Week 2–8 Discussion Prompts: Prepare An Initiative ✓ Solved

Week 2–8 Discussion Prompts: For each week, prepare an initial i

Week 2–8 Discussion Prompts: For each week, prepare an initial post addressing the specified questions, using APA format and citing at least one scholarly article with a link.

Week 2: Religion and Ethics — Analyze the moral frameworks of divine command ethics, natural law ethics, and emotivism in a nursing scenario in which a 12-year-old patient requires a blood transfusion that the parents oppose on religious grounds. Consider what each framework would say about the nurse’s obligation and the patient’s welfare, and reflect on your own stance.

Week 3: Self and Others — Discuss conflicts between self and community duties, professional versus familial duties, and national obligations, drawing on social contract ethics to explain how a community might resolve competing loyalties.

Week 4: Utilitarianism — Address utilitarian reasoning in hypothetical scenarios (end-of-life decisions, data/privacy issues, and affirmative action or policy design). Compare utilitarian conclusions with ethical egoism and social contract theory, and state your reasoned position.

Week 5: Kant’s Ethics — Explore personal and communal factors in debates such as death penalty or abortion from a Kantian perspective, applying the categorical imperatives and the principle of treating persons as ends in themselves.

Week 6: Caring About Feminism — Compare care-based ethics with rights-based ethics on issues such as poverty, substance use, and access to health care. Discuss how care ethics and rights ethics would guide responses to these issues and consider relevant guidelines for healthcare technologies and social technologies.

Week 7: Virtuous Person, Virtuous Citizen — Articulate a moral dilemma that requires a virtue or set of virtues, apply Aristotle’s golden mean to determine the best course of action, and discuss conflicts between moral duties (loyalty to community vs. self, professional vs. familial, national vs. personal).

Week 8: Contemplation and Consideration — Create a personal ethical philosophy (at least one of virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, or social contract ethics) and explain its contents. Apply this philosophy to John Doe’s case, and discuss how the veil of ignorance or another theory of justice would address that case.

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

The eight weekly discussions collectively traverse classic and contemporary ethical theories and their practical application to professional practice and public life. Across divine command, natural law, emotivism, care ethics, rights theory, utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, and social contract theory, students examine how theories guide judgments about complex moral conflicts. This paper synthesizes the cleaned prompts into a unified scholarly reflection, while illustrating each week’s reasoning with well-established ethical frameworks and applying them to clinical and civic scenarios. The analysis uses foundational sources in ethics to ground interpretation and to show how theoretical commitments translate into action in healthcare settings, policy design, and everyday moral choice (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019). The discussion also references pivotal thinkers across history, including Augustine, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Mill, and contemporary voices in the care ethics tradition (Gilligan; Noddings).

Week 2 Analysis: Religion, Free Will, and Ethical Reasoning

A foundational issue in Week 2 is whether moral responsibility is compatible with religious belief in divine sovereignty. Augustine’s treatment of free will posits that humans possess the capacity to choose, even in the presence of divine foreknowledge (Augustine, ca. 400 CE). This stance creates a space for moral accountability, which contrasts with determinist readings that emphasize divine will as determining outcomes. In contrast, divine command ethics asserts that right action is that which God commands; natural law ethics (as developed in the Thomistic tradition) claims that moral truths are accessible via human reason insofar as they reflect God’s eternal law. Emotivism, by contrast, treats moral judgments as expressions of attitude rather than claims about objective facts, challenging the idea that moral discourse has intrinsic cognitive content. In the nursing transfusion scenario, divine command ethics and natural law might converge on preserving life and the child’s welfare, but may diverge on the role of parental religious beliefs. Emotivism would frame the decision as a matter of expressing commitments and values rather than discovering universal moral laws. From a nursing perspective, Beauchamp and Childress (2019) emphasize patient welfare and professional ethics, urging care-based judgment that respects patient autonomy when appropriate, while prioritizing life-saving interventions in critical cases. Augustine’s emphasis on freedom and responsibility supports the nurse’s duty to act in the patient’s best interests, while acknowledging the tensions created for family relationships and religious conviction (Augustine, ca. 400 CE).

Key takeaways: In clinical ethics, balancing respect for religious beliefs with the obligation to save a child’s life often requires careful ethical analysis and, when necessary, adherence to professional standards that aim to protect patient welfare. A nuanced approach recognizes the limits of divine command and natural law in situations where patient welfare is at stake, while still honoring patients’ and families’ beliefs whenever possible.

Week 3 Analysis: Self, Community, and Social Contract

Week 3 foregrounds the tension between individual interests and community welfare, framed through social contract theory. Hobbes argued that a social contract is necessary to escape a state of nature characterized by fear and competition, creating political obligation for mutual protection and order (Hobbes, 1651). Locke added that natural rights to life, liberty, and property constrain governmental power, establishing a basis for legitimate political authority (Locke, 1689). Rawls later reframed social contract reasoning through the veil of ignorance, arguing that principles of justice should be chosen without knowledge of one’s own place in society (Rawls, 1971). In professional contexts, federal and state policies often require balancing duties to patients, families, and communities—an exercise in applying social contract ethics to real-world dilemmas. For example, environmental health, public safety, and resource allocation require fair procedures that protect the common good while recognizing individual rights. In practice, nursing and other professions must navigate loyalty to colleagues and institutions against familial obligations and broader national commitments, integrating professional codes of ethics and social contract considerations (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019).

