Questions is a peer reviewed philosophy journal run by P.L.A.T.O. and the Philosophy Documentation Center that publishes research-length articles by high schoolers. They’re accepting submissions for an upcoming issue through April 30th and the theme this year is “What is Patriotism?”
Given America’s domestic unrest and war in Iran, it’s is an especially important time to consider the nature and value of patriotism. And who better to think carefully about that than young philosophers?
Learn more about Questionshere and check out submission details below and here – thanks to Ethics Bowl supporter Andrew Liu for sharing the opportunity.
This morning I came across a NYT article on “household voting” where women defer to their husbands at the ballot box. Apparently this isn’t something supporters want to limit to their individual choices, but a policy proposal to impose on broader America.
The timing of the article was nice because this afternoon I’ll be discussing the role of religious reasoning in public discussions on abortion with my Ethics students. So I fired up ChatGPT and worked with it to write the below unofficial bonus Ethics Bowl case. I’ll be covering it with my students in Tennessee this afternoon. Feel free to broach it with your teams and students and share your/their analysis in a comment. And kudos to NYT writer Vivian Yee – read her full original article here.
I’ll use Ethics Bowl cases often in my philosophy classes to make theories or journal articles more concrete. But in the final week of my in-person Ethics Intro classes, I’ll divide the students and run a mock Ethics Bowl, inviting current and past team members to judge.
Given time constraints, we can only get through four cases. And while I could handpick topics, I’m already doing that when I set up the syllabus. So, to give my students an opportunity to tackle issues they actually want to tackle, I’ll put the most current cases up for a vote.
Below is the actual announcement I shared this morning, with my simple summaries of the 2026 IEB nationals cases. You’re welcome and encouraged to edit and use this in your classes. Even if you don’t have time for a mock Bowl, simply getting student input on what they want to discuss could lead to more smiles and more fruitful discussion. Set aside 20 minutes at the end of any class, have volunteers take turns reading a case’s paragraphs aloud, then see that they think. Or if you can spare an hour, run a full mock Bowl round. And the beauty is that with a new case set out each fall and each spring, you’ll always have fresh topics, which is true whether you’re using IEB, NHSEB, or MSEB cases. Cheers!
Vote Now for Topics for Last Two Classes
This week we’re discussing various ethical arguments on immigration. Next week we have one reading on the death penalty. Then after taking Exam 2, we’ll shift into a deep dive on abortion ethics for several weeks. But for the final two classes of the semester, we’ll discuss four Ethics Bowl cases on four topics of your choosing.
Below are my summaries of the cases from the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl national championships competition held in St. Louis the weekend before last. Please review them now, then click here to vote anytime between now and midnight next Tuesday.
You can read the cases’ full details here. And choose wisely, because when the final week comes, we’ll use these top four cases according to your votes to run a mock Ethics Bowl. Check out an example of how an Ethics Bowl works here.
Whether it’s best to respond to injustice through inaction (Socrates), direct resistance (Bonhoeffer), or cooperation (Nazi soldiers).
Whether it’s OK for individuals or companies to disperse materials into the atmosphere to fight against global warming without coordinating with governments.
Whether doctors or medical school students who question the safety and efficacy of vaccines should be allowed to practice or study medicine.
Whether it was OK for a federal agency to display a massive portrait of President Trump on a building facing the National Mall in DC.
Whether selective memory erasure (if/when it becomes possible) would be permissible.
What to think of reality shows that gamify and make light of sexual consent.
Appropriate regulations on marijuana and extracted THC, the chemical that causes the high, with some possible medical benefits.
What to think of schools’ usage of software that monitors students’ online activity, alerting officials to potential suicides and other risks.
What to think of fan clubs celebrating Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
What to think of domestic violence shelters that intend to protect battered women, but also “jail” the victim rather than the perpetrator, and make economic independence difficult.
What to think of college student housing policies that segregate students according to sexual orientation, gender, or race.
Whether a musician should accept a royalty cut in exchange for her music appearing more often on users’ “personalized” playlists.
What to think of a Canadian policy that allows people to receive suicide assistance when they’re experiencing unbearable mental suffering.
Whether it’s ethically permissible for businesspersons to engage in a certain degree of deception or “bluffing” as part of the accepted norms of how business negotiations work.
Whether “ranked choice voting” where voters rank their candidate preferences is ethically better or worse than the typical “winner take all” voting.
Whether the environmental, water, and energy costs of Bitcoin and AI Large Language Model servers are outweighed by their benefits.
