ETHICS for Media Psychology |
Part I: The Ethical Landscape
-> Week 3- Developmental ethics (May 22 - 28 - 2017)
Competencies and QuestionsEssential question(s): How do we develop our ethical reasoning capabilities as individuals, both pre-adult and as adults? Does everyone experience a similar kind of ethical evolution? What is the relationship between cognitive and ethical development? Are there differences in ethical evolution that are associated with culture and gender?
Competency focus this week Typically, most competencies are addressed in some way in each week's material. However, each week focuses on some competencies more than others. This week's competencies are identified below: Objectives for this week:
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Content and ActivitiesOverview
Last week we considered how ethics, in a very broad sense, evolved socially and philosophically. This week we develop perspectives to look at how we develop our ethics as individuals, relatively free of culture. I am approaching this material at the following levels:
1. The sociological, anthropology perspective One place to look for "ethical universals" is to look at the world through the lens of "structural functionalism," a school of social science which:
Basically, structural functionalism explains ethical behavior in terms of the kinds of social arrangement we all agree to observe, formally and informally. When we stray ethically, it is not in an abstract or philosophical sense, but in terms of the arrangements we have agreed to live by: legal, social, professional and personal. Thus, we develop our individual ethics as a response to conditioning within the context of a particular society with particular norms of behavior. The functionalists are interested in the fact that all categories of human activity, from courting to cooking, are present in every society. To them, differences in specific approaches among cultures simply prove the structuralist perspective: We are very alike in structure, very different in detail. Thus, the specifics of our ethics may change from culture to culture, but our ethics structures often do not. 2. The psychological perspective Our readings this week consider ethical development from a more personal point of view. Like functionalism theory, ethical development theory says we all develop our ethical schema in much the same way, but for different reasons. Developmentalists see us us passing through the same stages of development and headed toward the same goals as a function of neuro-biology, which is channeled by culture. The result is that the details of our growth may look very different, but our paths are very similar. We will consider some of the most important theorists of developmental ethics, including Piaget, Kohlberg and Gilligan, to help explain this. Their work does not extend into later adulthood. The issues with this are obvious. First, the brain's frontal cortex, the seat of our ethical reasoning powers, is not fully developed until sometime in the early twenties. Second, even after our brains stop evolving biologically, experience and learning can continue to modify our ethical perspectives throughout our lives. This leads to the question: What does personal ethical development look like as we journey through adulthood? Read
These materials relate more to human development ages through roughly age 18.
Read/view These materials relate more to human development in adulthood.
Read, optional
Moodle Questions, Postings:
Your contributions to the conversation. Each week make one major posting and respond to three colleagues' postings. |