Advanced Topics in Applied Ethics

This document provides advanced specialization tracks for learners who have completed the core undergraduate curriculum in Applied Ethics. Rather than attempting to complete every track, choose one or two areas that align with your specific goals.

Advanced Bioethics and Health Ethics

Advanced study of ethical issues in biomedicine, healthcare policy, and emerging biotechnologies, moving beyond introductory principlism into research governance, public health frameworks, and frontier technologies.

Research Ethics and Human Subjects Protection: Research Ethics: A Guide for Responsible Research with Human Subjects (KU Leuven / edX) - free course covering informed consent, vulnerable populations, IRB reasoning, and case analysis in innovative fields like gene editing and AI in research.

Public Health Ethics: An Ethics Framework for Public Health (Nancy E. Kass / American Journal of Public Health) - the seminal open-access article that established the six-step framework for analyzing the moral tradeoffs in population-level health interventions.

Synthetic Biology and Biotech Governance: Engineering Life: Synbio, Bioethics and Public Policy (Johns Hopkins / Coursera) - free course on the ethical and governance challenges raised by synthetic biology applications, from biosafety to dual-use research.

Neuroethics and Cognitive Enhancement: Neuroethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - comprehensive scholarly overview of the ethics of brain intervention, enhancement, brain-computer interfaces, and neuroprivacy.

Advanced Technology and AI Ethics

Deep engagement with the moral questions raised by computing systems, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, covering technical fairness frameworks, safety engineering, and governance of emerging AI capabilities.

Ethics of Technology (Comprehensive Survey): Ethics of Technology (MIT OpenCourseWare 24.131) - free full course with readings and assignments covering privacy, algorithmic bias, automation, and threats to democracy from a philosophical-ethics perspective.

AI Ethics for Engineers: Ethics for Engineers: Artificial Intelligence (MIT OpenCourseWare 10.01) - discussion-based seminar on aligning AI systems with human aims, preventing moral bias in learning algorithms, autonomous weapons, and the ethics of human-AI relationships.

Algorithmic Fairness and Bias: Ethics of AI Bias (MIT OpenCourseWare RES.10-002) - short video series on how machine learning systems acquire and amplify morally repugnant biases, with technical approaches to mitigation.

Responsible Computing Pedagogy and Cases: Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (MIT OpenCourseWare RES.TLL-008) - collection of case studies, active learning projects, and lecture materials for teaching responsible technology development.

Advanced Business and Organizational Ethics

Specialized study of moral reasoning in markets, corporate governance structures, stakeholder management, and the design of ethical organizational cultures.

Stakeholder Theory and Corporate Governance: Global Impact: Business Ethics (Coursera) - free course that trains learners to distinguish stakeholder theory from shareholder primacy and apply moral reasoning frameworks to real corporate dilemmas.

Advanced Implementation Practice: Giving Voice to Values Curriculum (Mary C. Gentile / Darden School of Business) - advanced collection of scripts, rehearsal exercises, and pre-scripting tools for acting on ethical judgment under organizational pressure.

Behavioral Ethics in Organizations: Ethics Unwrapped Video Series (McCombs School of Business, UT Austin) - research-based videos on bounded ethicality, incrementalism, moral disengagement, and other behavioral mechanisms that explain organizational misconduct.

Environmental and Climate Ethics

The moral dimensions of humanity's relationship with the natural environment, covering climate justice, obligations to future generations, animal ethics, and the distribution of environmental burdens.

Climate Justice and Intergenerational Ethics: A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Stephen M. Gardiner / Oxford University Press) - the most systematic philosophical treatment of why climate change is a perfect moral storm involving global, intergenerational, and theoretical storms that corrupt our moral response.

Animal Ethics: Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights (Nathan Nobis / Open Textbook Library) - free open textbook evaluating the main arguments for and against animal rights, from utilitarian and rights-based frameworks to the moral status of non-human animals.

Environmental Justice: Introduction to Climate Justice and Equity (FutureLearn) - free course exploring how climate change, conflict, energy, and sustainable farming intersect with justice and equity in global environmental policy.

Intergenerational Justice: Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection (Henry Shue / Oxford University Press) - collection of essays spanning twenty years that established the framework for thinking about subsistence emissions, luxury emissions, and fair burden-sharing between generations.

Global Ethics and Human Rights

The application of ethical reasoning to global poverty, humanitarian intervention, human rights frameworks, and the responsibilities of affluent nations and individuals in an interconnected world.

Global Justice and Effective Altruism: Effective Altruism (Peter Singer / Princeton University, Coursera) - free course examining the philosophical foundations of doing the most good, meeting people who have restructured their lives around impact, and applying these principles to career and giving decisions.

Humanitarian Ethics: Global Health and Humanitarianism (University of Manchester / Coursera) - free six-module course on the ethical tensions in humanitarian intervention, including triage, neutrality, and the politics of aid.

Human Rights Theory and Advocacy: Human Rights Academy (Amnesty International) - collection of free courses in over 20 languages covering human rights standards, advocacy strategies, and the practical application of rights frameworks.