Phis Lecture-1
Phis Lecture-1
Phis Lecture-1
There are two fundamental problems in identifying the ethical standards we are to follow:
If our ethics are not based on feelings, religion, law, accepted social practice, or science, what
are they based on? Many philosophers and ethicists have helped us answer this critical
question. They have suggested at least five different sources of ethical standards we should
use.
Some ethicists emphasize that the ethical action is the one that provides the most good or does
the least harm, or, to put it another way, produces the greatest balance of good over harm. The
ethical corporate action, then, is the
one that produces the greatest good and does the least harm for all who are affected
customers, employees, shareholders, the community, and the environment.
Ethical warfare balances the good achieved in ending terrorism with the harm done to all parties
through death, injuries, and destruction. The utilitarian approach deals with consequences; it
tries both to increase the good done and to reduce the harm done.
Other philosophers and ethicists suggest that the ethical action is the one that best protects and
respects the moral rights of those affected. This approach starts from the belief that humans
have a dignity based on their human nature per se or on their ability to freely choose what they
do with their lives.
On the basis of such dignity, they have a right to be treated as ends and not merely as means to
other ends. The list of moral rights -including the rights to make one's own choices about what
kind of life to lead, to be told the truth, not to be injured, to a degree of privacy, and so on-is
widely debated; some now argue that non-humans have rights, too.
Also, it is often said that rights imply duties-in particular, the duty to respect
others' rights.
The Fairness or Justice Approach
Aristotle and other Greek philosophers have contributed the idea that all equals should be
treated equally. Today we use this idea to say that ethical actions treat all human beings
equally-or if unequally, then fairly based on some standard that is defensible.
We pay people more based on their harder work or the greater amount that
they contribute to an organization, and say that is fair.
But there is a debate over CEO salaries that are hundreds of times larger than
the pay of others; many ask whether the huge disparity is based on a defensible standard or
whether it is the result of an imbalance of power and Hence it is unfair.
The Greek philosophers have also contributed the notion that life in community is a good in itself
and our actions should contribute to that life.
This approach suggests that the interlocking relationships of society are the basis of ethical
reasoning and that respect and compassion for all others-especially the vulnerable-are
requirements of such reasoning.
This approach also calls attention to the common conditions that are important to the welfare of
everyone. This may be a system of laws, effective police and fire departments, health care, a
public educational system, or even public recreational areas.
A very ancient approach to ethics is that ethical actions ought to be consistent with certain ideal
virtues that provide for the full development of our humanity.
These virtues are dispositions and habits that enable us to act according to the highest potential
of our character and on behalf of values like truth and beauty.
Virtue ethics asks of any action, "What kind of person will I become if I do this?" or "Is this action
consistent with my acting at my best?"
Each of the approaches helps us determine what standards of behavior can be considered
ethical. There are still problems to be solved, however.
The first problem is that we may not agree on the content of some of these specific approaches.
We may not all agree to the same set of human and civil rights.
We may not agree on what constitutes the common good. We may not even agree on what is
good and what is harmful.
The second problem is that the different approaches may not all answer the question "What is
ethical?" in the same way.
Making Decisions
The more novel and difficult the ethical choice we face, the more we need to rely on discussion
and dialogue with others about the dilemma. Only by careful exploration of the problem, aided
by the insights and different perspectives of others, can we make good ethical choices in such
situations.
We have found the following framework for ethical decision making a useful method for
exploring ethical dilemmas and identifying ethical courses of action.
Imagine that the U.S. The Central Intelligence Agency gets wind of a plot to set off a dirty bomb
in a major American city. Agents capture a suspect who, they believe, has information about
where the bomb is planted. Is it permissible for them to torture the suspect into revealing the
bomb's whereabouts? Can the
dignity of one individual be violated in order to save many others?
If you answered yes, you were probably using a form of moral reasoning called
"utilitarianism." Stripped down to its essentials, utilitarianism is a moral principle that holds that
the morally right course of action in any situation is the one
that produces the greatest balance of benefits over harms for everyone affected.
So long as a course of action produces maximum benefits for everyone, utilitarianism does not
care whether the benefits are produced by lies, manipulation, or coercion.
Business analysts, legislators, and scientists weigh daily the resulting benefits
and harms of policies when deciding, for example, whether to invest resources in a certain
public project, whether to approve a new drug, or whether to ban a certain pesticide.
