Introducing Ethics

Abstract

In this chapter, the reader is introduced to ethics as a subject. In this chapter, you will get to learn:

• ✓Introduction to ethics and its subject matter

• ✓Definitions of ethics

• ✓An idea of ethics as an academic subject

• ✓An outline about how ethics is a study of values, and why it is a branch of Axiology

• ✓Distinctions between ethos and ethics, and normative and descriptive

• ✓Discussion on the importance of studying ethics

• ✓Information about different divisions within the subject of ethics

• ✓A discussion on the relation between free will and ethics.

Appendices

Study Questions

• 1. What are the characteristics, which sets ethics apart from other studies of behavior?

• 2. What is Axiology? How is ethics different from the other axiological studies?

• 3. For each of the following, answer (a) if it is ethically ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and (b) in each case briefly but persuasively justify your answer.

  3.1. To post a rumor on a campus gossip site about a classmate

  3.2 To not share with your other friends what one of your friends has told you confidentially

  3.3. To help your friend to secure a government contract, when there are three equally eligible claimants, including your friend, for awarding the contract, and you are part of the team which awards the contract.

  3.4. To sustain drug habits by selling drugs to others.

  3.5. To lie to your employer to protect a fellow colleague who you know is engaged in embezzlement of company funds.

• 4. For each of the 3.1.-3.5, identify the value(s) which is upheld, or compromised, or in conflict, as may be applicable, in these cases.

• 5. Some say that ethics becomes “inescapable” as we, the humans, are social beings, and that we live in relationship with the other human beings, and with the nature. In your opinion, is this a good reason to study ethics? Justify your answer.

• 6. What are the three major divisions within ethics? What is the difference between normative ethics and metaethics? Where would professional ethics belong among these divisions?

• 7. How does ethos differ from ethics? Why is it said that ethics presupposes an ethos?

• 8. Is free will required as a necessary condition for holding someone morally responsible for an action? Explain.

Research Exercises

• 1. Read the leading newspapers (at least 3) of your choice for the past 2 days. List the news items (at least 3) that you think come within the purview of ethics by invoking some considerations about right, or wrong, good or bad.

• 2. Are these cases on your list also legally right, or wrong? If yes, explain how and where do you make the distinction between the legal and the ethical? If no, go to the next question.

• 3. Find out who you hold as the agent or the doer in these cases. Do you believe that the agent (s) had a choice to do otherwise?

• 4. Can values be deduced from the facts? Can ‘should’ statements be derived from ‘is’ statements?

Case Study Discussion

Ethics Case to Discuss 1.1

Voting Machine

Company BigApple has developed the software for a computerized voting machine. Company Manumen, which manufactured the machine, has persuaded the administration of several cities and states to purchase it. On the strength of these orders, Manumen is planning a major purchase from BigApple. BigApple software engineer Sweta was visiting Manumen one day and she came to know that due to problems in the manufacturing of the machine one out of every fifteen machines is likely to miscount soon after installation. Sweta reports it to her superior, who informs her that that is Manumen’s problem and that she should not bother.

• 1. Is there any action, or a decision, in this story that can be judged as right or wrong? Explain.

• 2. If answered yes to 1, what kind of right or wrong is in question in this case? Is it ethically right or wrong? Explain.

• 3. If you were in this situation, how would you handle it? Do nothing? Or, ask your Supervisor to consider the long-term implications of association with Manumen for BigApple? Or, would you react in some other way?

• 4. Does the fact that, only one of, and not all, fifteen machines is likely to develop a counting error problem, affect the assessment of rightness or wrongness in this case? If yes, explain why. If not, explain why.

Key Terms

• Academic discipline: A systematically organized field of academic discourse.

• Axiology: A philosophical study of the values.

• Determinism: The position that all events that happen in the world happen only because of some pre-existing conditions and are thus completely determined by these conditions.

• Desiderata: Things that are desired, goals or objectives.

• Ethos: The basic, distinctive character, or the collection of the dispositions, attitudes, and beliefs.

• Free will: Traditionally, free will is understood as a kind of power to control one’s choices and actions, as a capacity to choose and to do otherwise

• Free-willed actions: Those actions over which (a) the agent has control and (b) has chosen to do without any external coercion, or pressure, when the agent had other possible choices. ‘Is-ought’ problem: No ‘ought’ or ‘should’ statement can be correctly derived from a set of premises which are ‘is’ statements, i.e. purely factual and descriptive statements. When people do this, the ‘is-ought’ problem occurs as a logical fallacy.

• Metaethics: That part of ethics which critically examines the foundational concepts and criteria of ethics and the concepts and presuppositions that normative ethics utilizes.

• Normative: That which is related to a norm or a standard.

• Normative ethics: That part of ethics which deliberates upon the norms or standards for human conduct.

• Value: In the context of ethics, it is understood as abstract and intangible, but enduring, ultimate desired end-states. It is immeasurable and non-quantifiable.