Ethical frameworks involve an overlap of 1) philosophical traditions, 2) religious traditions, and 3) moral principles. Most people will draw from all of these but emphasize one framework or another in their approach to ethics.
I Philosophical traditions
When we are confronted with an ethical dilemma, we often use a combination of ethical tools to understand the situation and judge what is best to do. We think about our duty, about the impact on other people, about whether an action is virtuous or fair. Understanding the range of ethical tools helps us approach ethical challenges in a more thoughtful way. These philosophical traditions in ethics have emerged in various epochs of human history. Virtue ethics is from classical civilizations; Consequence and Duty ethics emerged in the Enlightenment period; Justice ethics emerged in the mid-20th century; and Bioethics became a major concern in the late 20th century.
1. Virtue ethics: A person’s long term happiness can only be found through virtue, or being good. At the center of this Greek tradition of ethics was the value of using human reason to get beyond appeals to authority or circular religious arguments.
- Plato emphasized the ideal. His allegory of the cave was meant to show that we live in a world of illusion and that we must often shed our illusions to find the truth.
- Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics held that reason could be used to create happiness (human telos) and would give us moral and intellectual virtues. The moral virtues include moderation, courage and magnanimity; the intellectual virtues include art, science and philosophical wisdom.
- Epicurean and Stoic traditions of ethics followed both traditions. The Golden Mean, the idea that we should seek moderation in all things and that good is usually found between the extremes, is an Epicurean ethical ideal.
The underlying idea of virtue ethics is that people cultivate their better natures, rather than surrendering to their passions or desires. A good example of this issue is in the movie Groundhog Day (above right) where a TV anchor played by Bill Murray learns he is more or less immortal, and ends up making a pig of himself in the local diner. Andie McDowell, playing his producer, asks him why he would lower himself, and recites part of a poem, “Breathes there the man,” by Walter Scott.
2. Consequence ethics involves considering the greatest good for the greatest number of people. So, in other words, the value of an action is determined by its outcome.This is also called utilitarianism. There are problems with utilitarianism, especially in that it doesn’t include ideas of justice or duty. Taken to its extreme, the greatest good for the majority might be very bad for a minority.
3. Duty ethics (also called deontological ethics, from deon, or duty) bases ethical decisions on adherence to rules. Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) said that we should do what would be right if everyone did it. He called this the categorical imperative. Its not the consequences that make and action right or wrong, but whether they conform to a greater good.
Immanuel Kant described the categorical imperative with three basic axioms:
- Act only according to a maxim (rule) that you would also want to become a universal law.
- Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
- Act as though you were, through your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.
4. Justice ethics stems from the work of John Rawls, whose Theory of Justice was conceived as a new alternative to utilitarian and duty ethics. The idea is that social choices should be made in non-self serving way from an unbiased original position or “veil of ignorance.” One example would be the division of estate property among the sons and daughters of a recently deceased parent. Those who divide the property would be the last to chose which portion they would be able to inherit.
When you see well-to-do financial-industry types … with a glint of discomfort and even fear in their eyes — wondering if this thing may just spin out of control — you know that Occupy Wall Street is having a visceral impact. But if you want a philosophy that explains why the matter of the 99 percent and the 1 percent has deservedly struck such a nerve, you need to go back to John Rawls.
The way to create the rules for a just society, Rawls argued in his 1971 masterwork, “A Theory of Justice,” is to first imagine everyone in an “original position” behind a pre-birth “veil of ignorance,” where no one knows what their own traits will be — whether they will be rich or poor, beautiful or plain, smart or less so, talented or not, healthy or unwell. Then you’d see what kind of social order people would agree in advance was fair, if they couldn’t know what place they were destined to occupy in it.Matt Miller, “Justice, inequality and the 99 percent,” Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2011.
5. Bioethics are also called environmental ethics. One source of bioethics was Aldo Leopold’s 1946 book “Land Ethic” in which he projected a broadening of the scope of virtue, consequence, justice and duty ethics from the purely human realm to other living things and the entire web of life. This was not entirely new. For instance, in Metaphysics of Morals, Kant said that people have a duty to avoid cruelty to animals. But Kant said this was because cruelty deadens the feeling of compassion in people, and not because non-rational beings have moral worth. That would have been a typical idea of the 1700s (and acceptable as part of ethical pragmatism). Today, with a bioethical lens, we see animals as having their own intrinsic moral worth independent of people.
