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Ethics can be defined broadly as a set of moral principles or values. Each of us has such a set of values, although we may or may not have clearly expressed them. It is common for people to differ in their moral principles and values and the relative importance they attach to them. These differences reflect life experiences, successes and failures, as well as the influences of parents, teachers, and friends.
Ethical behavior is necessary for a society to function in a orderly manner. It can be argued that ethics is the glue that holds a society together. Philosophers, religious organizations, and other groups have defined in various ways ideal sets of moral principles and values. The following are different approaches, from ancient and modern traditions and philosophers, depicting their meaning and understanding of ethics and how it can be applied in ethical decision-making.
Utilitarianism was founded by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham toward the end of the 18th century. He believed that all human actions are motivated by a desire to obtain pleasure and avoid pain. The principle of utility expresses that actions were right if they tended to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies right and wrong and also considers the consequences that may result. This can be regarded as an appropriate action, but offers no realistic way to gather necessary information to make the required decision. Confronting certain situations in life, there is no time to weigh all possible outcomes and decide the one that provides the greatest benefit to all; majority of predicaments allow just enough time for a person to act on impulse alone. To calculate the welfare of the people involved in or effected by any given situation, utilitarianism requires that all individuals be considered equally. Quantitative utilitarians would contemplate the pleasure and pain that would be caused and evaluate how both sides would be affected. Through this calculation of pleasures and pains, one could tell what was right or wrong.
John Stuart Mill, also a British philosopher, modified and expanded on Bentham’s principles. Mill’s approach insists on qualitative utilitarianism, which requires that one consider not only the amount of pain or pleasure, but also the quality of such pain and pleasure. An utilitarian must consider both the consequences of an action and the good and evil that accompanies it.
There are advantages and disadvantages in applying this approach to my own life. I know when I am faced with decisions I do find myself weighing all outcomes, what is right and wrong, and what consequences might result. For example, I encountered a dilemma at my summer job two years ago. I was an usher at a concert venue and I was faced with turning my friend’s nephew in for having marijuana on him. It was wrong for him to have the drugs with him but at the same time he would of gotten into a lot of trouble. Could I do that to my friend? Could I not do anything at all? As I contemplated this problem, I did take the utilitarianism approach in trying to decide what would be the best thing to do to handle this. In the end I did turn him in to my boss, as not only was that my job, but if anything happen as a result of using the drugs I would feel responsible for not notifying someone. The disadvantage to this is that there is not enough necessary information available and there is no scale on which to weigh the various considerations. Granted he was only sentenced to community service, how did I know that he consequences could not have been worse, like being sent to jail. I could of decided to handle it myself instead of turning him into my boss. This approach helps in deciding between right and wrong but when it comes to what the consequences actually are and how everyone in the situation will be affected, there really is no way of knowing.
The moral law, along with natural law, approach to ethical decision-making, views ethics as a set of rules that must be obeyed without any consideration of the consequences that will follow from doing so or not. It claims that it is impossible to measure right from wrong and prohibits the reliance on consequential calculations and use of any action that aims directly against good intentions. The works of philosophers Aquinas, Hobbes, and Kant coincide with these concepts.
Thomas Aquinas, an Italian philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian, believed happiness to be found in the love of God. His conception on right and wrong came from the blending of Aristotle’s teachings and Christianity. His theory on the difference between right and wrong can be regarded by the use of reason and reflection on experience.
Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, suggests that we are motivated by selfish self interests and because of that, we are better off living in a world of moral rules. Hobbes believes that these self interests are a way of saying that all of our actions are a product of our own beliefs, that people consider themselves to be better than anyone else other than God.
Immanuel Kant’s, an German philosopher, ethical system is based on the belief that everything happens for a reason. Our actions, of any sort, are directed by reason. Whether we need to reach a specific outcome or resolution, we choose the action that will accomplish that task or whether that action is the only means necessary and then that particular action must be followed.
