Ethics

How do we decide what is right?

In 1948, the United Nations proclaimed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights “as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected….”

In 2000, the United Nations put forth a set of goals for the world to work on together. The aspiration was that these goals would be achieved by 2015. Much progress was made.

Millennium Development Goals

 

In 2015, the United Nations designated a set of goals to continue its work toward equality and peace.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

 

Examples of Approaches to Ethical Reasoning

Consequence-Based

Utilitarianism – Jeremy Bentham

  • Do what produces the greatest overall good for all affected
  • Requires an assessment of the consequences, a forecasting of the outcomes

Measured in various ways:

  • Monetary
  • Human welfare
  • Pleasure or happiness

Maximize net benefits for all foreseeable outcomes

Applying to a case:

  • What are the likely consequences, good and bad, of each decision?

Limitations????

  • Protect minority from tyranny of the majority
  • Subjectivity
  • Unforeseen consequences
  • Ends justify the means?

Categorical or Duty-based 

Immanuel Kant

  • Determining UNIVERSAL moral duties
  • Do only that which you would want everyone to do, otherwise, there’s a moral duty NOT to
  • Respect people as ends in themselves
  • Duty to obey universal principles:  do not lie, do no harm…
  • Right to be treated with respect: not to be lied to or harmed…

Ideally, ethics is universal and impersonal: do that which everyone must do, no matter who they are or where they’re from.

Applying to a case:

  • Does it violate anyone’s human rights?

Limitations:

  • Rigidity
  • Consequences DO matter

Virtue-Based

Aristotle

  • What would a person of good moral character do?
  • Exercise appropriate virtue in every case:  honesty, generosity, justice…

Applicable virtues depend on context:

  • What is HONEST depends on social traditions, history; context based

Limitation:

  • Relies on judgement
  • Not precise formula
  • Behaviors are believed to be ethical simply because they’ve become “normal”

Ethics of care

Feminist scholarship – Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings  

  • Interpersonal relationships and care or benevolence as a virtue are central to moral action
  • Shares a great deal with virtue-based: Contextual, responds to limitation of impersonal, objective rules
  • Arises from feminist concerns:  about the quality of human relations rather than duties and rights

Applying to a case:

  • Do relationships demand special care?  Does violating a “universal” ideal for a relationship amount to “caring?”

Limitations:

  • Not a clear guide
  • Can maintain prejudice

 

Here is a PowerPoint presentation of the ideas above, with some additional thinking about how to consider issues with an ethics lens:

Ethics-Intro


Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, recorded his lectures for his course on Justice. In this course, he examines many facets of ethical decision making, rights of the individual and society, and asks questions about what we owe society and what we are owed…. if anything.

Lecture 15: What’s A Fair Start?