The Union Taylor 404 - 04/17/2025 at 4:00 pm
Ideally, a student will walk away from their ethics courses with some food for thought and a greater appreciation of the underlying complexity of ethics. Some might have a favorite theory or thinker, but the rarest student will walk away with a better understanding of nature, elements, and the implications of their own ethical beliefs. However, it is more common for the afterimages of an ethics courses fade quickly.
Given how important ethics is for us personally and socially, it is utterly desirable that our ethics education not only improve our students’ thinking about ethics, but also motivate them to care enough about their ethics to go to the trouble of exercising and employing the cognitive resources taught in their ethics classes after the classes are over. In this talk, we aim diagnose why effective ethical motivation can be so difficult and suggest some ways to overcome this difficulty.
Join us as we discuss how to instill ethical thinking in students long after the end of their ethics courses!
