We have explored the global demographic transition to fewer children in families that is enabling richer individual investments in everything from childcare to professional development, in turn fueling the creative innovations bringer greener solutions for supporting a worldwide uplifting in standards of living. We’ve all been on a real ride this semester and it has been a privilege to muddle through making sense of it with you all.

Ethical Reasoning and You

Some of the current events we have considered are ethically complicated in character or consequence. This course is charged with assessing the GVSU general education learning outcome “ethical reasoning.” Senior faculty serving on the university curriculum committee offer this definition of “ethics” from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University:

Ethics refers to standards and practices that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find themselves – as friends, parents, children, citizens, businesspeople, professionals, and so on. Ethics is also concerned with our character. It requires knowledge, skills, and habits.

Markkula scholars go on to suggest that ethical decision-making is guided by morally grounded, logical frameworks of reasoning. They distinguish decisions grounded in ethical principle from decisions made by hunches or feelings, religious belief, laws or restrictions, science, or social convention. Instead, Markkula scholars offer six lenses used to evaluate situations where the “right” action or position is, well, a little complicated! These six lenses emphasize different moral priorities, including:

• Rights – humans are endowed with the right to live a dignified existence, free to make choices, live without injury, and observe the duty to reciprocate respect in others’ same rights.
• Justice – people are entitled to fair and equal treatment, including restitution for harm.
• Utilitarianism – in any course of action, the balance of good produced must far outweigh any harms for most people.
• Common good – people in a community have interlocking roles and a shared stake in supporting each other’s well-being, particularly the well-being of vulnerable members.
• Virtue – acting on behalf of values that indisputably push us to be our best versions of ourselves- integrity, compassion, courage, generosity, and the like.
• Care – an empathic perspective derived from deep appreciation of others’ position and genuine concern for wholistic solutions to problems.

The subject of ethics typically falls into philosophers’ academic wheelhouse. Philosophers like to have rational justifications for decisions that have morally complicated conditions or consequences. Ethical lenses should help us arrive at the “right” decision by grounding our logic in a set of principles.

Ethical Advice for Future Lakers

Throughout the semester I’ve presented you with divergent perspectives of the “right” approach to improving a variety of social problems. To varying degrees of success, I’ve tried to complicate your understanding about what’s “right” and “wrong.” Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide where your moral compass points.

In your final blog post, I’ve asked you to reflect on the ethical dilemmas you’ve encountered in this course by imagining that you are giving survival advice to a future SOC 105 student. When drawing conclusions about ethically complicated issues, which decision-making lens do you recommend they use, and why? I look forward to reading your letters to fellow Lakers, thanks for a great semester!