The main points I want you to take away from this course:
1. Many claims about ethics are claims about how the world works: people are selfish.
2. Even normative claims entail claims about how the world works in the form of reasons: X is wrong because Y (Y is a claim or prediction about how the world works)
3. Claims about how the world works rest on evidence, not opinion.
Therefore, when you make an ethics claim you need to validate this claim using relevant evidence.
Sources of relevant evidence: economics, psychology, sociology, biology, chemistry.
What does the evidence suggest about moral principles?
Moral principles are: universal, evolving, imperfect.
Our application of these principles to areas of health care reveals this very well.
We will examine these points in more detail throughout the semester. While it's easy to get lost in the details these are the main points to take away from this course. I hope that if you remember nothing else about this course you remember this:
Moral principles are: universal, evolving, and imperfect.