In his paper you will choose an issue to investigate from Ethics Bowl (Case 2: Lessons from the Plague Year). This case highlights an ethical issue and provides an ethical question for the case. Your answer to the ethical question will be your thesis statement. The assignment is to defend a position on an issue concerning your selected case. This paper consists of 8 parts. Ive attached the rubric below, please let me know if you need further information.

Ethical Reasoning Paper Assignment Due: 5/13/21 Format: Times New Roman, Double Spaced, 12 pt. type Length: 5-8 pages Submit: upload as a Word Document or PDF (*not* Pages) One of the key skills you need to develop in philosophy is the ability to take a position on an issue and argue in favor of it. This means working out your argument, defining key terms, considering counter arguments, responding to the counter arguments and revising your position as appropriate. For this paper you will choose an issue to investigate from Ethics Bowl PDF. This case highlights an ethical issue and provides an ethical question for the case. Your answer to the ethical question will be your thesis statement. The assignment is to defend a position on an issue concerning your selected case. Ethical Case: Case 2: Lessons from the Plague Year While humankind will be learning from the pandemic for years to come, none of us can ignore the numerous ethics issues with which we have been presented. The ethical implications of the pandemic in the United States and abroad are staggering. From the beginning, problems arising from social disparity became painfully obvious, as the virus affected different populations disproportionately. During the first wave of the pandemic, some people could work from the safety of their homes. Others lost their jobs as restaurants closed and leisure travel ground to a halt. Others had no choice but to work in situations in which they were continually exposed to the virus. People of color had higher rates of infection and death. The vaccines, when made available, were distributed to the whitest and the wealthiest nations first. Later, as the virus surged and resurged, the supply of ICU beds, experimental treatments, and ventilators dwindled. The scarcity of medical resources forced hospital leadership to decide whether patients over a particular age should be given palliative care only. They had to decide if it made ethical as well as economic sense to remove the most seriously ill patients from ventilators and free them up for others who looked more likely to survive. At times, the situation had become so dire that some healthcare personnel were comparing their working environment to a MASH unit. Different nations took very different approaches as the contagion raged within their borders. Some countries, like India and China, mandated draconian nationwide shutdowns and curfews. Other countries, like Argentina and Sweden, acted as if there was no pandemic at all. The United States took no coherent approach. The federal government delegated healthcare decisions to the states, many of which in turn left healthcare decisions up to individual businesses and people. While some leaders within the federal government verbally encouraged social distancing and wearing masks to limit COVID spread, others encouraged large crowds for campaign rallies, met face-to-face in legislative sessions, and held holiday parties, thereby sending a message by their actions in sharp contrast with the government’s verbal message. At the personal level, behaviors ranged widely, from extravagant tipping out of sympathy for service workers to screaming abuse at store clerks who tried to enforce mask requirements imposed by their company, city, or state. The list of COVID-related ethical issues could go on for pages, and several of the cases in this year’s ethics bowl address a few of them. In the United States, we generally expect colleges and universities to contribute to the public good by producing research useful to the community and to the advancement of knowledge. We also expect them to prepare students for active and responsible engagement as citizens in a diverse world. How well are you, as college students, being equipped to deal with these issues now and for future global emergencies? Above and beyond a school’s responsibility to provide a safe environment and carry on its normal job of education, the question arises as to whether the pandemic has given higher education an increased responsibility for helping students and the community recognize, analyze, and actively address the ethical issues that arise from the pandemic, such as those mentioned above. If so, we might expect higher education to meet that responsibility by adjusting coursework, changing the nature of campus life, shifting the direction of some research, and forming new community partnerships. Some would argue that this sort of activism is not appropriate for higher education. The traditional role of educators is to educate, after all, not to shift direction with every crisis, even one as dire as the