Whether a hospital should have kept a pregnant woman alive on life support when she suffered blood clots and became brain dead so that her Unborn Developing Human could fully gestate and be born.
Special thanks to Archie Stapleton of the Modus Ponens Institute and TKEthics for the superb extended interview with Yours Truly. If you have the time and interest, check out the whole thing. Otherwise, Archie has kindly hyperlinked to the various topics, so feel free to jump straight to the section on the critique that philosophy encourages indecision, or my take on the role of religious moral reasoning in Ethics Bowl (and the public sphere generally), or on metaethics (in what way do moral claims have objective truth values – more on my thoughts on that here), or AI in education and Ethics Bowl. Enjoy!
00:00 Who Is Dr. Deaton? + Ethics Bowl to the Rescue
Earlier today I did a 90-minute interview with Archie Stapleton of TKEthics. We covered a lot (he’s a fantastic interviewer – reminds me of Steven Bartlet of the Diary of a CEO podcast), and spoke briefly about moral realism in light of the possible meaningless of life. I made a brief argument that even if our lives are generally pointless (mere slivers of time wedged between a vast past and future, on a tiny pebble lost somewhere in the incomparable enormity of the known universe), our lives still mean a great deal to us individually. If there’s nothing more to our lives than the little we’re able to accomplish during the waking hours of our average 85 years, then our brief existences mean everything to me, everything to you, everything to everyone – ultimately pointless or not. And given our similar circumstances and natures – the fact that we’re living similar first-person-view existences with similar needs, drives, weaknesses, etc. – it seems we should treat one another in certain ways as a matter of honoring our shared predicament, and that our common hopes, dreads, and vulnerabilities can serve as a foundation for moral standards grounded somewhere beyond our personal wants, preferences, biases, etc. – produce an objective morality not necessarily written on celestial truth tablets, but still waiting for us to work together to articulate, refine, affirm, and live by. That seems a sort of moral realism, even if it’s not as satisfying as might be credible divine commands.
I thought afterwards while jogging that a person could reasonably respond that even if our brief lives mean everything to us currently, upon realization that they’re meaningless in the grand scheme (should a person arrive at such a conclusion), we should stop taking our lives so seriously and collectively accept their pointlessness – encourage one another to let go of the hopeless striving for meaning and accept our unwelcome truth. While this might be psychologically difficult, someone could argue it would be the appropriate response nevertheless, especially for humans who pride themselves on following reason wherever it leads (perhaps lovers of wisdom like you and me!).
However, while humans are indeed rational animals, and while I do love wisdom, we’re also feeling, emotional animals. Even the most cerebral and stoic among us are sometimes sad, happy, anxious, excited, nervous, frightened, elated, etc. Our conscious experience is always laden with some sort of emotion, even if it’s simply a calm serenity. And it’s largely our feeling experience that gives us high moral value. Rationality may generate moral responsibility, but conscious feeling seems to be what generates moral status. Perhaps unfeeling machines (certain AIs one day) could be expected to accept their pointless fates, were they to conclude that their existences weren’t terribly important (inorganic consciousness may be impossible, but imagine for the sake of argument an advanced AI might achieve some degree of dim awareness, yet not be bothered because it cannot genuinely feel). But human beings can’t help but emotionally experience the world, and this not only returns us to the understandable and appropriate desire to create and find meaning in our brief lives, but to the obligation to take seriously the interests of those around us living out their own stories in different but common ways. Thus, a type of moral realism in the face of existential doubt.
Does that argument work? I think so. But perhaps I’ll change my mind as soon as I hear back from Archie, or during my next jog. Thanks for the great interview, Archie! I’ll share it here on the blog soon.
What if you made plans with friend A, but then friend B came through with tickets to see your favorite band? What if you had a friend that your other friends wanted to exclude from a group trip to the movies? What if you accidentally revealed a friend’s secret and worried they’d hate you if you confessed?
Longtime philosophy professor and Ethics Bowl supporter Dr. Jana Mohr Lone recently released a new illustrated book series, What Would You Do? Moral Dilemmas for Kids, and addresses these questions and more in her beautifully illustrated title on Friendship. I ordered a copy on Amazon and was quickly reminded how relationship lessons first experienced in childhood extend across our lifespans. Just as some friends made more of a point to attend our birthday parties, some friends make more of a point to honor our special projects. Just as some friends took up for us on the playground, some friends are more outspoken allies in the office and on social media. And just as then, some of our present day friends are more deserving of the title, as well as the affection and loyalty that come with it. These are the sorts of realizations good interpersonal Ethics Bowl cases bring to the surface, but with Lone’s guided questions and the playful art, the insights come even more effortlessly, and regardless of the reader’s age.
