200 points Master of Arts (Professional and Applied Ethics)

Master of Arts (Professional and Applied Ethics)Informal specialisationYear: 2019

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Overview

This program is offered by the Centre in Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and is available through the philosophy discipline in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in the Faculty of Arts.

Organisational change, political change, wars, globalisation, new technologies and practices, corporate collapses, corruption, scandals in the health and research sectors, environmental disasters, conflicts of interest, all raise distinctive and pressing issues of policy and practice. Finding practical and ethically sustainable solutions requires a thorough understanding of both the ethical and the empirical aspects of the situation.

Completion of this program will equip graduates to conduct research on and analyse key ethical concepts and arguments in their field of specialisation, enabling them to contribute to policy discussion and development in a wide range of professional, institutional and industry settings. There is scope for students to follow their own interests, with a substantial thesis component and specialisations such as the ethics of health care, computing, business, politics and criminal justice; as well as the broad themes of bioethics and global justice.

Intended learning outcomes

Students who complete the Master of Arts (Professional and Applied Ethics) should:

  • understand and analyse complex ethical issues;

  • detect ambiguity, vagueness, inconsistency, and other weaknesses in the expressions of ideas;

  • distinguish different types of question, claim or argument, and respond to them appropriately;

  • distinguish what is relevant to a given issue from what is not; and

  • see ways in which an argument or explanation could be improved.

Last updated: 4 March 2025