current pandemic. Any attention given to COVID-19 is attention taken away from other subjects. Case 2: Do colleges and universities have an ethical responsibility to provide their students with a moral education regarding pandemic issues? Select the Issue First, select one case to investigate from the Ethics Bowl PDF. To access this document go to: Blackboard à Assignments à Ethical Reasoning Paper. The PDF of the Ethics Bowl Cases is attached. Read over the questions that are assigned to the cases. The assignment is to take a position on one of the cases in response to the question that has been assigned to that case. Click on the links at the bottom of your case and begin doing some research into to make sure that you have a handle on the main issues and are ready to take a position in response to the question. Use the case number and name as the title of your paper. Prewrite Begin the prewriting process of writing an argumentative paper as described in Weston’s Argument Rulebook, Chapter VII. Extended Arguments (51-60). That is you should: ● Explore the issue ● Spell out your basic argument Basic Argument: P1: During the COVID-19 pandemic, people in the first wave had no choice but to work in environments where they were constantly exposed to the virus, putting their lives at risk. P2: Hospitals had to consider if it was ethical to withdraw the most chronically ill patients from ventilators (putting their lives at risk) to make room for those who seemed to have a better chance of survival. P3: All colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to provide moral education to students on how to act in difficult situations where human lives are at risk. Conclusion: Colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to provide moral education to their students about pandemic issues. ● Begin sketching out a defense of each of your premises ● Consider how one might object to your argument or to given premises ● Think about how you can respond to these arguments and/or revise your original argument so that they do not arise Only now should you begin Writing! This paper has eight parts (be sure to complete them all): Part I: First Paragraph: The Issue Start with a short summary of the issue you will be investigating. Define key terms. Give the reader some key facts about the issue and background information to contextualize it. Also give the reader a quick sketch of the different positions people take on this issue and why. End the paragraph with a clear thesis statement, such as: In this paper I will be arguing _______. Tip: Consult Weston’s Argument Rulebook, Ch. VIII Argumentative Essays (61-68) Part 1: The Issue – Click here for Video Instructions (1:27) Case used in all Demonstration Videos: Zoos (4:27) Demonstration Video: The Issue – Paper Practice (1:36) Part II: Second Paragraph: Basic Argument Present the basic argument for your position in premise and conclusion form. P1) During the COVID-19 pandemic, people in the first wave had no choice but to work in environments where they were constantly exposed to the virus, putting their lives at risk. P2) Hospitals had to consider if it was ethical to withdraw the most chronically ill patients from ventilators (putting their lives at risk) to make room for those who seemed to have a better chance of survival. P3) All colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to provide moral education to students on how to act in difficult situations where human lives are at risk. C)Colleges and universities have an ethical obligation to provide moral education to their students about pandemic issues. Put forward your premises in a methodical manner that leads us to the conclusion. Use as many premises as you need to get to the conclusion ( at least two premises).Review the discussion boards on argument building (from the beginning of the semester) and Weston’s rules in Chapter 1, Short Arguments to help you do this. Use your thesis statement from The Issue as the conclusion of your argument. Since your conclusion must be about an ethical issue, you will need to include a premise that supplies an ethical principle (which will allow you to determine whether the action is ethical or not). The type of ethical principle that each student needs really depends on the type of argument that the student has structured. Let’s say that a student is writing an argument about who is responsible for fixing the student debt crisis. For this student, I would suggest that a premise that stipulates what determines whether something is one’s responsibility or not. This would be a principle that takes a more general abstract form, which would allow it to be used to determine not just who is responsible to fix the student loan crisis, but also who is responsible to take out the trash, or to feed people who do not have money to buy food due to loss of employment with the pandemic. It is kind of like a formula for determining who is responsible. So, this could take a couple of different forms. For example: ● If ___, then that person is ethically responsible. ● When ____, the person/entity who ___ is ethically responsible to ___. ● A person is ethically responsible to fix a problem if ______. ● Whenever a person/entity ______, then they are ethically responsible to fix the problem. Now, your basic argument might not be about ethical responsibility. Maybe it is about what is ethically justifiable (It is ethically justifiable to _______ when ______; _______ makes an action ethically justifiable; As long as _______ an action is ethically justifiable). Or maybe it is about what is morally wrong, in which case your ethical principle might look something like this: It is morally wrong to _______; An action is morally wrong, if _______. Or maybe it is about about is ethically right: It is morally right to _______; An action is morally right, if _______. Find the ethical principle that works for your argument, providing the more abstract, philosophical foundation that will allow us to understand how we should judge the ethical value of the empirical details involved in your case. This basic argument should lay out your reasoning, short and sweet. If you are finding that it is getting long, then take a closer look to see if what you wrote is a bare bones argument or actually a defense of the premises. Anything that is a defense of the argument belongs in the next section of the paper ( Parts III & IV). Alternatively, you might find that in order to lay out your reasoning on the issue, you need to involve more than one line of argument. If this is the case, then you might consider doing this by creating two arguments that build upon one another (for an example of how such an argument could be structured, please refer back to the new threads I created on this topic in the Argument Building Discussion Boards). Part 2: Basic Argument – Click here for Video Instructions (3:01) Demonstration Video: Basic Argument – Paper Practice (5:18) Part III: Defense of Empirical Premises Now explain your argument in more detail, dedicating one paragraph to each of your premises, explaining the reasoning behind it. Start each paragraph by presenting the premise that you will be defending. Then proceed to explain why the reader should accept the premise. End each paragraph by showing how this premise relates to your conclusion (or how this premise leads into the next premise, which will be defended in the following paragraph). In the process of defending your premises, you should: ● define key terms, see Weston Appendix II (95-100) ● cite reliable sources to back up your claims (try starting with the sources offered in the footnotes of your case study description) ● explain why any generalizations you are making are justified (i.e., do not overgeneralizations) ● See Weston, Ch 2, Examples (9-18) defend your ethical principle (since an ethical principle should have been one of your premises above, in this section there should be a paragraph gives the justification for this principle). Part 3: Defense of Empirical Premises – Click here for Video Instructions (2:19) Demonstration Video: Defense of Empirical Premises – Paper Practice (7:16) Part IV: Defense of Ethical Principle Now defend your ethical principle (since an ethical principle should have been one of your premises above). This is an essential part of your ethical reasoning paper! This section should consist of 1-2 paragraphs. You need to explain why we should accept your ethical principle—why is that what should ethically concern us? Imagine that you are talking to a person who reads your ethical principle (for example, that: We have an ethical responsibility to _____.) and says “No, we don’t!” How would you explain to that person that we do have such an ethical responsibility (or, tha t_____ is what makes an action ethically good; or, that is what makes an action ethically wrong)? How would you convince that person? Be careful to stay on ethical terrain here! Your goal is to get the reader to accept that this is the principle that will allows us to act ethically—which is a separate matter from the non-ethical/non-moral concerns of it being efficient, practical, effective, popular, legal, customary, etc. *Note* – The sample paper in attachment is weak in this section. Aim to develop your defence of your ethical principle more fully. The video instructions for this section contain a lot more detail! Part 4: Defense of Ethical Principle – Click here for Video Instructions (5:38) Demonstration Video: Defense of ETHICAL Principle/s – Paper Practice (3:05) Part V: Reflect on Connection Between Ethical Principle and an Ethical System This section should be two paragraphs long and it is another essential part of your ethical reasoning paper! Now reflect on further on your ethical principle. What ethical systems we studied this semester does this principle connect with? Can you identify anything Kantian in your principle and the way that you defended it? What about any Utilitarian reasoning? Do you engage any Aristotelian concerns that would connect with his system of virtue ethics? What about Care Ethics? Find at least one ethical system