Deontological Ethical Approaches
This week I would like you to reflect on Discrimination vs. Religious Freedom: The Wedding Cake Baker. It’s a news article.
Your approach to this symposium discussion can be a bit more open-ended than the main discussion, remembering that your main goal is to work together to identify:
- the main ethical questions and considerations,
- evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the reasons for different positions one might hold,
- apply the theories we have examined thus far to support or criticize the topic discussed.
This week, you will consider how deontology applies to a controversy, dilemma, event, or scenario selected by your instructor. It is a chance for you to discuss together the ethical issues and questions that it raises, your own response to those, and whether that aligns with or does not align with a deontological approach. The aim is not to simply assert your own view or to denigrate other views, but to identify, evaluate, and discuss the moral reasoning involved in addressing the chosen issue.
Your posts should remain focused on the ethical considerations, and at some point in your contribution you must specifically address the way someone with a deontological view would approach this issue by explaining and evaluating that approach.
If you have a position, you should strive to provide reasons in defense of that position.
400 words
