LitMUSE

Do you believe that there should be any effort to legally control the presentation of “news” by newspapers and television? Damage has been done to individuals as a result of loosely controlled media reports:

Lurid reporting of crime (especially bizarre ones) seems to trigger further incidents (e.g., skyjackings, snipings, sex crimes).
Different networks or newspapers have reported [...]

Any adult found guilty of having sex with a minor must serve a mandatory jail sentence of three years. A girl’s father found out, through her diary, that she was having sexual relations with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend; she is only fourteen. The girl’s father makes the D.A. prosecute the boyfriend. You are on the jury [...]

Sandy is an engineer on her way up in a major automobile manufacturing firm. She learns, through departmental gossip, that a new car designed by another department is being tested and has revealed a possibility of gas tank explosion on impact.
She is told that the car is not going to be redesigned until next season. [...]

Aristotle makes a case for the legitimacy of “instrumental ends,” i.e., acts that are done as a means to other ends, as an ethical concept if they help humans fulfill their functions as humans. This notion has a direct relationship to the oldest of moral issues: Are there some goals (ends) so important that they [...]

Early in 1985, Roswell Gilbert took the life of his 76-year-old wife, a victim of Alzheimer’s Disease. He claimed that in her intense suffering and embarrassment, she begged him to end her life and that he acted out of both love for her and obligation to her. He was found guilty of first degree murder [...]

Thrasymachus claimed that “might makes right.” While most civilized people decry such a position, historically we have resorted to the use of might in solving problems probably more frequently than we have any other one solution. When this is done, it is usually followed immediately by a complex moral justification. What is your position on [...]

The gods of Greek myth were invented by the people in an attempt to rationalize and explain the world around them. Before people can feel secure in their worlds, they must orient themselves therein; i.e., they must tentatively define what they believe to be the nature of the world so that they may develop a [...]

Gorgias asserted that objective perception is impossible. Socrates agreed that it is highly unlikely, but claimed that through knowledge of the self, through knowing where we individually are most likely to distort data, we can come ever closer to perceiving what is truth. With this in mind, what are your subjectivities, biases, prejudices, tastes, etc.? [...]

Test your attitude toward human rights legislation by examining your views on the issue which began in Miami several years ago and then rapidly spread across the nation: the attempt to legally abolish in public employment discrimination based on sexual preference (hetro/homo). Members of the gay community have decided in increasing numbers to no longer [...]

Consider your own means of arriving at specific decisions concerning the “rightness” or “wrongness” of certain activities. Are you more of a moral “relativist” or “absolutist” in this process? (Note: this is a question more of process than of specific moral issues though you may wish to refer to specific activities for examples.)