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What is ethics?

What is ethics?. Ethics is about normative claims. Normative Descriptive should be is. Normative vs. descriptive. Ethics is about normative claims. Normative Descriptive should be is etiquette science religion history

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What is ethics?

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  1. What is ethics?

  2. Ethics is about normative claims. NormativeDescriptive should be is Normative vs. descriptive

  3. Ethics is about normative claims. NormativeDescriptive should be is etiquette science religion history ethics statistics Normative vs. descriptive

  4. People are rational and make free choices. assumptions

  5. People believe in natural rights - the rights to life, liberty, and property - and agree that rules and laws should safeguard these natural rights and ensure a civil and secure society, and therefore, we should be willing to follow just laws. assumptions

  6. People should be able to demonstrate knowledge. assumptions

  7. 1. Absolutism • only 1 correct answer • context is irrelevant • the correct answer is known 2 Extreme positions to avoid

  8. 1. Absolutism • only 1 correct answer • context is irrelevant • the correct answer is known 2. Relativism • many answers • context is everything • all answers are equally correct 2 Extreme positions to avoid

  9. 1. Bandwagon 2. Appeal to emotion 3. Strawman 4. Appeal to ignorance 5. Appeal to authority Common wrong moves

  10. You are a doctor in a hospital’s emergency room. Six accident victims are brought in. All six are “at death’s door,” but one is much worse off than the other five. You can save that person, if you devote all of your energy, resources, and attention to her. Alternatively, you can save the other five, if you are willing to focus your energy, attention, and resources on them. • What should be done? • Why would that be the right thing to do? • What would justify doing it? *This is a slightly revised version of a case from Gilbert Harman’s The Nature of Morality The Emergency Room*

  11. 1. Consequences Perspective – which choice will result in the greater good • Utilitarianism: to increase happiness or “utility” • 2 things are assumed: • everybody is equal • the right action is the one that leads to the greatest good for the largest number of people 3 tools

  12. You have five patients who are dying; each needs an organ transplant. You can save all five, if you take a single healthy patient and harvest her organs for transplantation. The person you need is in room 306. She is in the hospital for a physical—for insurance purposes. You know from the results of the tests that have been run that she is perfectly healthy. You also know that her organs could be transplanted successfully in the needy patients. If you do nothing, she will leave the hospital and be very well-insured, but the other patients will surely die. They can be saved only if the organs of the woman in room 306 are harvested and transplanted. • What should be done? Why? *This is a slightly revised version of a case from Gilbert Harman’s The Nature of Morality The Woman in Room 306*

  13. 1. Consequences Perspective 2. Rights/Respect for Persons Perspective – look at intentions and consider if the person is being treated as they deserve • We must ask: • Can an act be wrong even though its consequences are very good? 3 tools

  14. 1. Consequences Perspective 2. Rights/Respect for Persons Perspective – look at intentions and consider if the person is being treated as they deserve • We must ask: • Can an act be wrong even though its consequences are very good? YES • Can an act be right even though its consequences are lousy? 3 tools

  15. A soldier finds himself and his unit under attack. He can decide to go for reinforcements or stay and face the likely result of his entire unit being killed. He decides that going for reinforcements would be a good decision in order to save more lives, but along the way, he is injured, his attempt fails and everybody in his unit dies. • Did he make the right decision? The Soldier

  16. 1. Consequences Perspective 2. Rights/Respect for Persons Perspective – look at intentions and consider if the person is being treated as they deserve • We must ask: • Can an act be wrong even though its consequences are very good? YES • Can an act be right even though its consequences are lousy? YES • So, we should be focusing on: • Universality = “The Golden Rule” • Deserved treatment 3 tools

  17. You are a lifeguard at a public beach. Looking to your right you see two people floundering about and in obvious need of assistance. However, as you are climbing down from your lifeguard tower, you notice that your 16-year-old daughter, who was swimming off to your left, is also in danger of drowning. No one else is in a position to help. • What would you do?  • What should you do? A Day at the Beach

  18. 1. Consequences Perspective 2. Rights/Respect for Persons Perspective 3. Character (Aspiration) Perspective – is what I’m thinking of doing consistent with what I aspire to be? • Responsibility of being human, which involves: • Striving for excellence in life – to be a person of admirable character • Remembering that one is constructing oneself with every decision and act • Asking “What am I making of myself? What will I become if I do this?” 3 tools

  19. Four-step approach: 1. Identification/recognition 2. Analysis • 3 tools – convergence begets confidence 3. Justification 4. Decision/action Ethical decision-making

  20. Is cheating wrong? Cheating

  21. Cheating has unhappy consequences for: • Other students, as when, for example, grading is done on a curve • Employers and their customers or clients; they’ve been misled and believe that the cheater knows how to do the job • think, for example, about the accounting or EMS student who cheated his or her way through school; the employer believes that he/she knows how to do the job, but, in fact, he/she doesn’t….. • Their school, if, for instance, there were a cheating scandal that received attention in the press. Such a scandal has far reaching effects; it may tarnish not only the reputation of the school but that of its graduates, past, present and future; and with this we’re back to the consequences for other students. • An additional result already on the table but not explicitly called out is the effect cheating has on the character of the cheater. ….. cheating

  22. But wait – there’s more… • Moreover, quite apart from the consequences, cheating is wrong because it is unfair; cheaters have an unfair advantage—they get the benefits of others abiding by the rules without bearing the burden (of being “law abiding”) that other students carry. • Cheating is unjust, because it undermines good faith efforts to see to it that people get what they deserve. • Cheating violates student rights that arise from the implicit (if not explicit) social contract students are party to when they voluntarily become a member of the college community. • Further, cheating thwarts aspirations for genuine excellence both for individuals and institutions. cheating

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