Utilitarianism offers a relatively straightforward method for deciding the morally right course of
action for any particular situation we may find ourselves in.
To discover what we ought to do in any situation, we first identify the various courses of action
that we could perform.
Second, we determine all of the foreseeable benefits and harms that would result from each
course of action for everyone affected by the action.
And third, we choose the course of action that provides the greatest benefits after the costs
have been taken into account.
The principle of utilitarianism can be traced to the writings of Jeremy Bentham, who lived in
England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Bentham, a legal reformer, sought an objective basis that would provide a publicly acceptable
norm for determining what kinds of laws England should enact. He believed that the most
promising way of reaching such an agreement was to choose that policy that would bring about
the greatest net benefits to society once the harms had been taken into account.
His motto, a familiar one now, was "the greatest good for the greatest number."
Over the years, the principle of utilitarianism has been expanded and refined so that today there
are many variations of the principle. For example, Bentham defined benefits and harms in terms
of pleasure and pain. John Stuart Mill, a great 19th century utilitarian figure, spoke of benefits
and harms not in terms of pleasure and pain alone but in terms of the quality or intensity of such
pleasure and pain.
Today utilitarians often describe benefits and harms in terms of the satisfaction of personal
preferences or in purely economic terms of monetary benefits over monetary costs.
Utilitarians also differ in their views about the kind of question we ought to ask ourselves when
making an ethical decision. Some utilitarians maintain that in making an ethical decision, we
must ask ourselves: "What effect will my doing this act in this situation have on the general
balance of good over evil?" If lying would produce the best consequences in a particular
situation, we ought to lie.
Others, known as rule utilitarians, claim that we must choose that act that conforms to the
general rule that would have the best consequences. In other words, we must ask ourselves:
"What effect would everyone's doing this kind of action have on the general balance of good
over evil?"
So, for example, the rule "to always tell the truth" in general promotes the good of everyone and
therefore should always be followed, even if in a certain situation lying would produce the best
consequences.
Despite such differences among utilitarians, however, most hold to the general principle that
morality must depend on balancing the beneficial and harmful consequences of our conduct.
While utilitarianism is currently a very popular ethical theory, there are some difficulties in relying
on it as a sole method for moral decision-making.
First, the utilitarian calculation requires that we assign values to the benefits and harms resulting
from our actions and compare them with the benefits and harms that might result from other
actions. But it's often difficult, if not impossible, to measure and compare the values of certain
benefits and costs. How do we go about assigning a value to life or to art? And how do we go
about comparing the value of money with, for example, the value of life, the value of time, or the
value of human dignity?
Moreover, can we ever be really certain about all of the consequences of our
actions? Our ability to measure and to predict the benefits and harms resulting
from a course of action or a moral rule is dubious, to say the least.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty with utilitarianism is that it fails to take into account considerations
of justice. We can imagine instances where a certain
a course of action would produce great benefits for society, but they would be clearly unjust.
During the apartheid regime in South Africa in the last century, South African whites, for
example, sometimes claimed that all South Africans—including blacks—were better off under
white rule.
These whites claimed that in those African nations that have traded a whites-only government
for a black or mixed one, social conditions have rapidly deteriorated. Civil wars, economic
decline, famine, and unrest, they predicted, will be the result of allowing the black majority of
South Africa to run the government.
If such a prediction were true—and the end of apartheid has shown that the prediction was
false—then the white government of South Africa would have been morally justified by
utilitarianism, in spite of its injustice.
If our moral decisions are to take into account considerations of justice, then
Apparently utilitarianism cannot be the sole principle guiding our decisions. It can, however, play
a role in these decisions. The principle of utilitarianism invites us to consider the immediate and
the less immediate consequences of our actions.
Given its insistence on summing the benefits and harms of all people,
Utilitarianism asks us to look beyond self interest to consider impartially the interests of all
persons affected by our actions.
As John Stuart Mill once wrote:The happiness which forms the utilitarian
standard of what is right in conduct, is not...(one's) own happiness, but that of all concerned. As
between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly
impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.
In an era today that some have characterized as "the age of self interest," utilitarianism is a
powerful reminder that morality calls us to look beyond the self to the good of all.