virtue
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The Tuning-In Relationship (2023), Part 2
Picking up from the story of the young engineer who needed to find the groove of a fraught meeting at work, I turn to set up the main argument of my 2023 paper on music and ethics. The Tuning-In Relationship These reflections on the plight of the young engineer point toward the possibility that ethical… Continue reading
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The Tuning-In Relationship (2023), Part 1
A few years ago I finally made good on a long-ago promise to look into a possible connection – at least a parallel, perhaps something more – between music and ethics. In a 2015 post on teaching my older child how to drive, for example, I wrote: I picked up on the connection between music… Continue reading
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Citizens of Nowhere
Preparing for a class session on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, I came across a passage in Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue that gets to the heart of the idea of my recent post, “Ethics for Exiles.” It concerns the role of friendship in ethics and in political life. Friendship of course, on Aristotle’s view, involves affection. But… Continue reading
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Theoretical Commitments
I have long thought of myself as something of an agnostic on matters of moral theory. From the beginning I have concerned myself with practical decision-making, first with environmental ethics and policy and more recently with engineering ethics. I am now mainly concerned with how best to teach ethics to undergraduate students in engineering degree… Continue reading
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Scaffolding: The Virtue Template, revised
Some months ago, I posted a template I provided to students in my engineering ethics class, to assist them in thinking about virtues and vices in considering various options for responding to a complex problem situation. This, I explained, is an example of scaffolding, which is a crucial element in problem-based learning: it is an… Continue reading
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Integrity Test
I take ‘integrity’ to mean a kind of wholeness or consistency of character: someone with integrity can be counted on to behave with the same kind of self-control or courage or respect or honesty or fairness in any circumstances, even if no one is looking. An old test of integrity is the Ring of Gyges,… Continue reading
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Thinking about Virtue: A Bit of Scaffolding
I have been reading back in some literature on problem-based learning (PBL), and related matters, in preparation for writing a paper on my ongoing course-design process. Along the way, I made a discovery – or a re-discovery – that was immediately and urgently useful in the classes I’m teaching this semester. One of the basic… Continue reading
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Reading Aristotle with Engineers
Since I switched to problem-based learning in my ethics classes, I’ve been experimenting with different ways of introducing my students to ethical theory as such and helping them to develop a working knowledge of a small handful of particular theories. Part of my struggle in the past has been with trying to have them start… Continue reading