One of the cool things you get to do as a professor (DISCLAIMER: outside of the ivory walls of academia, saying “professor” pretty much means, “person who is on the teaching faculty at a University”. Within those walls though, the title is a specific rank that’s part of this whole secret-handshake, feudal-like system where Professors are the Lords and lowly “Instructors” (my actual rank) are the vassals. When I call myself a professor around these parts (my intra-net blog), it’s in the common, vernacular sense of the word. If I were to call myself a professor at the lunch table on campus though, I’m pretty sure veins would start popping out of the necks on those around me as they race to be the first to remind me that I am, in fact, not a Professor, not ever an Associate Professor of Assistant Professor, that I am in fact a lowly Instructor, which is just one step above dried cat vomit on the academic ranking scale. So, we’re cool?) ….

As I was saying, one of the coolest things you get to do as a prof is say, “I think I would like to teach a course about such and such”, and then you write up a course plan, and if it gets approved, and students sign up for it, you get to teach it. I just finished, on Friday, the first stage in designing and submitting a new course called “Music and Ethics”.

So, I thought I would post the lecture outline here, for your perusal. It’s pretty much my dream course – it has little pieces from everything I love reading and thinking about, and all tied together by the common thread of how we should, as people of faith and as musicians, think about making ethical decisions.

Week 1: “The Case for the Ethical Life”
- Plato and the Ring of Gyges
- Reason and Ethics: The possibility of moral expertise (in what I’m sure will be a very controversial move, I’m relying on the writing of Peter Singer, who has written several books that I think brilliant but misguided, and also a few journal articles arguing fantastically well for the idea that there can exist a learned skill of moral expertise. It’s a defense for the idea that not everyone’s opinion carries equal weight in a moral conversation, that there can be those who have special training, and significant thoughtful consideration, that leads to better moral conclusions.)
- Faith, Knowledge, and Virtue: ethics and the Christian life.

Week 2: “Introduction to Ethical Systems of Thought”
- Standards for evaluating ethical systems
- Normative vs. Descriptive Systems
- Reason, Intuition, and Faith: Are ethical systems a necessary component of Christian thought? (Basially, why do we need to study this stuff? Shouldn’t we just pray and read our bible, and the right decision will be revealed to us?)

Week 3: “Ethical Systems, Part 1″
- 3 kinds of moral skepticism: Nihilism, Moral Subjectivism, Moral Relativism

Week 4: “Ethical Systems, Part 2”
- Natural Law Theory
- Divine Command Ethics
- Classic and Contemporary Utilitarianism

Week 5: “Ethical Systems, Part 3”
- Kantian Ethics
- Virtue Ethics
- Moral Pluralism

Week 6: “Instructor Bias Week!”
- The case for Divine Virtue Ethics. So, I’m not one of those profs who thinks that the way to teach philosophy and ethics is to be the totally neutral fount of knowledge, personally removed from the subject matter. I have strong, and considered, views on the right and wrong way to sort through this stuff, and I think it cheats the students for me to stand on the sidelines. So, I’m going to tell them what I think, and make my best case for why I think it.

Week 7: “The Ethics of Participation, Part 1”
- “In the world, not of the world”: a Christian perspective on holiness and participation
- Moral outcomes
- The transitive property of participation

Week 8: “The Ethics of Participation, Part 2”
- Dual Morality, Agency, and Law: three false exits to the question of participation
- The “Nazi Prison Guard” dilemma

Week 9: “Intellectual Property, Part 1”
- A biblical perspective on property
- Property and creativity
- 3 alternatives to a property system: patronage, service model, gift economy

Week 10: “Intellectual Property, Part 2”
- Ethics within a property system
- Law, Justice, and Integrity: systematic vs. personal ethics

Week 11: “Issues in Professionalism”
- Selling the goods: ethics and personal representation in the music industry
- Invested participation: aesthetics, credits, preparation, commitment

Week 12: “Aesthetics and Creativity”
- Imago Dei, and the theology of creativity
- The Dualism of Human Nature: integration and the musical experience

Weeks 13-15, the remainder of the course, are just the students turning in their thesis papers, doing peer review, and doing oral defense.

So, this is pretty much my dream course to teach. And that makes me …

King Nerd, signing out.