PHIL 104

Fall 2026 All Classes

All Classes

Intro to Ethics-ACP

Credit: 3 hours.

Some basic questions of ethics, discussed in the light of influential ethical theories and with reference to specific moral problems, such as: What makes an action morally right? Are moral standards absolute or relative? What is relation between personal morality and social morality, and between social morality and law? Course is identical to PHIL 105 except for the additional writing component.

Credit is not given for both PHIL 104 and either PHIL 105 or PHIL 106. Prerequisite: Completion of campus Composition I general education requirement.

This course satisfies the General Education Criteria in Fall 2022 for:

Advanced Composition

Humanities – Hist & Phil

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PHIL 104 class schedule data for fall 2026
	Status		CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
			65128	Online Online	A A	ARRANGED ARRANGED	n.a. n.a.	n.a. n.a.	Bojanowski, J Bojanowski, J	Availability: Open (Restricted) Part of Term: B Date Range: 10/19/26-12/09/26 Degree Notes: Advanced Composition, and Humanities - Hist & Phil course. Section Info: This course is an asynchronous course with a one live Zoom session per week. The live Zoom session will be recorded so that learners will have access to it even if they have to miss it. The course is divided into three parts. In the first part, we will explore various ethical questions such as: • Should we abandon privacy online to defend our national security? • Do we have a moral obligation to help the famine-stricken in poor countries? • Is it wrong to eat meat? • What types of content are we allowed to share on social media? • Is abortion morally permissible? • Why is gender stereotyping morally problematic? • Should people receive high rewards for outstanding performances if these performances depend on people’s natural advantages? It would be strange if we simply flipped a coin to determine the answer to each of these questions. Instead, we will think carefully about these questions. We will learn to critically assess and evaluate develop good arguments, and provide sound justifications for our answers. In the second part, we will move from these concrete questions to a more fundamental question: Is there a principle that underlies all our particular ethical judgments, and if so, what is this principle? We will evaluate John Stuart Mill's proposal that all our particular ethical judgments are guided by the principle that we ought to aim at “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” We will also consider alternative candidates. The final part of the course will show how ethical principles inform our fundamental political and economic institutions. This will lead us to the question about the nature of distributive justice: How should the benefits and burdens of a good society be distributed?