Handouts

There are actually quite a few good web resources for this class. That said, I do not recommend that you surf the web on your own finding sources, because most of the ones you find are actually very bad, given that the people who author them have no idea what they are talking about. Below I’ve listed some good resources for each topic you’ll be studying in the course. Note: remember to never use a web resource for a paper or to study for a test that is not below without sending me an email first. You may find up doing yourself a real disservice following the advice of some anonymous uninformed web author!

CP’s Review Sheets
These are the sheets I’ve created for the material. (The vast majority of these I wrote, but there are a few which borrow heavily from handouts created by other authors. I can’t recall who they were, so HT to them, whoever they are!)

1. Confucius Introduction Overview

2. The Concept of Jen,

3. A Model Confucius Interpretation,

4. Objectivism and Relativism

5. Relativism as a Diagram

6. Subjectivism and Emotivism

7. Egoism

8. Aristotle

9. General Utilitarianism

10. Grazalski on Meat Eating

11. Hospers and Rule Utilitarianism

12. Kai Nielsen and Consequentialism

13. Nozick’s Pleasure Machine

14. Williams against Utilitarianism

15. Kant Overview

16. Ruddick on Better Sex

17. Teleology and Deontology

18. Virtue Ethics Diagrammed

19. Deontology Diagrammed

20. Consequentialism Diagrammed

21. Three Concepts in Ethics

22. Key Confucian Concepts and Disciples

23. Concept Map for Course

24. A Guide to Book Two of the Analects

Sheets from Other Professors

1. Ethics Updates. Site operated by Prof. Hinman at UC San Diego. It’s remarkably comprehensive, lots of power point stuff, video, lecture notes, and so on. You’ll have to do some navigating, but it’s very useful. Puts my web guides to shame!

2. “Kant’s Four Examples” from Craig Duncan, Ithaca College.

Standard Reference Material

A. WIKIPEDIA. Wikipedia is actually a decent source, especially for basic undergraduate level review. I realize that some professors are “anti-Wiki” but as long as you are not using it to cite in a paper (I draw the line there) but are rather using it to help you to understand the material we are studying, I am fine with you using the source. Remember that with Wiki, you have no idea who wrote the entry, and it could be totally wrong! Here are the pieces they have that would be of use:

1. Cultural Relativism

2. Moral Relativism

3. Emotivism

4. Psychological Egoism

5. Prisoner’s Dilemma

6. Virtue Ethics

7. Confucianism

8. The Euthyphro Problem

9. Bentham

10. Utilitarianism

11. John Stuart Mill

12. Kant

13. The Categorical Imperative

14. Deontology

15. Bernard Williams

16. Nietzsche

B. STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY. This really is the central authoritative resource for philosophy on the web. Unfortunately, it is not really written for an undergraduate audience, so it is not that easy to read. So this resource is for the more intrepid and enterprising students who would like to go further into what these theories/concepts mean. They have entries on

1. Relativism

2. Psychological and Ethical Egoism

3. Subjectivism (cognitivism) vs Emotivism (non-cognitivism)

4. Virtue Ethics

5. Confucius

6. John Stuart Mill

7. Utilitarianism

8. Rule Utilitarianism

9. Kant and Deontology

10. Williams on Integrity

11. Nietzsche on Morality