PHIL 164: Morality and Business

UNC–Chapel Hill — Fall 2022 Meetings: MWF 1:25–2:15, Murphey Hall 105 Instructor: Kirun Sankaran (kirun@email.unc.edu) Office hours: MWF 11–12, or by appointment (weather permitting, outside in Coker Arboretum)

Course Description

This course examines key debates in business ethics: Is the sole purpose of business the maximization of profit? What social responsibilities, if any, do businesses bear? Are consumers morally complicit in the unethical practices of businesses they buy from? Are there limits to markets — should there be markets for human organs, reproductive services, or sex work?

There's a very bad joke that "business ethics" is an oxymoron — that business is by its nature immoral, or at least amoral. If nothing else, the purpose of this class is to get you to stop making that terrible, hackneyed joke. Business enterprises, like other forms of social organization, are at their core forms of cooperation, and they bring unique moral questions and challenges. Our goal is to explore some of them.

No prerequisites; accessible to anyone interested in issues at the intersection of ethics and business.

Course Format

Three meetings a week of active discussion, intensive group work, short student presentations, and informational lectures where helpful — all aimed at cultivating a course culture of critical engagement.

Assignments and Assessment

1. Three reading responses — 10% each (30% total). ~1000 words outlining the selected reading's argument.
2. Final project (group), in three graded parts: a draft with cross-group peer feedback (15%), a class presentation in the last week (20%), and a final paper of ~4 pages (20%). Groups take a position on a business-ethics proposition (e.g., "Ethical companies must divest from fossil fuels"), submit an early four-sentence argument sketch, then build it out.
3. Attendance and participation — 15%. Three no-penalty absences; each further unexcused absence costs a third of a letter grade.

Reading List and Course Schedule

• Week 1 (Aug 15–19): Conceptual Preliminaries. NYT, "The Trouble with Sex Robots"
• Week 2 (Aug 22–26): More Conceptual and Moral Preliminaries. Herzog, Reclaiming the System, Ch. 2; McAdam, "On the Existential Function of the Social" (responses due Aug 26)
• Week 3 (Aug 29–Sep 2): Markets. Friedman, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits"; Heath, "A Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics" (responses due Sep 2)
• Week 4 (Sep 5–9): Firms. Coase, "The Nature of the Firm"; Singer, "The Political Nature of the Firm" (responses due Sep 9)
• Week 5 (Sep 12–16): Politics. Strawson, "Social Morality and Individual Ideal" (response due Sep 16)
• Week 6 (Sep 19–23): Exploitation. McKeown, "Sweatshop Labor as Global Structural Exploitation"; Powell and Zwolinski, "The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment" (responses due Sep 23)
• Week 7 (Sep 26–30): Commodification I. Anderson, "The Ethical Limitations of the Market" (response due Sep 30)
• Week 8 (Oct 3–7): Commodification II. Anderson, "Is Women's Labor a Commodity?"; Nussbaum, "Whether From Reason or Prejudice" (responses due Oct 7)
• Week 9 (Oct 10–14): Commodification III. Brennan and Jaworski, "Markets Without Symbolic Limits"; Sankaran, "Cash Rules Everything Around Me" (responses due Oct 14)
• Week 10 (Oct 17–19): Workplace Democracy I. O'Shea, "Socialist Republicanism" (response due Oct 21)
• Week 11 (Oct 24–28): Workplace Democracy II. Frye, "Efficiency and Domination in the Socialist Republic: Reply to O'Shea"; O'Shea, "In Defence of Public Ownership: A Reply to Frye" (responses due Oct 28)
• Week 12 (Oct 31–Nov 4): Workplace Democracy III. Ferreras and Landemore, "Towards a Justification of the Firm–State Analogy" (response due Nov 4)
• Week 13 (Nov 14–18): Writing Week / Draft Workshop. Pryor, "Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper" (draft due Nov 14)
• Week 14 (Nov 21): Class Presentations
• Week 15 (Nov 28–30): Class Presentations

Final paper due Saturday, December 3, midnight.

Course learning objectives (value-theory gen-ed outcomes) and UNC institutional boilerplate (attendance policy, Honor Code, ARS, CAPS, Title IX, etc.) included in the distributed syllabus; omitted here for brevity.