Analyzing Moral Issues

This text with readings addresses a variety of timely and interesting moral issues, providing background information and primary source selections for each issue presented. It includes a chapter on ethical theory and covers a broad range of ethical perspectives—among them virtue ethics (Aristotelian and Confucian), Buddhist and feminist care ethics, and the Rawlsian and communitarian approaches. The fifth edition also includes new readings and case studies covering some of the more pressing issues of recent ethical debate, such as genetic enhancement of children, racism and sexism in the 2008 presidential elections, the effect of the U.S. Patriot Act on academic freedom, military conscription, and global warming.

Judith A. Boss earned her PhD in 1990 from Boston University, her MA from Dalhousie University in Canada in 1971, and her BA from the University of Western Australia in 1969. Prior to pursing a career in academia, she worked as a writer/researcher for the Nova Scotia Museum. She was on the faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1995 and worked as Assistant Director of Curriculum Affairs at Brown University School of Medicine until 2004 when she "retired" to return to full-time writing and became a visiting scholar with the philosophy department at Brown University. She continued, until last year, to teach one course a semester at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to her philosophical interests, she completed a MS in Human Development at URI in 1991 and has led faculty workshops and written extensively on the topic of college student development. She was recipient of a URI Foundation Grant to study the effects of community service learning on students' moral development and has served as a grant application reviewer for the Corporation for National Service. The author of nine books, her publications include ANALYZING MORAL ISSUES and ETHICS FOR LIFE, both with McGraw-Hill. Her Critical Thinking textbook THiNK, also with McGraw-Hill, just came out in 2009. She is published in, among other, The Journal of Moral Education, Public Affairs Quarterly, The Journal of Medical Ethics, Academic Medicine, Educational Theory, Free Inquiry, and The Journal of Experiential Education. During her spare time she volunteers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and is active in the Appalachian Mountain Club. An avid traveler, she has traveled with students from the University of Rhode Island and Brown Medical School to work with underserved, indigenous people in Guatemala and Mexico. Her favorite travel destination, however, is Antarctica, and she is currently looking for a publisher for a suspense/thriller she wrote that is set in Antarctica. She lives in Rhode Island with her daughter, son-in-law and twin granddaughters.