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Mill's Utilitarianism When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies the appropriate considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather the necessary information to make the required calculations. This lack of information is a problem both in evaluating the welfare issues and in evaluating the consequentialist issues which utilitarianism requires be weighed when making moral decisions. Utilitarianism attempts to solve both of these difficulties by appealing to experience; however, no method of reconciling an individual decision with the rules of experience is suggested, and no relative weights are assigned to the various considerations. In deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who has planted a bomb in New York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the overall welfare of the people involved or effected by the action taken, and the consequences of the action taken. To calculate the welfare of the people involved in or effected by an action, utilitarianism requires that all individuals be considered equally. Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure and pain which would be caused by the bomb exploding against the pleasureand pain that would be caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the amounts would be summed and compared. The problem with this method is that it is impossible to know beforehand how much pain would be caused by the bomb exploding or how much pain would be caused by the torture. Utilitarianism offers no practical way to make the interpersonal comparison of utility necessary to compare the pains. In the case of the bomb exploding, it at least seems highly probable that a greater amount of pain would be caused, at least in the present, by the bomb exploding. This probability suffices for a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not account for the consequences, which create an entirely different problem, which will be discussed below. The probability also does not hold for Mill's utilitarianism. Mill's Utilitarianism insists on qualitative utilitarianism, which requires that one consider not only the amount of pain or pleasure, but also the quality of such pain and pleasure. Mill suggests that to distinguish between different pains and pleasures we should ask people who have experienced both types which is more pleasurable or more painful. This solution does not work for the question of torture compared to death in an explosion. There is no one who has experienced both, therefore, there is no one who can be consulted. Even if we agree that the pain caused by the number of deaths in the explosion is greater than the pain of the terrorist being tortured, this assessment only accounts for the welfare half of the utilitarian's considerations. Furthermore, one has no way to measure how much more pain is caused by allowing the bomb to explode than by torturing the terrorist. After settling the issues surrounding the welfare, a utilitarian must also consider the consequences of an action. In weighing the consequences, there are two important considerations. The first, which is especially important to objectivist Utilitarianism, is which people will be killed. The second is the precedent which will be set by the action. Unfortunately for the decision maker, the information necessary to make either of these calculations is unavailable. There is no way to determine which people will be killed and weigh whether their deaths would be good for society. Utilitarianism requires that one compare the good that the people would do for society with the harm they would do society if they were not killed. For example, if a young Adolf Hitler were in the building, it might do more good for society to allow the building to explode. Unfortunately for an individual attempting to use utilitarianism to make for decisions, there is no way to know beforehand what a person will do. Furthermore, without even knowing which building the bomb is in, there is no way to predict which people will surely be in the building. A subjectivist utilitarian would dismiss this consideration and would examine only what a rational person would consider to be the consequence; however, even the subjectivist utilitarian must face the question of precedent setting. Utilitarianism considers justice and humane treatment to be good for society as a whole and therefore instrumentally good as a means to promoting happiness. Utilitarianism considers precedent to be important, but does not offer any method of determining exceptions. It is impossible to determine how much effect on precedent any given isolated action will have. In the case of determining whether or not to torture the terrorist, one must consider whether it is good forsociety to allow torture to be used as a method of gaining information. If it is bad, one must determine whether this action willcreate a precedent. If it will create or contribute to the creation of a precedent, one must compare the detrimental effects of this precedent with the other consequences and welfare caused by the action. Utilitarianism offers no method for comparison. The problem is that a person faced with making the decision cannot get the information. Even through experience, it is hard to judge how much effect each action has on precedent. More specifically, it is hard to determine whether an action is worthy of being an exception to a rule. Utilitarianism offers no resolution to this problem. Utilitarianism also considers the Theory of Desert to be instrumentally valuable to the promotion of happiness. It is generally good for society to reward people for doing right and to punish them for doing wrong. Using this belief in the value of justice, a utilitarian would have more trouble torturing the child of the terrorist than with torturing the terrorist. The dilemma would be similar to that of precedent. A utilitarian would ask how much it will harm society's faith in the punishment of evildoers and the protection of the innocent to torture the child. The sum of the consequences would then be compared to the sum of the welfare considerations to decides whether or not to torture the terrorist and whether or not to torture the child of the terrorist. In some way, these things must therefore all be comparable and assigned weights; however, Utilitarianism offers no method of comparison. There must be some percentage of consideration given to the harmful precedent set compared to the amount of pain caused by the deaths, compared to the pain the terrorist or the child being tortured feels, compared to the harm society will be saved from by the deaths of people in the explosion, compared to the good that society will be deprived of by the deaths in the explosion. The overarching problem with utilitarianism as a method for decision making is that not enough of the necessary information is available and there is no scale on which to weigh the various considerations. Basically, the subjective utilitarian would probably consider that the deaths of many is worse than the torture of one. Depending on how much weight is given to the detrimental effects of the precedent which would be set by torturing the terrorist, the utilitarian could consider this to outweigh the greater pain caused by the explosion or not. Different people have different moral consciences, which dictate different actions. These differences will dictate where the person puts the most weight in the utilitarian considerations, since utilitarianism does not specify. Similarly, depending on how much weight is given to the detrimental precedent of torturing innocent children, the utilitarian could consider it to outweigh the pain caused by the explosion or not. In the end, utilitarianism does not help in making the moral decision. The information necessary to calculate all of the considerations identified by utilitarianism is not available. Furthermore, what isrequired is a method of comparing and weighing the considerations, and this method is not defined by utilitarianism. In the end, the decision maker is still left to make the decision based on internal moral feelings of what is right and what is wrong which do not come from utilitarianism.
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