Integrating across Differences in Values

We have already under Values noted that there are five main types of ethical analysis and that these often point in the same direction. An interdisciplinary general education program can usefully introduce students to each of the five types of ethical analysis. This alone is invaluable in allowing students to examine their own ethical attitudes and those of others. An appreciation that all five types of analysis are valid guides respect for the ethical attitudes of others.

It is then useful to apply each type of ethical analysis to a range of ethical issues. Strong arguments can be made under each for honesty and (personal and social) responsibility and many other values. Students can be guided, then, to reflect on how a respect for diversity can be coupled with a general expectation of honest and responsible behavior.

An interdisciplinary general education can then usefully apply the integrative techniques listed under Teaching Interdisciplinary Integration to ethical controversies. These techniques will not always erase ethical disagreements but can usefully alleviate these:

• • Redefinition can be very useful because the terminology employed in ethical controversies becomes emotionally charged. It is thus useful to interrogate the precise meaning of "right to life," "right to choose," "right to work," and even "responsibility" (which often conflates ideals of personal and social responsibility).

  • Organization can be useful when different ethical arguments are applied to different elements of a complex social problem. A policy that seems to have a sound consequentialist justification may be objected to because the process by which it was developed or implemented offends certain values. [Students can then wonder if the good consequences can somehow be achieved through a less offensive process.]

  • Extension can be very useful. Consequential analysis often focuses only on incomes or happiness, but could be extended to incorporate the values or rules or traditions advocated by other approaches to ethical analysis. Likewise these other approaches can be broadened to embrace a wider set of values or rules or traditions.

  • Transformation can also be powerful. Ethical debates often hinge on whether we prioritize the individual or some societal aggregate; it is then useful to explore whether we want a balanced approach that values both. A host of other exaggerated/false dichotomies are implicated in ethical disputes: rationality versus non-rationality, independence versus interdependence, or freedom versus duty.

Textbooks in interdisciplinary studies spend far less time exploring how these integrative techniques can be applied to ethical questions than to scientific questions. But if students and instructors are familiar with the techniques, class discussions can explore how each technique might be applied to a particular ethical challenge. Such discussions will simultaneously reinforce understanding of the techniques, enhance student understandings of different ethical attitudes, and suggest policies and behaviors that are more respectful of differing ethical positions.

Scholars of interdisciplinarity have necessarily grappled with questions of values when discussing interdisciplinary public policy. Instructors of a course on interdisciplinary ethics might find the analysis and resources identified in Interdisciplinary Public Policy Analysis of About Interdisciplinarity useful.

Tanya Augsburg and Tendai Chitewere, "Starting with Worldviews: A Five-Step Preparatory Approach to Integrative Interdisciplinary Learning," Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies 31, pp. 174-191 (2013), describes how to guide students to an appreciation of their own worldviews as well as those of others.