that connects with your ethical principle and the way that you defended it. In your first paragraph, explain the key ideas from that ethical system. How does that system work? How does it go about determining what the right thing to do is? What does it consider of ethical importance? I would encourage you to cite the primary texts we studied this semester in this paragraph. In your second paragraph, explain how your ethical principle relates to this section. How is this system reflected in your way of defending your ethical principle? Explain. Part 5: Connection to an Ethical System – Click here for Video Instructions (2:52) Demonstration Video: Connection to an Ethical System – Paper Practice (6:00) Part VI: Consider an Objection Next, put forward an objection that could be raised against your argument. Be careful not to strawman the objection. Explain the reasoning behind the objection so that it will strike the reader as a legitimate concern. Also be careful to select an objection that actually respond to your argument and does not simply supporting a different view on the topic. Tips: Think of the objector as a person who is in conversation with you and your ideas. When you are coming up with an objection, imagine the objector heard your argument in parts 2 and 3 of this paper. Why might someone have heard you out and yet still object to what you have said? Make it clear which of your premise/s from part 2 that the objector is specifically targeting with this objection. Part 6: Objection – Click here for Video Instructions (2:50) Demonstration Video: Objection – Paper Practice (5:57) Part VII: Response to the Objection Now offer a response to the objection you just raised. Explain your reasoning in detail so that you will have the best chances of convincing a person who objects to your argument in the manner described above. Part 7: Response to the Objection – Click here for Video Instructions (0:22) Demonstration Video: RESPONSE to Objection – Paper Practice (3:58) Part VIII: Conclusion Reflect on your response to the objection. Do you think that the objection to your argument wins? Or does your response to the objection win? Explain your reasoning. BE CAREFUL! Typical conclusion that simply summarize the foregoing earn a “0”. For the 15 points, you must actually reflect on how well your response to the objection does or does not deal with the objection’s concerns. Really consider what points the objection has in its favor. Part 8: Conclusion – Click here for Video Instructions (1:12) Demonstration Video: Conclusion – Paper Practice (6:36) Works Cited Each paper must include a Works Cited or Bibliography page with at least three sources. You may use whichever citation format you are most comfortable with, i.e., APA, MLA, Chicago. Add section titles Insert the following section titles into your paper. ● The Issue ● Basic Argument ● Defense of Empirical Premises ● Defense of Ethical Principle ● Reflect on Connection Between Ethical Principle and an Ethical System ● Consider an Objection ● Response to the Objection ● Conclusion ● Works Cited This is an easy way to get (or loose!) 10 points. Formatting and Grading Criteria – Click here for Video Instructions(3:25) Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Any student whose paper includes any instances of plagiarism will receive a zero for that assignment and be reported to the Academic Integrity Committee. Such reports could potentially result in the student’s expulsion. Do not Plagiarize. Sample Student Paper *Note: This Case is NOT an option for the class this semester * I have highlighted some key things I would like to see in your paper (do not highlight them in your paper; the highlights are just for your benefit in this sample) Case 7: Your Best Self Now The Issue The Chinese social credit system was first announced in 2014 and is a system that gives China’s citizens a social credit score based on their behaviors and actions. It is meant to promote positive behaviors and create a more trustworthy society. Citizens receive better scores by executing socially desirable actions such as obeying the law. Scores will decline if citizens engage in problematic behaviors. Furthermore, citizens can access social benefits based on their scores. As they are rewarded for good behavior, they are also punished for bad behavior. Advocates for the Chinese social credit system claim that the system enforces positive results as the behaviors of citizens improve. Critics argue that it violates privacy and a person’s autonomy. In this paper I will be arguing that Chinese social credit system is an ethically wrong practice. Basic Argument P1) The Chinese social credit system undermines people as autonomous beings P2) Some of the ways that it undermines autonomy are by invading citizens’ privacy and bribing citizens to engage in good behavior. P3) Any practice that undermines a person’s autonomy is ethically wrong. C) Thus, the Chinese social credit system is an ethically wrong practice. Defense of Empir …
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