A conditional, if-then, statement is not an argument.

Anger or irritation with another person who challenges your position is a sign that your self-justification is working and you are winning the argument.

Critical moral thinking should start with the values we disagree on.

Differing values attached to gender roles argues for the notion that values may be somewhat relative.

Faculty are required to report plagiarism and cheating to the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs.

Illustrations and explanations are two types of arguments.

Offhand self-justification is self-defeating and adds to our burden of unsupportable opinions.

Premises are statements in an argument offered as evidence or reasons why one should accept a conclusion

Questions, including rhetorical questions, are never statements.

Relativism looks at the difference in moral values and concludes any moral opinion is as good as the next.

The aim of ethics is to be able to lock down one’s own position so that it has the status of the 10 commandments.

The “mind your own business” attitude of the relativist is an anti-social response.

There is a practical limit to relativism, i.e. we deal mostly with people who share many of our values.

This course is designated Writing Intensive and as such requires a minimum of 2500 words of written work.

Weston suggests engaging in ethics involves learnable skills, including: thinking systematically, constructively, and creatively about values.

When dealing with new situations it is useful to sort people into fixed moral categories.

When emailing the instructor students of this course are to use the following convention in the subject line: RS361 – <your section number> – <your name > - <brief reason for the email>, for example: Subject: RS361 – 14206 – John Doe – Schedule an Appointment

“Offhand self-justification” or rationalization may be an excuse for not really thinking about your position.

“Therefore” is a conclusion indicator.

An explanation is an argument.