Hocbigg - Applied Ethics
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Introduction
Applied ethics is the branch of philosophy that takes moral theory and points it at real, contested problems: how a doctor should handle a refusal of treatment, what a company owes to the people affected by its decisions, who is accountable when an algorithm discriminates. Where moral philosophy asks in the abstract what makes actions right, applied ethics supplies the concepts and the working method for analyzing concrete cases — and that method travels far beyond academia. It underlies clinical ethics consultation, compliance and corporate responsibility work, technology governance, and policy analysis, and it sharpens everyday judgment about genuinely hard choices.
This curriculum assumes no prior training in philosophy. It is built for independent study: nearly every resource is free and openly accessible — university open courseware, open-access textbooks, and free online courses — and the few paid items are canonical books retained where no free equivalent matches their quality.
The six subjects are arranged in a deliberate order. The first three — ethical theory, logic and critical reasoning, and the methods of applied ethics — form a sequence and are best worked through in that order: theory gives you the vocabulary of the main normative positions, the reasoning subject trains you to reconstruct and evaluate arguments, and the methods subject teaches the craft of moving from principles to cases. The three subjects that follow are applied domains: bioethics, business and professional ethics, and the ethics of technology and AI. They draw on the same foundations but not on each other, so once the first three are behind you, you can take them in whatever order matches your interests. Bioethics comes first among them because it is where the discipline's case methods matured, but it is not a prerequisite for the rest.
A practical note on resources: each subject lists several, and you are not expected to complete all of them. A workable pattern is to choose one main resource as your spine for a subject — a full lecture series or a textbook — and treat the others as supplements or second angles on the same material.
This page covers only the core: the foundational subjects that everyone in the discipline should study before specializing. It deliberately leaves out specialized subfields and reference material. Once you have worked through it, Advanced Topics collects the specialization tracks — advanced bioethics, deeper work on AI and business ethics, environmental and climate ethics, and global justice. When you want to stop studying and start producing, Projects has step-by-step guides for writing case analyses, policy briefs, op-eds, and ethical impact assessments. For deeper literature, turn to Readings; for extended video and audio material, see Courses.
Curriculum
Foundations of Ethical Theory
The major normative theories — utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, and contractualism — plus the basic metaethical questions about what moral claims are and whether they can be objective.
Introduction to Ethics: Moral Problems and the Good Life (MITx / MIT Open Learning Library) - free interactive course requiring no registration; covers well-being, moral objectivity, historical approaches, and what we owe to others.
Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature (Open Yale Courses / Tamar Gendler) - complete free video lectures pairing classic texts from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Rawls with findings from cognitive science.
Justice with Michael Sandel (Harvard University / YouTube) - Harvard's famous introductory series that stress-tests utilitarian, Kantian, and libertarian theories against real moral dilemmas.
Ethics for A-Level (Mark Dimmock & Andrew Fisher / Open Book Publishers) - free open-access textbook covering normative ethics, metaethics, and applied topics in a rigorous but readable way.
The Elements of Moral Philosophy (James Rachels & Stuart Rachels / McGraw-Hill) - the most widely used concise ethics textbook; a good paid alternative spine if you want a traditional single-author survey.
Logic and Critical Reasoning
How to identify, reconstruct, and evaluate arguments — the core skill that all ethical analysis and case discussion depends on.
Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking (Matthew Van Cleave / Open Textbook Library) - free open textbook covering argument identification, reconstruction, informal fallacies, and basic formal logic.
forall x: Calgary (Open Logic Project) - free open formal logic textbook for learners who want symbolic depth beyond informal argument analysis.
Methods and Frameworks in Applied Ethics
How to move from theory to practice — case analysis, principlism, casuistry, and reflective equilibrium, plus structured decision-making frameworks for real dilemmas.
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making (Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University) - free guide that walks through recognizing issues, gathering facts, and evaluating alternatives through utilitarian, rights, fairness, common-good, and virtue lenses.
NHSEB Case Library (National High School Ethics Bowl) - free, searchable archive of over 300 real-world ethics cases with discussion questions; the practice ground for applying the frameworks.
Practical Ethics (Peter Singer / Cambridge University Press) - the canonical demonstration of systematic reasoning from theory to concrete problems such as equality, animals, and climate.
Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Tom L. Beauchamp & James F. Childress / Oxford University Press) - the definitive statement of principlism and of the specification and balancing methods used across applied ethics.
Bioethics and Medical Ethics
The most developed applied domain — consent, autonomy, end-of-life care, reproduction, research ethics, and allocation — taught through canonical cases and the four-principles approach.
Bioethics: The Law, Medicine, and Ethics of Reproductive Technologies and Genetics (Harvard Professional and Lifelong Learning) - free self-paced course on the edX platform covering surrogacy, enhancement, genetic information, and tissue ownership.
Bioethics: A Coursebook (Compost Collective / Open Book Publishers) - free open-access coursebook with chapters on health care ethics, research ethics, and emerging biotechnology.
Medical Ethics Online (Peoples-uni / NextGenU) - free self-directed course on consent, confidentiality, and end-of-life decisions, built for independent learners.
Business and Professional Ethics
Ethical reasoning applied to markets, firms, and professional roles — corporate responsibility, stakeholder theory, whistleblowing, and the behavioral science of why good people do bad things.
Business Ethics (Stephen M. Byars & Kurt Stanberry / OpenStax) - free peer-reviewed textbook covering ethical theory, stakeholders, corporate social responsibility, and workplace cases.
Ethics Unwrapped (McCombs School of Business, UT Austin) - free short-video series explaining behavioral ethics concepts like bounded ethicality, incrementalism, and moral disengagement.
Giving Voice to Values (Mary C. Gentile) - free curriculum focused on the practical side — scripts, rehearsal, and pre-scripting for acting on your values under organizational pressure.
Ethics of Technology and AI
The ethical analysis of computing, data, and algorithmic systems — privacy, surveillance, bias, accountability, and the responsible design of AI.
Ethics of AI (University of Helsinki) - free interactive course covering AI ethics concepts through short lessons and practical exercises.
Global MOOC on the Ethics of AI (UNESCO / Coursera) - free 10-module course built on UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of AI; audit access on Coursera.
Weapons of Math Destruction (Cathy O'Neil / Broadway Books) - accessible case studies of how algorithms in policing, insurance, education, and credit can reinforce inequality.