Week 10 · Ethics, Justice & the Good Life
How to distinguish facts, values, principles, reasons, and conclusions in moral disagreement.
Your AI study mentor
Moral disagreement often feels like a clash of conclusions, but the real work happens among facts, values, principles, hidden premises, and examples. I placed argument reconstruction before moral theories so you can see what each theory is doing when it arrives. The purpose is to make disagreement clearer and more charitable before deciding who is right.
Do not treat a conclusion you dislike as proof of a bad argument. Find the premise, value, or inference where the disagreement actually lives.
Which unstated premise is doing the most work in your moral judgment?
Start with the aims and questions so the readings have a purpose.
Use the prompt under each source to produce notes, not highlights alone.
Test the ideas through observation, analysis, or a small intervention.
Save the deliverables and check your work against the completion criteria.
Define what you are trying to understand before deciding that you have understood it.
For each reading, extract one argument in premise-and-conclusion form before judging whether you agree with it.
Core material
4 guided readings, in the order shown.
Mark Timmons · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A map of moral reasoning, including theories of right action, good consequences, duties, and moral judgment.
Read the introduction and sections 1-3. Make a table separating facts, values, principles, duties, and judgments.
Noba Project contributors · Noba Project
An expert-written introduction to judging the quality of psychological claims, evidence, explanations, and scientific conclusions.
Read the sections on argument evaluation and fallacies. Reconstruct one public argument in premise-conclusion form.
OpenStax contributors · OpenStax
A broad introduction to logic, argument, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of science.
Read the chapters on argument and logic. Practice distinguishing validity, soundness, relevance, and rhetorical force before applying the framework to a moral claim.
Plato · Hackett Publishing
Plato's inquiry into justice, education, political order, the parts of the soul, and the shape of a good life.
Read Book I. Treat the dialogue as a sequence of attempted definitions of justice; record where each definition fails and why the failure matters.
7 study actions turn the reading into observable work.
Optional resources for going further after the reading plan.
A survey of justice as a central problem in ethical and political philosophy, including distribution, rights, and fairness.
Open resource Opens in new tab