Teaching Ethics is also teaching argumentation: analysis of five common failures in ethical justifications

Abstract

Philosophy teaching in primary and secondary education is a challenge for the teacher committed to the development of the students’ reflective and critical skills. Part of this challenge is the teaching of ethics, that can very easily become indoctrination or remaining in a mere discussion of opinions, in case the teacher is not aware of the arguments of the students to discuss them and deepen them properly. The Ethics classes, as to develop the ability to make reasonable ethical judgments should be based on the use of good arguments; for such, the teacher needs to be able to identify the fallacies commonly used by students on justifying behaviors that they consider right, and show them the weaknesses of those justifications. Thus, this article aims to analyze five common failures of ethical justification, namely: circular reasoning, appeal to the bandwagon or appeal to the people, two wrongs make a right, appeal to tradition and naturalistic fallacy. The discussion of these fallacies, often used to justify ethical behavior, aims to help teachers and future teachers of philosophy to question the students’ views and alleged justifications in ethics classes, so that the philosophy classes as a whole in fact develop critical thinking and the creativity of its participants.