Ethics and the Naval Warrior Stockdale Center - Michael Sears

Note: all episodes of Ethics and the Naval Warrior have been copied to a new show, "Radio Stockdale". Search on your podcast player for "Radio Stockdale" and hit Subscribe. Hear all of your old Ethics and the Naval Warrior episodes, and many new episodes on Ethics, Character and Leadership on "Radio Stockdale". No new episodes will be posted on this show starting November 1, 2021.

Under what conditions is the state morally justified in waging war? What are the moral responsibilities of those called upon to fight their nation's wars? This podcast introduces just war theory, a scholarly tradition that has evolved over the course of millennia as an ethical guide for the statesmen and combatants who must grapple with these difficult and enormously consequential questions.

A discussion on character, the moral virtues most relevant to aspiring military officers, and how NE203 is structured to help midshipmen learn how to develop their characters.

Moral deliberation involves the filtering and weighing (whether consciously or unconsciously) of relevant moral principles and concepts in order to determine a course of action. In this episode, we consider the novel way that NE203 teaches Moral Deliberation in order to shift our focus from theory to practice.

Moral perception is awareness of the morally relevant features of the world. Many things can get in the way of perceiving the morally salient features of a given situation, our history, our culture, our biases--even being in a hurry. In this episode, we talk about how we consider this important aspect of morality.

Every Midshipman at the Naval Academy takes a course in ethics during their Youngster (Sophomore) year. The course, "Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader", serves as one of the building blocks for Leadership, Character, Ethics and Law, and is a requirement to graduate and be commissioned in the naval service. The course has undergone a major change this year. In this series, we'll be discussing the changes with some of the Professors who led the conversation and building of this new course.

This podcast introduces the main reasons that counted in favor of the thorough revision of NE203 and summarizes the most important changes made to that course.