Instructions

The exercise must be at least 400 words in length (excluding title and reference pages) and formatted according to APA style. Be sure to including a title page and reference page as necessary. Your exercise must be organized to address each of the five parts below. Number each part accordingly.

Part One: Thesis Statement

Construct a thesis statement that articulates your position on the question as you have defined it. This will likely be the last thing you do in this exercise, but your thesis should be placed at the top of the first page after the title page.

Your thesis should clearly state your position and provide a concise statement of the primary reason(s) drawn from the three issues you raise in Part Two. For example, having identified three important issues that need to be considered, you may find that two of them support your view, and while one may present a challenge to it, that challenge can be overcome.

Part Two: Provide a Brief Introduction to the Topic

Your introduction must make clear to the reader exactly what ethical issue or question you are addressing within this topic, and what you consider to be the boundaries of the question.

For example, a paper on criminal punishment might consider whether capital punishment should be used as punishment for certain types of crime, or it might consider the broader question of whether the criminal justice system should favor retribution over rehabilitation. If you were writing on this topic, you would need to specify which of these (or some other) specific question you intend to discuss. (Note: You may not write on criminal punishment, this is just an example. More examples are given in the "Notes and Advice" section.) You should aim to focus your question as narrowly as possible.

The final sentence of this paragraph should provide a brief summary of the three ethically significant issues pertaining to this question that you intend to address.

Parts Three, Four, and Five: Explain Three Ethically Significant Issues Pertaining to This Question

An "ethically significant issue" is a feature of the topic and circumstances that must be taken into account when reasoning about the question. For example, if you were writing on criminal punishment and focusing on the question of whether drug users should be imprisoned, ethically significant issues might include the monetary costs, the social costs, the impact on the person, the effect on the drug trade, and so on. And each of these, in turn, would have sub-issues, negative and positive sides, etc. Your task is to be as specific as you can in explaining the ethically significant issue. See the "Notes and Advice" section for further information.