If I remember correctly, in one of my classes, the prof defined ethics as determining what is right or wrong, but taking into consideration that circumstances influence ethics. Morals, for my money, are less... flexible, rooted more in emotion, and, as I said, more subjective.
Considering that the assignment was for the students to write a research paper, using research and facts to prove or disprove their thesis, I was hesitant to accept any topics in which people were deeply invested emotionally. I was willing to meet with any student who WANTED to write on those topics, and to discuss how they planned to proceed, but reminded them that research papers based on their personal belief system were problematic at best.
So you would have been willing to accept a paper arguing that abortion was or wasn't unethical?
To answer your question, it would have depended heavily on the student, how they planned to conduct their research, what reliable sources they expected to use, and so forth. I can't answer yes or no, because every student's thought process and research paper strategy was different. My first question would have been, "And how do you plan to prove/disprove that?" And my decision would have been based heavily on whatever their reply might have been. (The woman who wanted to write that abortion was morally wrong wanted to cite heavily from the Bible -- something I found problematic for a research paper. She then wanted to write about video games being "morally wrong," at which point, I suggested to her that she could probably make an excellent argument against excessive violence in video games, as long as she recognized that the video game industry does use a rating system. I don't remember what she eventually wrote about.)
I did encourage them to tackle more concrete issues that relied less on "I feel" statements, because, for a freshman/sophomore comp class (a good number of whom consistently struggled with identifying reliable vs. unreliable sources), a research paper dealing with concrete issues would have yielded more research results and citation sources. Less of a headache overall.
But my big thing was "you cannot argue beliefs or personal preference." The analogy I used most often was that if you prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, no amount of persuasion is going to make you believe otherwise. Likewise, no amount of verbiage is going to convince a Hindu it really is actually okay to eat beef.
Re: I've heard of this on an NCIS episode in which Ducky was getting his master's... (didn't get it)
Considering that the assignment was for the students to write a research paper, using research and facts to prove or disprove their thesis, I was hesitant to accept any topics in which people were deeply invested emotionally. I was willing to meet with any student who WANTED to write on those topics, and to discuss how they planned to proceed, but reminded them that research papers based on their personal belief system were problematic at best.
So you would have been willing to accept a paper arguing that abortion was or wasn't unethical?
To answer your question, it would have depended heavily on the student, how they planned to conduct their research, what reliable sources they expected to use, and so forth. I can't answer yes or no, because every student's thought process and research paper strategy was different. My first question would have been, "And how do you plan to prove/disprove that?" And my decision would have been based heavily on whatever their reply might have been. (The woman who wanted to write that abortion was morally wrong wanted to cite heavily from the Bible -- something I found problematic for a research paper. She then wanted to write about video games being "morally wrong," at which point, I suggested to her that she could probably make an excellent argument against excessive violence in video games, as long as she recognized that the video game industry does use a rating system. I don't remember what she eventually wrote about.)
I did encourage them to tackle more concrete issues that relied less on "I feel" statements, because, for a freshman/sophomore comp class (a good number of whom consistently struggled with identifying reliable vs. unreliable sources), a research paper dealing with concrete issues would have yielded more research results and citation sources. Less of a headache overall.
But my big thing was "you cannot argue beliefs or personal preference." The analogy I used most often was that if you prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla, no amount of persuasion is going to make you believe otherwise. Likewise, no amount of verbiage is going to convince a Hindu it really is actually okay to eat beef.