At this point in the exercise, you have been asked to:

• Read a scenario
• Provide your initial assessment of the ethical issues the scenario raises
• Compare your own assessment to three provided assessments
• Identify which of these three most closely resembles your initial assessment
• Consider some follow-up questions concerning that assessment
• Reflect on whether or not your answers to those questions lead you to reconsider your initial assessment
• EITHER articulate your reasons for sticking with your initial assessment in light of these questions OR reconsider your assessment, identify one of the other two as now closer to your own, and consider some more follow-up questions.

If you hadn’t been asked to do each of these things, how different do you think your response to the scenario would have been?

Suppose we had simply reported to you that something like this had happened. Would you have found it interesting or newsworthy?

Suppose you were friends with Jessica and she told you about what Alan did. Would you have been more likely to reflect carefully on various aspects of the situation, or to simply respond with some expression of emotion and with some suggestion (about where Alan should go or how Jessica should handle the situation)?

Some people are likely to be made impatient or to become disoriented in a process that involves making provisional claims, taking other claims that differ from their own into consideration, thinking about questions that potentially complicate things for them, considering revisions to their original claim, etc. In many ways, it would be nice if we could simply trust our gut reactions and be certain that we see situations clearly enough at first glance to know exactly what we ought to do. You might be wondering at this point: If asking questions leads to further questions, and we can’t simply wrap this exercise up and put a bow on it by telling you what the right answers are, then what’s the point? Are we really any better off than we were when we started?

Now, Back to the Discussion of the Basic Idea of Moral Literacy