WGS Ethics and Animal Sciences (0.8 ECTS) - Online

Course description

As a future scientist in the life sciences, it is important that PhD students have an insight into the debates around the relationship between human beings, animals, and nature, to understand their meaning and to learn to participate in these debates.
This course will provide students with a systematic overview of the key topics of animal and environmental ethics. Specific attention is given to the ethical assessment of animal experiments and the tension between individualist animal ethics and collectivist environmental ethics. Attention is also given to the cultural background of normativity and the ethical aspects of the PhD students’ own research projects.

Course objectives

The objectives of this course is to train ethical reflection and to gain knowledge about debates in animal and environmental ethics. Moreover, the PhD students should be able to place their own research in a broader societal context and be able to justify their own normative position.

Learning goals: After completing this course students are expected to be able to:

• Give a schematic overview of the key topics in animal and environmental ethics;
• Assess and evaluate the arguments within current debates about our treatment of animals and the environment;
• Demonstrate understanding of the differences between environmental ethics and animal welfare ethics.

General information

Target Group: PhDs, postdocs, WUR staff and non-WUR participants

Course level: General, post-graduate

Group size: A minimum of 12 and a maximum of 15 participants

Course duration: 2 days and given 3 times per year

Language: English

Credit points: 0.8 ECTS

Name lecturer: Bernice Bovenkerk

Programme

Day 1

10.00-12.30 Introduction Animal Ethics

13.30-17.15 Introduction Environmental ethics

Day 2

10.00-11.00 Culture and Ethics

11.00 -12.30 Ethics in the PhD projects of the participants

13.30- 17.15 Animal Experimentation Committee