Reflection: Social contract theory supports transparent processes, fair distribution of burdens, and justifiable policies that all parties could reasonably endorse from an impartial position. This helps align professional duties with civic responsibilities while acknowledging the legitimacy of personal loyalties.

Week 4 Analysis: Utilitarianism, Safety, and Policy Trade-offs

The week’s core is utility: actions are moral if they maximize happiness or minimize suffering given available information about consequences. Utilitarianism requires evaluating outcomes and the likelihood of different results, often under conditions of uncertainty. In the three hypothetical options—end-of-life welfare decisions, data-privacy considerations for a new app, and affirmative action in admissions—a utilitarian calculus would weigh overall welfare, balancing individual harms and benefits against collective goods. The ethical egoist would prioritize self-interest, while social contract theory would weigh outcomes that rational parties would accept under fair procedures. A utilitarian approach would justify interventions that prevent greater harm, such as preserving life when it clearly benefits the patient and family, but could conflict with personal autonomy or religious beliefs. Beauchamp and Childress (2019) emphasize the need to assess consequences in clinical ethics, including the possible impact on patients, families, and the health system as a whole. Ethical debates around privacy and public safety illustrate the tension between utility and rights, requiring careful specification of who gains and who bears costs. This week’s analysis demonstrates the need to distinguish outcome-based reasoning from duties and rights-based limitations to avoid ethical overreach.

Conclusion: Utilitarian reasoning must be complemented by rights considerations (respect for autonomy), duties to others, and institutional constraints to avoid endorsing morally questionable policies simply because they produce favorable aggregate results.

Week 5 Analysis: Kantian Ethics and Moral Universality

Kant’s universalizability principle commands actions that could be willed as universal laws and treats persons as ends in themselves. This framework challenges policies that instrumentalize individuals or permit hypothetical exceptions to moral duties. In debates like the death penalty or abortion, Kantian ethics emphasizes respect for rational agency and the intrinsic worth of persons, pushing back against uses of individuals merely as means to an end, such as state punishment or instrumental abortion. A nuanced Kantian account would require examining the motives behind actions and whether the action could be consistently universalized without contradiction. The discussion of dual obligations—individual redeemability and communal welfare—benefits from Kant’s insistence on dignified treatment and the moral worth of each person, even when outcomes appear favorable otherwise. This perspective complements other ethical theories by placing duties and respect for persons at the center of moral judgment (Kant, 1785/1993).

In practical terms, Kantian analysis would demand clear justification for penalties or restrictiveness that treats persons as instruments, and would require that policies preserve autonomy, dignity, and universalizable maxims that respect human worth (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019).

Week 6 Analysis: Caring vs. Rights Ethics in Social Policy

Care ethics emphasizes relationships, dependency, and responsive care, often highlighting social justice concerns in poverty, health disparities, and access to care (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984). Rights-based ethics, by contrast, centers on entitlements and protections, such as the right to health care or to be free from discrimination (Rawls, 1971). This week’s comparison invites critical evaluation of which framework better addresses poverty and health inequities, and how policy might reflect both relational obligations and individual entitlements. In healthcare technology, the ethics of care stresses the relational implications of innovations—how they affect patient–provider relationships, trust, and caregiving burdens—while rights-based analysis emphasizes consent, privacy, and fair access. A balanced approach would integrate the strengths of both: ensuring robust protections for patients’ autonomy and dignity, while recognizing the ethical significance of caring relations in real-world care settings (Noddings, 1984; Gilligan, 1982).

Week 7 Analysis: Virtue Ethics and Moral Character

Aristotle’s virtue ethics centers on the cultivation of character and the golden mean—the point between excess and deficiency that yields virtue. A moral dilemma requiring virtue should be assessed by which action a virtuous agent would characteristically choose and how action reveals a stable moral disposition. Beyond action, the conflicts of moral duties—such as loyalty to community versus self, or professional versus familial obligations—are examined through virtue ethics as continuous formation of character rather than isolated decisions. The analysis should demonstrate the role of rational deliberation (phronēsis) and the alignment of action with a virtuous life grounded in reason and social flourishing (Aristotle, c. 340 BCE).

Week 8 Analysis: Personal Ethical Philosophy and Application

In Week 8, you articulate a personal ethical philosophy that includes at least one of the major frameworks: virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, or social contract ethics. You then apply this philosophy to John Doe’s case, exploring how your theory would resolve moral questions and how the veil of ignorance or another justice theory would address the case. This exercise emphasizes the construction of a coherent, defendable ethical stance grounded in the theories studied, while also considering how bias, social positioning, and structural factors shape moral judgment. The aim is not to prescribe a single correct answer, but to demonstrate principled reasoning, consistency in application, and openness to critique (Kant, 1785/1993; Rawls, 1971; Aristotle, c. 340 BCE).

References

• Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2019). Principles of Biomedical Ethics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/principles-of-biomedical-ethics-9780199335348
• Kant, I. (1785/1993). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-groundwork/
• Mill, J. S. (1863). Utilitarianism. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11224
• Aristotle. (c. 340 BCE). Nicomachean Ethics. MIT Classics. https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
• Locke, J. (1689). Two Treatises of Government. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370
• Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207
• Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Yale University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=Qg3qAAAAMAAJ
• Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/title/in-a-different-voice
• Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A Relational Approach to Moral Education. University of California Press. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520053747/caring
• Augustine, S. (ca. 400). On Free Will. New Advent. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1101.htm