"Introduction to Ethics: An Open Educational Resource" is now available!

As part of my sabbatical project for Spring 2019 at Golden West College I generated a crowd-sourced textbook for an introductory level course in Ethics. With the generous help of other talented philosophers (thank you to everyone who helped out), this work is now complete! You can download it using the links to the left or by clicking one of these links for the appropriate file:

Download PDF  

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Below is the table of contents:

UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION
1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin)
2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba)
3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr)
4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin)
5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge)
6 The Ethics of our Digital Selves (Noah Levin)

UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD”
7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas)
8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge)
9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis)
10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin)
11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob)
12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob)

UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS
13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar)
14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies)
15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman)
16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin)
17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar)
18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes)

UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS
19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh)
20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill)
21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge)
22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin)
23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton)
24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill)

UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY
25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato)
26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley)
27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant)
28 The Virtues (Aristotle)
29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche)
30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko)

"Philosophy of Western Religions: An Open Educational Resource" is now available!

As part of my sabbatical project for Spring 2019 at Golden West College I generated a crowd-sourced textbook for an introductory level Philosophy of Western Religions course. With the generous help of other talented philosophers (thank you to everyone who helped out), this work is now complete! You can download it using the links to the left or by clicking one of these links for the appropriate file:

Download PDF  

Download ePub

Download .DOCX 

Below is the table of contents:

UNIT ONE: THE BASICS OF RELIGIONS AND THE NATURE OF BELIEF
1 Philosophy of Religion, God, and Theology (Noah Levin)
2 Cults, Extremism, and Fundamentalism (Noah Levin)
3 Science and Theology (Kenneth Cauthen)
4 What Makes a Religion Special? (Noah Levin)
5 The Ethics of Belief (W.K. Clifford)
6 The Will to Believe (William James)
7 What Does it Mean to Believe in God? (Baron d’Holbach)

UNIT TWO: THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
8 The Ontological Argument & The Lost Island Objection (St. Anselm & Gaunilo of Marmoutiers)
9 The Cosmological Argument (St. Thomas Aquinas)
10 Objections to the Cosmological Argument (Fred Curry)
11 The Teleological Argument (William Paley)
12 Objections to the Teleological Argument (David Hume)
13 Argument from Design (Noah Levin)
14 Criticisms of the Argument from Design (Noah Levin)
15 The Wager (Blaise Pascal)

UNIT THREE: ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
16 The Various Traits of God (Tom Metcalf)
17 What Type of God is it Rational to Believe in? (Noah Levin)
18 Can God do the Impossible? (Tom Metcalf)
19 The Problem of Evil (David Hume)
20 Theodicies as a Response to the Problem of Evil (Tom Metcalf)
21 Free Will and the Traits of God (Noah Levin)

UNIT FOUR: THE EVOLUTION OF WESTERN THEISTIC BELIEFS
22 Selections from the Gospel of Mark (Gospel of Mark)
23 The Gospels, “Q”, Jesus, and the Early Church (J. K. Miles)
24 Maimonides and Jewish Philosophy (Maimonides)
25 Selections from The Quran (The Quran)

UNIT FIVE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE MORAL, AND SOCIETY
26 What do we do About Religious Disagreements? (Kristin Seemuth Whaley)
27 Is it Good to “Have Faith”?  (Noah Levin)
28 Morality and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley)
29 Tolerance in a Global Society (Noah Levin)
30 Religion, the After-Life, and Immortality (Noah Levin)