Reason and professional ethics - Chapter 1: introductory remarks and overview

Many professionals confront ethical issues concerning their proper roles and the manner in which they should carry out those roles. This book is aimed at those studying for entry into the various professions (such as teaching or social work) where ethical questions are commonly faced. It introduces readers to both the techniques and depth of ethical argument drawn from the fields of critical thinking and informal logic and enables practitioners to use these techniques so they can be deployed as 'tools of thought' for thinking in a carefully reasoned and extended way about problems of professional ethics. The book also provides a brief introduction to some of the normative and meta-ethical theory relevant to the principled discussion of professional ethics. Post-graduate students and academics should also find the treatment of some of the complexities of extended reasoning, in particular its focus upon careful metacognitive tracking and planning of an inquiry, to be of interest. Contents: Introductory remarks and overview; Proposition types; Structuring arguments; Subjecting arguments to criticism: logic criticism; Subjecting arguments to criticism: premise criticism; Extended reasoning: the basics; Extended reasoning: some complexities; Babble and murk; Some ethical theory; Index.