On ethics, diversity, and conflict: The graduate years , Vol I

Every class I teach on ethics has students who invariably arrive at the question “what is ethics?” This is a question many have wrestled with over the history of the modern human. Maybe the problem with ethics is that the definition is as varied and elusive as those associated with love or leadership. Then again, there is a possibility it is too closely defined as something that is good when so many situations where an understanding of ethics suggests that an ethical framework may be not-so-good. Here I define ethics in the absence of good or bad; rather it is simply a decision-making framework humans use to manage their activities and to minimize cognitive dissonance between what one thinks and what one does.