Introduction to Ethics

The book introduces the reader to western ethics as a subject, along with its three standard subdivisions. Although the book is written with university students, policymakers, and professionals in mind, the book is lucid enough to be accessible to most adult readers.  The book begins with introductions to the basics of ethics. These chapters are meant to provide the reader with the background knowledge necessary for understanding the more technical chapters on metaethics, normative ethics theories, and applied ethics, the three well-known subdivisions within ethics. The chapters that follow take up core ethical issues from each of these areas. The sections focus on explanation and a critical understanding of the ethical issue. The chapters also have examples, cases, and exercises to encourage critical thinking and to enable the reader to grasp the issue better. The book has tried to bring contemporary issues, such as ethics of human organ transplantation, and contemporary theories, such as Amartya Sen’s concept of Justice and Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach, to engage the readers with ethics in the real world.  The book concludes with applied ethics, but with the example of ethics of artificial intelligence. The aim is to keep ethics as a future-driven activity and to emphasize the need to understand the real-world ethical situations and dilemmas that will affect the stakeholders all around the world in the coming years as artificial intelligence and data-driven technologies change our everyday life. 

Chhanda Chakraborti is an active thinker, author, and a professor of Philosophy.  Her Ph.D. is from University of Utah, USA. Her M.A. degree in Philosophy is from University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and a second M.A in Philosophy is from Jadavpur University, India. She served as a Professor of Philosophy at Department of HSS, IIT Kharagpur, India, and has visited several universities abroad for academic and professional purpose. After retirement from IIT Kharagpur, she has joined School of Liberal Arts, IIT Jodhpur.

Her current active research areas are Public Health Ethics and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. For years, she has served as a nominated key member in the Institute Ethics Committee for Research involving Human Subjects at IIT Kharagpur. She has also served as a nominated member of the Editorial Advisory Body of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.  She organized several international and national conferences, workshops, and seminars, including an International Symposium on Infectious and Communicable Diseases and the Global Spread: Bioethical Issues and Concerns at the 10^th World Bioethics Congress in Singapore on July 28–31, 2010. She has also organized many training programs, including programs on ‘Professional Ethics’.   Recipient of many awards and fellowships, she has over 30 years of experience in research guidance, multidisciplinary research collaboration, and curriculum development. In two of her most recent sponsored projects, she will investigate the ethical issues with the technologically manipulated information, such as Deep Fake, and with Digital Twins such as Digital Twins of heritage objects.  With a long history of research experience and a varied range of research interests, she is still willing to learn and do more.