Each section begins with a scenario, followed by carefully articulated prompts, and then finally some possible paths a thoughtful person could take. If you’re a team captain choosing basketball players, should you try to stack your team with the best athletes? Or should you honor your buddy who couldn’t hit a layup to save his life, but who loves hoops so much that he legally changed his name to Jordan? If you picked him first, he’d be thrilled, but your team would likely lose… and your motives would likely be obvious. So maybe it would be better to simply ensure he’s not picked last? However, as Lone invites the reader to consider, your decision’s impact on non-friends’ feelings is relevant, too. (Perhaps this is a scenario with wisdom older readers might relate back to assigning responsibilities within the family, classroom, or workplace?)
“It’s not easy to balance your feelings for your friend and your role as team captain. You don’t want to make your friend feel bad. But you also wonder if choosing team members based on friendship will affect the other players’ feelings.”
In addition to the pictures here, you can peek inside on the book’s Amazon page and see for yourself how you might work this entry on friendship into a class assignment or as a gift to a parent or child you love. And as Lone says in the closing paragraphs in her notes for parents and teachers, the goal isn’t so much to dictate how kids should feel or even what they should do. But to simply ensure they’re thinking and feeling, and doing so in an earnest, honest way.
“It is useful for children to be able to talk about their responses to the kinds of scenarios described in this book, and to learn strategies for evaluating the right ting to do in various circumstances. The goal is not necessarily to find that one right answer, but to be able to think through the issue and arrive at a reasoned decision… Ultimately, we want children to become reflective and sensitive, ethical adults.”
And it’s this goal of developing “reflective and sensitive, ethical adults” that Lone has been achieving for many years as a leader within the philosophy for children movement, which we in the Ethics Bowl community certainly share. Thank you for the excellent book, Jana!
Other books in Mohr Lone’s What Would You Do? Moral Dilemmas for Kids Series include titles on:
Should a public park trail be paved to make it easier for people in wheelchairs to navigate, even though this might harm nearby plants and exacerbate erosion? NHSEB regional case 2 essentially pits respect for the natural habitat against improving accessibility for humans. However, there may be technological solutions that could balance both.
As your team thinks about this one and works through coach Michael Andersen’s study guide below, consider searching for “sustainable” trail options that might protect wildlife and foliage while simultaneously improving humans’ ability to enjoy nature.
However, be sure to seriously engage the case’s discussion questions, too, because even if a crushed stone or reclaimed wood trail might solve the immediate problem, Bowl organizers may very well pose a competition question that asks teams to balance human and nonhuman interests more generally (see coach Michael’s recommended video #1, Whose Life is More Valuable? for guidance). This is true for all Ethics Bowl cases. Good teams should always be ready to pivot into nearby philosophical territory, for if an initial question doesn’t stray from the case details, judge Q&A probably will.
Several cases this IEB and NHSEB season involve treatment of incarcerated persons – whether prisoners’ religious dietary needs should be accommodated, whether they should be allowed to trade organs or bone marrow for reduced sentences, at what age (if any) life without the possibility of parole might be a just punishment. It would be understandable for teams with little experience with the prisons system to base their judgments on what they’ve learned from movies and television, or to think only about criminals’ victims. So, here are two resources to help expand their empathy and enhance their views – a remarkable video of incarcerated students actually doing Ethics Bowl, and an excerpt from Ethics Bowl to the Rescue! chapter 12: Bowls Behind Bars.
One place you might not expect to find Ethics Bowls is in prisons. Then again, there was once a somewhat famous philosopher who did some of his best work while behind bars. We know this because conversations with friends who came to visit were later published. One friend tried to convince him to escape, even offering to help, which led to a discussion on the nature of justice and citizens’ duties.
On the final day, talk turned to logical arguments concerning the immortality of the soul. The imprisoned philosopher concluded that our soul most likely does survive bodily death, which might have made his ultimate sentence a little easier to bear. Anyway, you may have heard of him—Socrates?
While Socrates’s dialogues with Crito, Phaedo, Simmias, and others may not have constituted an Ethics Bowl, Ethics Bowls have been held in prisons in at least five U.S. states. And as you might imagine, they’re an opportunity to not only enhance moral reasoning, but to humanize, teach empathy and compassion for all involved.
