Motto: "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten" B.F. Skinner
According to Callahan and Bok (1979) ethics courses should try to reach the following goals:
1. Stimulation of the moral imagination. This means that students should be encouraged to understand that there is "a moral point of view" and that moral conflicts are often inevitable and these conflicts are often difficult to resolve. Such a resolution can have as its results actual suffering or unhappiness. Students should realize that they live in a web of moral relationships.
2. Recognition of ethical issues.
3. Development of analytical skills so that real issues of ethics and morality are exposed and not treated as emotional debating points.
4. "Elicitation of a sense of moral obligation and of personal responsibility for one's actions." Remember the motto of Cornell University: "Freedom with Responsibility".
5. Toleration for and resistance to disagreement and ambiguity. One should agree to disagree, and be aware that some rationales are a mixture of reason and emotion and sometimes words cannot be precise or have a different meaning for the speaker than for the listener, as a result of different experiences, different religions and or different cultural constraints under which each one has grown up.
In this course (AS414) we will attempt to meet these goals by:
1. Exploring a rational basis for ethical (moral) considerations that prevail in the relationships among people and to what extent such considerations should prevail in the relationships between human and non-human animals.
2. Providing all students an opportunity to use their imagination, their initiative and to utilize their expertise in solving ethical problems and/or in persuading others of their point of view.
3. Stimulating the development of critical thinking. For example: the writing of a critical book review, and either the writing of a critical term paper, defense of propositions, generated by the student, designing a board game or computer game in which ethical issues concerning animals are addressed or carrying out a student-generated project.
NOTE: It is important that all discussions be based on mutual respect for one another's point of view. This does not mean that discussions can not be vigorous.
5. Providing students an opportunity to do library research in preparation for each weekly discussion.
6. Alerting everyone of the dangers of certainty about ideas and frames of reference. This does not mean that this course has as a goal to change your convictions or points of view, on the contrary.
7. Making everyone aware that ethics evolve, and that the ethical considerations have resulted in different conclusions in the past than these considerations do in the present.