Ethics for Life: A Text with Readings

by Judith A. Boss

Ethics for Life provides students with an ethics curriculum that has been shown to significantly improve students’ ability to make real-life moral decisions. Solidly based on the latest research on the moral development of college students and providing students with a broad overview of the major world moral philosophies and case studies based on real-life issues. Ethics for Life is presented in a historical and interdisciplinary context offering a more holistic approach.

Genres: Philosophy, Textbooks

480 pages, Unbound

First published June 1, 1998

Reviews

[Julian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ethics For Life includes heavy biases toward certain moral positions. In the chapter "Ethical Egoism" Judith A. Boss states that psychological egoism is wrong because it is non falsifiable (“any good scientific theory...must be falsifiable.”) What Boss fails to mention is that no moral theory she presents can meet the requirement of “scientific falsifiability,” just look at divine command theory (mentioned two chapters earlier) moral actions at the command of a divine being are the very definition of “non falsifiable.” Applying this argument to only one moral theory (when it applies to all of them) is incredibly misleading.

The author obviously prefers certain moral theories over others and even though she offers critiques at the end of each section the critiques of certain moral positions are given preferential treatment. For instance, at the end of her “critique” of deontology she states: “Despite its shortcomings, the strengths and richness of deontology far outshine its weaknesses.” Boss then goes on to say that Kantian deontology is probably the most “fertile” modern moral philosophy. No other positions are given the chance of a retort and glowing review by the author. Boss also makes use of the Stanford prison experiment to support some of her claims. This study is the epitome of selection bias and is hardly “scientific” (look below for links to Fromm's critique and a Skeptoid podcast on the experiment.)

I only gave this book two stars instead of one because some of the sections seemed to contain pertinent, non-biased, information. A student should not be able to tell from a textbook what the position of the author is (so long as the author's opinion is not the subject of study). I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who wants an honest and fair assessment of ethical systems. Avoid.

Fromm on the Stanford prison experiment:
http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociology...

What You Didn't Know About the Stanford Prison Experiment:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4102

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a lot of good/interesting things in it, but ultimately I found it to be too dense and very unclear. Often the author would drop ideas suddenly within the chapter by simply cutting the paragraph off with a new bolded topic, not by actually bringing the idea to any kind of conclusion. The length of the chapters did not help this either.

Interesting but ultimately over ambitious and very poorly organized.

[Faiza Hussein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for learning basics of ethics and philosophy, both Western and Eastern concepts.

There's updated example of events in the last 4 years that mentioned in the book.

It's interesting and inspired me to read classics books like Brothers Karamazov, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and Divine Comedy by Italian poet Dante, etc.

[Muhammad Tofail]

sgl;k

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I like about this book is what most people despise: the author is very upfront about her positions on each ethical theory. This makes it that much more important to think critically about what you are reading and form your own opinions.

[Amy Sjoquist · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I read in class was ok.