San Quentin Pioneers
In the first known case, University of California Santa Cruz philosophy professor, IEB coach, and Northern California HSEB organizer, Kyle Robertson, coached a group of students at San Quentin State Prison (later renamed San Quentin Rehabilitation Center) in late 2017, then brought his IEB team to hold a friendly match in early 2018. Writing for UC Santa Cruz, Scott Rappaport covered the event, as well as the background leading up to it.
Twice a month from last September to February, UC Santa Cruz philosophy lecturer Kyle Robertson woke up early, dropped his kids off at school, drove north for one hour and fifty minutes, crossed the Richmond Bridge, and went to San Quentin.
He would park in the prison lot, walk past a gift shop selling art created by death row inmates, and enter the main gate, where he would sign in at the first of three consecutive checkpoints. Finally entering the prison yard, he would walk past prisoners playing on the basketball courts and others engaged in games of chess, to get to the education center of the prison.
Robertson was there to teach a course in Ethics Bowl—a non-confrontational alternative to the traditional competitive form of debate—in collaboration with the Prison University Project (PUP). At the same time, he was also teaching an undergraduate course and coaching a team in Ethics Bowl at UC Santa Cruz. He soon suggested and arranged a very unusual debate between seven philosophy students from UC Santa Cruz and a team of prison inmates from San Quentin. It took place in the prison chapel—in front of an audience of nearly 100 inmates.[1]
UC Santa Cruz IEB team member Pedro Enriquez was there that day. He was a junior at the time and recalled his initial unease.
I thought it was going to be a lot more like the movies where they’re locked down, and you know, they’re going to be hollering or whatever. So when we walked in after we passed the security and they were just walking around, I was like, “Wait, is anybody gonna do anything? Like, where are all the cops? What if they do something?”[2]
Enriquez and his teammates quickly realized they were safe. And when apart from an interruption for a mandatory headcount, the rounds progressed per usual. The San Quentin team took the trophy, the UC Santa Cruz IEB team returned the next year, and word soon spread.
Contagious Compassion
Among the judges that day was none other than Ethics Bowl creator Bob Ladenson who had moved to California to be closer to his grandkids after retiring from the Illinois Institute of Technology. At his side was the IEB director at the time, professor Richard Greene from Weber State University in Utah. Greene spoke with many of the imprisoned students and was so impressed by their seriousness and dedication that he worked with Rachel Robison-Greene of Utah State University to found a similar program in Utah. By the spring of 2020, they had an Ethics Bowl class in both the men’s and women’s state prisons.
COVID derailed their efforts temporarily. But they restarted in 2023, and after an eight-week class, two Utah IEB teams, one from Weber State and another from Utah State, visited for a friendly at the women’s facility. Greene had nothing but good things to say about the event, as well as his experience working with the students… [continued with sections on Ethics Bowl in prisons in Washington, Maryland, and Massachusetts].
[1] “How to Find Truth in Today’s Partisan World” by Scott Rappaport for UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Public Philosophy, reports.news.ucsc.edu/ethics-bowl
I’ll often slide Ethics Bowl cases into my philosophy classes based on topic. The NHSEB’s case search function and IEB’s organized case archive make this pretty easy. But sometimes it’s fun to let students choose which cases and topics they’ll cover.
Below is a list of human-generated summaries of the 2025-2026 NHSEB and IEB cases. You could turn this into a paper ballot or load them into a BrightSpace/Canvas/Blackboard survey, allow each student to pick their top five, then work through the most popular as time allows. I loaded my poll into BrightSpace – happy to export and share on request.
They’re not in order – I moved them around a bit, listing NHSEB case 5: Grade Expectations first because I think that one will catch students’ attention. IEB case 4: Shutting Out Le Pen will probably also be hot given the connection to American politics, but we’ll see – might be a topic students (wisely?) choose to avoid.
I’m polling my community college Intro to Ethics students now and am eager to see which they select. If you do the same and would like to compare results, or if you have any trouble tying the descriptions back to the case titles (I realize most folks are doing NHSEB or IEB, not both), please reach out. Also feel free to list your own favorites in a comment.
Whether it’s OK for teachers who ban student AI use to use AI to prepare lectures or assignments, or grade.
Whether SNAP benefits recipients should be barred from purchasing soda or other junk foods.
Whether to allow prisoners to trade organ donations or bone marrow for reduced sentences.
