How to Prepare for Your Presentation:

1. What is happening in the news recently concerning your ethical subject of presentation?

You need to look at different sites such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, websites like Democracy Now, Truthdig, and Common Dreams as well as Fox news to see how your subject matter has been an issue in the news recently and how they argue for or against it.

1. Apply the ethical theories we studied: Psychological and Ethical Egoism, Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, Feminist Ethics of Care, Kant’s Deontology, and Mill’s Utilitarianism to the events and discussions to your relevant ethical issue in the news. For example, if your topic is abortion, do a research on recent events and discussions in the news around the topic and then in your PowerPoint presentation apply the ethical theories we learned in this course to those news and events about abortion.

1. Are the arguments being used around your topic of presentation in the news, the same or different from the one’s we read about in our text book?

You need to study all or most articles in the MacKinnon text (Ethics: Theory & Contemporary Issues) about your topic, and in your PowerPoint presentation compare and contrast those views with the discussions and events around the topic in the news. In another word, choose a set of “arguments” from Shaw’s text and compare them to the way the issue has been discussed recently in the news.

1. Check out interesting YouTube shows on your topic, i.e. Chomsky and Singer’s discussions on the topic of abortion on YouTube taken from Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire, or other YouTube presentations on the topic and choose a piece to show in the class during or after your PowerPoint presentation.