   In week one of this course we looked at relativism and its core idea that the   very ideas of right and wrong are rooted in tradition and cultural   heritage.  We also saw that a consequence of relativism   is its view that there are no objective moral truths — that in effect, the   universe is not inherently moral and that morality is a creation of human   activity.  In the group discussion question in week one, we talked   about racism and considered questions about its origin and essence as well as   our general moral agreement that racism is morally rephrehensible.
 

  The question of whether morality is the creation of human activity or whether   morality as we know it is part of a larger moral fabric in the universe is an   important question because so much hinges on its answer — it is, in   different words, a question about the fundamental nature of the universe and   our place in it.
 

  Utilitarianism seems to avoid asking or answering the question of whether   there is a moral fabric in the universe, since one can make all sorts of   utilitarian conclusions without needing to address this.
 

  Deontology asserts that the universe is inherently moral and that moral laws   exist and can be discovered just as sure as laws of physics and mathematics   exist.  
 

  While Virtue Ethics does not directly address this question, what we studied   about it does assert that virtues, and hence morality, do exist and that they   can be acquired and practice and perfected.
 

  QUESTION:
 

  When we look at social “progress” over the years — say even in the   last half century or so — most of us have the sense that Civil Rights,   desegregation and gender equality are good things and that they bring us   closer to a just society.  To quote Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous   words:
 

                                                             “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards   justice.”
 

  If there is any truth to our sense that social progress of Civil Rights and   gender equality brings us closer to justice, what does this tell us   about relativism’s idea that right and wrong are relative to culture?
 

  Do you think morality is entirely the creation of human thought, or do we   possess morality because it is part of the created universe?