Another source of bioethics was the reaction to unethical human medical experiments. These included Nazi concentration camp experiments, and in the US, the deadly 1932 – 1970 Tuskegee syphilis experiment , the 1950 San Francisco Serratia experiment, along with psychologically damaging experiments like the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and the 1961 Milgram experiment, These experiments were conducted without consent of the participants. Another controversial experiment, conducted in 1968 on third graders, let blue-eyed students discriminate against brown-eyed students.
An example of ethical media conduct in this area was the story by Associated Press reporter Jean Heller in 1972 that broke the news about the Tuskegee Experiment.
6. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ethics are relatively new but, like bioethics, spring from a perception of unethical conduct by the big social media companies like Facebook (Meta), Google (Alphabet), Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and others.
Among the issues:
- Misuses of artificial intelligence (replicating propaganda bots or copyright violations);
- Hate speech against individuals, cultures, ethnic groups, nations
- Invasions of personal privacy, surveillance (eg China’s “social credit” system);
- Violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
- A lack of fairness in the global media structure and the way it can leave young people vulnerable to terrorist recruitment, according to the United Nations.
- Profit-driven algorithms that promote hate speech in social media;
- “Truth decay” or lack of verification about culture war claims (vaccines, election fraud, insurrection, etc);
- Election interference through foreign propaganda
Institutional Review Boards
One reaction to unethical research was the establishment of human subjects review committees (or IRBs) in universities and scientific research institutions in the US and worldwide. Also, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was established in 1974 to identify the basic ethical principles that should underlie the conduct of research. The Belmont Report (1979), partly an outgrowth of the commission, listed principles such as autonomy, beneficence and justice. Later, non-maleficence, human dignity and the sanctity of life were added to this list of cardinal values.
Animal rights and genetic rights are other areas of concern for bioethics. In India, Vandana Shiva is a bioethicist from the Hindu tradition who is concerned about corporations and the misuse of genetic resources, similar debates crop up in Africa and in Latin America. Throughout the developing world, underdevelopment and geopolitical power relations are the context in which bioethics concerns may arise. These can include anything from medical tests on unsuspecting populations to dumping of toxic wastes to patenting of plant to the privatization of water supplies. In the global media, questions about power relations and the unequal flow of information were raised in the MacBride report and by subsequent UN commissions.
II RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS — BUDDHISM, CHRISTIANITY, HINDUISM, JUDAISM, ISLAM
Buddhist — Eightfold path: (Right views, Right aspirations, Right speech, Right conduct, Right livelihood, Right effort, Right mindfulness, and Right meditational attainment).
Christian — Includes the Golden Rule (Love your neighbor; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; turn the other cheek; ) and the concept of avoiding sin.
Hindu — Ahimsa, do no harm to any living thing
Islamic — Surrender to the will of God.
Jewish — Ten Commandments (also Christian and Islamic)
Note that there is a great deal of overlap and interaction between these faiths. For example, Christianity isn’t the only (or even necessarily the original) source of the Golden Rule — it is often found in other religions. Also note that not all religions are represented here. Other major religions include Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism and Wicca.
For more information see Robert Cavalier’s Online Guide to Ethics and Philosophy.
III Moral Principles
When making these difficult moral choices, sometimes its helpful to discuss basic moral principles in neutral language that transcends philosophical or religious traditions. According to Gerald Corey, Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions, (NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), terms for basic principles found in ethical traditions are:
- Autonomy / people make their own choices without manipulation
- Nonmaleficence / do no harm
- Benificence / help people
- Justice / fairness, treat all people alike
- Fidelity / honor commitment to those you serve
- Veracity / truthfulness
Ethical orientation or ultimate loyalty is another way to look at how individuals and cultures view ethical behavior. Which of these describes your ethical orientation?
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Ask yourself: Are you oriented towards the greater good of the community or the greater good of individuals? Who bears the ultimate value — the individual or the community? This is not to say that either orientation is ethical or unethical. Instead, your orientation is a deeply seated psychological attribute that helps you make decisions about ethics.
Outgoing, communitarian people may be more concerned with the greater good of the whole group, while introspective people may be more concerned with personal liberties. The question is also cultural: Generally, eastern cultures are more community oriented, valuing harmony over individualism, while western cultures cherish individual liberties — quite often at the expense of social harmony.
In either case, these orientations are not mutually exclusive. Nearly all people and societies have at least some concern for both individuals and communities.
Either of the two orientations, taken to the extreme, can produce social dysfunctions. An extremely libertarian society may have great inequities in its distribution of wealth and resources. An extremely communitarian society may stifle freedom and initiative.
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READING
July 25, 2022, Associated Press — How an AP reporter broke the Tuskeggee syphilis story.
Advice from Aristotle on communications ethics — By Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth. (Published in 2018 in The Conversation).