By Anne Thomson
Ethical thinking skills for everyone
Subject
Themes
Ethical dilemmas confront everyone, from personal choices about promises and pregnancies to political questions about capital punishment and foreign aid. Navigating these dilemmas well requires not a set of ready-made answers but a toolkit of reasoning skills built on three pillars: the ability to analyse arguments, the ability to make well-reasoned decisions, and the commitment to fair-mindedness.
Ethical dilemmas confront everyone, from personal choices about promises and pregnancies to political questions about capital punishment and foreign aid. Navigating these dilemmas well requires not a set of ready-made answers but a toolkit of reasoning skills built on three pillars: the ability to…
Published in 1999, this work emerged at a significant moment for the critical thinking movement in higher education. The 1980s and 1990s saw a growing recognition that universities needed to teach not just disciplinary knowledge but also the transferable skills of reasoning, analysis, and…
Moral reasoning is not a mysterious or purely subjective activity. It follows identifiable structures that can be analysed, assessed, and improved. At its core, every moral argument consists of reasons offered in support of a conclusion, and the quality of the argument depends on whether those…
Autonomy, defined as the capacity to make decisions for oneself, emerges as one of three foundational moral values alongside the avoidance of harm and the pursuit of justice. Its importance is demonstrated through a series of cases where ignoring autonomy leads to morally deficient decisions, even…
Justice, defined as "treating equals equally," stands as a foundational moral value that cannot be reduced to or derived from the consequences of actions. This claim is central to the critique of utilitarianism and the development of a richer framework for ethical decision-making. The childminder's…
Two rival moral theories offer competing answers to the most fundamental question in ethics: what makes an action right or wrong? Utilitarianism says consequences determine morality; deontological ethics says some actions are right or wrong regardless of their outcomes. Testing both theories against…
Fair-mindedness is essential to good ethical reasoning, yet defining it precisely proves surprisingly difficult. It is not mere tolerance, if tolerance means politely listening to views one has no intention of taking seriously. Nor is it the belief that every viewpoint deserves equal weight, since…
Moral reasoning appears everywhere, from newspaper opinion columns to private deliberation about personal dilemmas. An argument, in this context, consists of one or more reasons offered in support of a claim called the conclusion. Moral arguments are distinguished from other types of argument by…
Two crucial questions govern the assessment of any argument. First, are the reasons true, or at least acceptable? Second, do the reasons actually support the conclusion? These questions are deceptively simple but demand considerable skill to apply well. Consider the argument: "Withholding…
Longer and more complex passages of moral reasoning now provide the testing ground for all the skills developed so far. Real-world discussions in newspapers, journals, and political speeches rarely present their arguments in neat, linear form. Reasons and conclusions may be jumbled, irrelevant…
Skilled criticism of other people's reasoning is valuable, but it is not enough. Effective critical thinking requires the ability and willingness to make well-reasoned decisions of one's own. An "optimising strategy" provides the basic structure: consider why a decision is necessary, list the…
Ethical reasoning depends on concepts such as harm, autonomy, and justice, but using these terms effectively requires careful clarification. The simplest approach to defining a word involves stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for its application: "sister" means "female sibling," and…
Two major moral theories offer competing overarching principles for determining right action. Utilitarianism, originating with Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century and advocated by John Stuart Mill, holds that actions are right insofar as they produce the greatest happiness or maximum…
Opinions about ethical issues are often so strongly held that giving serious consideration to opposing views feels almost impossible. Yet basing moral judgements on prejudice rather than careful reasoning is a failure we should guard against. Fair-mindedness is neither mere politeness towards those…
By Anne Thomson
Subject
Themes
Ethical dilemmas confront everyone, from personal choices about promises and pregnancies to political questions about capital punishment and foreign aid. Navigating these dilemmas well requires not a set of ready-made answers but a toolkit of reasoning skills built on three pillars: the ability to analyse arguments, the ability to make well-reasoned decisions, and the commitment to fair-mindedness.