A moral or ethical Issue

What Then Shall I Do?

Final Project for SAGE 450: Self, Community, and World

This course asks you to consider your emerging sense of identity and purpose.  It will give you a chance to think about the person you are becoming and your responsibilities as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of the world.  This course raised many moral issues, and there are many more we have not explicitly addressed.  For any moral issue, we each bring a set of moral values.  Those values come from somewhere—they have a basis in our experience and influences.   It is often important to consider multiple ethical perspectives when considering global ethical problems, and to evaluate among different perspectives to figure out what to do about those problems.  Consider all of the assignments and activities we have done this semester when doing this final project, although this paper must be distinct from previous papers.

In this final project for SAGE 450, we ask you to write a ~10 page paper that examines a moral issue of personal concern to you.  Your task isto do the following:

• Outline the issue in question, in its community and global context—why is the problem a moral one? What different moral perspectives are involved?The issue you choose does NOT have to be about food.
• What are others doing about it (sources are necessary here)? What moral issues are resolved by these actions?  What moral issues are raised by these actions?
• Since you will choose a moral issue of importance to you, you must also explain your value system, and what you hope to do to contribute to a resolution of the problem, locally and/or globally. What moral considerations are there for you?  What moral issues will be resolved by any actions you would take?  What moral issues will be raised by these actions?

Your paper will be evaluated according to:

• how well you research the problem
• how well you think through the moral issues involved and integrate different perspectives (including your own)
• how well you weave together the ideas in a stylistically clear, grammatically correct way.
• how well you use outside sources