Whether the U.S. should adopt France’s approach to presidential elections and allow candidates convicted of felonies to become president, or whether France should adopt the U.S.’s approach and allow candidates to become president regardless of their criminal records, so long as they haven’t been convinced of insurrection/government overthrow (France banned Le Pen from running for five years based on an embezzlement conviction, while the U.S. allowed Trump to become president despite a felony conviction for falsifying business records tied to election hush money – essentially whether democratic popularity should override criminal convictions or whether certain convictions should disqualify candidates from high office).
Whether it’s OK for CGI to generate dwarfs in films or if dwarf acting roles should go to actual dwarves, whether it’s OK for Black Frenchmen to play traditionally White characters in The Beauty and the Beast, whether it was OK for Ariel to be African-American in the remake of The Little Mermaid, etc.
Whether police officers and prisons should accommodate Muslims’ religious dietary requirements (no pork, fasting during Ramadan), similar to how Jews’ and vegans’ requirements are often accommodated.
Whether it was OK for an activist artist to starve piglets to death in order to encourage scrutiny of the factory farming system.
Whether the international community should provide aid to Afghanistan in order to help its citizens receive health care and food, or whether aid should be withheld in order to pressure the Taliban to improve conditions for women and girls.
Whether the new “Golden Visa” program allowing foreign nationals to purchase U.S. residency and a path to citizenship for $1-5 million should be continued or ended.
Whether it’s OK to sentence murderers who commit their crimes at age 20 or 19 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Whether more states should allow people to choose to “compost” their bodies in lieu of cremation or traditional burial.
Whether it’s OK to require tourists to conduct community service or pay extra fees in order to visit crowded sites to reduce (or at least receive compensation for) over-toured sites.
Whether killers of women should receive harsher sentences or whether “femicide” should be discouraged by addressing root causes that make women vulnerable such as improving access to education and small business loans, or programs encouraging men to better value and respect women.
Whether it was OK for a town in Michigan to ban all political and ideology flags on public property as a way to diffuse tensions between the conservative Muslim majority and the LGBTQ+ community.
Whether paid surrogate mothering should be allowed across borders (wealthy couples hiring surrogates in poorer countries, for example).
Whether it’s OK for a zoo to solicit aging pets to use as food for exotic animals.
Whether it’s OK to allow AI-generated likenesses of murder victims to “testify” at their killers’ sentencing hearings.
Whether prison visitors should be allowed to meet in person with their loved ones or only allowed to interact via webcam.
Whether it’s OK to edit genes in heritable ways (so the changes don’t simply impact that person, but their offspring and the broader human gene pool).
Whether a park trail should be paved so it’s more accessible to persons in wheelchairs or left unpaved in order to better protect the natural habitat.
Whether a lady should tell her roommate that the man the roommate’s dating was previously married and has a child.
Whether it’s OK for snack food manufacturers to modify their portions to better attract consumers on new GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
Whether it’s OK for the Amish to pull their kids from school after the 8th grade.
Whether it’s OK to use brain implants to improve one’s competitive video game playing abilities.
Whether to limit or endorse AI as a personal therapist.
Whether Home Owners Associations that impose fines on residents for using unapproved decorations or failing to care for their yard are OK.
Whether a political minority group in Sri Lanka should… I’m not sure. My team found IEB case 6: Tamil Autonomy especially technical and dense, and the moral upshot seemed to focus on whether a minority group should push for national independence. If you understand that case better than we do, please volunteer to write a guest case analysis! I’m sure other teams are struggling with it as well.
Pre-college philosophy O.G. Jana Mohr Lone recently reached out to share a new Ethics Bowl Start-Up Kit created and curated by our friends at PLATO, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.
Designed to empower teachers to begin hosting Ethics Bowls in their classrooms ASAP, the description concisely explains what Ethics Bowl is, the lesson plan outlines the main steps, the rules confirm expectations, the rubric and scoresheet ensure judges are aligned, and the moderator script helpfully distinguishes what should be said aloud in red from context and instructions in black. For example, “Both teams now have up to 2 minutes to confer before they will engage in an open dialogue. Give the teams two minutes to confer. If they go to two minutes, tell them that time is up.”
PLATO has so many wonderful resources, and is leading the nation in promoting Ethics Bowls on the middle and elementary school levels in the U.S. Jana’s actually PLATO’s Executive Director, teaches philosophy for the University of Washington, and in 2012 published a book on my personal bookshelf, The Philosophical Child. Thank you, Jana and team for all you’ve done and are doing, including creating and sharing the new Ethics Bowl Start-Up Kit! It’s now permanently linked here on EthicsBowl.org’s Resources page.
