Ethical style

Remove all ads!

I'm starting this thread based on the torture thread as I'm going to try to keep that one on topic.

I am a CPA in the USA and in my state to keep my license I am required to take X hours of ethical training. Well this morning I attended a 4 hour seminar and learned all sorts of interesting things.

There are two types of ethical approaches.

1. Rule based ethics are ethics based upon the adoption of an abstract, impersonal principles, like justice, fairness, equality or authority. People that rely on this ethical approach, make decisions by applying some general principle to the situation.

2. Situational based ethics are based upon the belief that the focal point of every ethical dilemma is the specific individuals involved and the particular circumstances of the issue.

These are straight from the materials handed out. I found it very interesting for if asked I would have thought I would fall into the 1st category, but there is a test which you can take here that figures it out for you. Out of nine questions I turned out to follow the second style 6 times.

 

It's an interesting premise, but I think the questions are pretty dubious and far too vague for the results to mean anything substantive.

For example, number 5: being "just and fair" and being "sympathetic and feeling" are not mutually exclusive. Sympathy and empathy can be a means to establishing what is fair. 4 is even worse; it states two situations that only an unethical or unthinking person would engage in. Only a fool would steal something valuable or betray a friend "for no good reason." I think nearly everyone in this situation would believe the reason they had for doing so is a very good one, even if it isn't. Number 8 is too vague, too. It would depend on what the "hurt" is. If that means to cause an innocent co-worker harm, then yes you've done wrong. But firing a person for incompetence also hurts them.

Meh. Anyway, I scored 5 care and 4 justice.

 

I would have thought I'd score higher on the justice side too. But I'm 5/4 - just like DR. Some of those questions are pretty dumb though - like #6. Does anyone think it's worse to play favorites than not helping someone in trouble? And how many people thinks it's not as a bad to be unmerciful as it is to be unfair? In these instances the justice answer seems very conuterintuitive to all but the most unfeeling of people.

 

Yup the test is really too vague and sometimes the ''worst'' option really depends on the situation, but anyway I've scored Care 5 Justice 4, which seems pretty average around here so far.

 

9 care. Given I'm CN, that's not a surprise, but even so, that's kind of a crap quiz.

 

Care Score: 5
Justice Score: 4

Not too good of a quizz.

 

Justice 6, Care 3.

I believe that some catch 22 situations have been included deliberately. I believe that many things become more clear when examined from a perspective of faith.

The first question for example. If you look at the purpose of life as to improve yourself, then by lying to them, you are hindering their progress, a greater evil than hurting their feelings.

And for the second question, Rules are there for a reason, and by making exceptions, you chip away at those rules, and soon they lose their binding nature.

Number 4, both would be equal actually. Both are covered in the 10 commandments...

 

I, also, had a hard time choosing between answers. Questions were vague and the quiz too short to give a fair score.

However, I can't quarrel with my results. Being CG I tend to go by a case by case decision rather than a general "This is the right, best and only way to do things".

Care Score 6 Justice Score 3

 

Justice 6, care 3.

[ June 23, 2007, 02:53: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Care 7, Justice 2.

CG and situational ethics (and all the pitfalls therein) for me!

Several questions are rather moot, but then it's a fairly brief quiz - only nine questions - and could hardly be considered exhaustive enough to be of any use in more than satisfying personal curiosity.

 

Care 4, Justice 5

It all comes down to whether, as Simon Baron-Cohen calls it, you are a systemizer or an empathizer. His research has indicated that males generally are systemizers, their brains are basically hardwired like that from birth due to genetics, and it also indicates that women are basically hardwired towards empathy from birth due to genetics. Primary biological features amongst boys and girls are clearly defined...usually...but it is also the way in which the world interacts with the child depending on their gender as to how their secondady biological features take shape.

To put it simply, men 'think' more often than they 'feel', and women 'feel' more often than they think. Classic example is men not understanding what their female partner is so upset about, and another is women not being so good at reading maps. First example shows that men dont grasp the vast emotional depths of a womans mind, and the latter shows that women percieve space differently. I could go on but I wont, I wrote an essay on this subject recently for my metaphysics class.

 

Care 5/Justice 4

And if they aren't mentally ready to hear the truth? What if telling them the truth would destroy them? Wouldn't you then be hindering their progress by telling them the truth?

Sometimes the rules are wrong. Sure, when the rules are wrong, they should be changed, but in the mean time I think saying something like "Sorry, kid, while this law is wrong and you are being royally screwed over without good reason, I still have to do this nasty, nasty thing to you because it's the law. Hopefully, they'll get around to changing it sooner or later (not that it's gonna help you any) so that things like this won't keep happening to well-meaning people like you. I really feel for you, but rules are rules" would be more than a little capricious. But maybe that's just me.

Not really. Robbing someone for no good reason and standing up a dinner date are not, in my opinion, even remotely in the same league. Neither is good, but no one necessarily gets hurt when you break a promise. Stealing, on the other hand, always hurts someone.

 

@Drew I agree with you on #1 and 2 but not 4. Breaking a promise can be devastating to a person. If some one is counting on you to do something and you fail to do it the results can be very hurtful. Break a promise to a child and you may break a heart.

 

@Nakia, I'd say it depends on what you stole, who you stole it from, to whom you made the broken promise, and what the promise was. Breaking a promise can be something as little as failing to mow the lawn on Sunday. Stealing, on the other hand, is always stealing. I agree that, in many instances, breaking a promise can be on par with or worse than certain types of theft, but we are comparing the breaking of an unspecified promise to an unspecified theft in this instance. The only caveat they gave us is that there is no good reason.

What we can take from this is that, even in it's best possible light, the theft is always going to be self-serving (since any possible justification for the theft would constitute a "good reason") and someone is always going to get hurt (at least financially), but the broken promise will, in many instances, be completely innocuous or maybe just mildly annoying. Further, how you define "no good reason" is also important. Forgetting, while not a good reason, is often quite innocuous.

As an excercise, I'm going to put the best possible spin on the theft and promise breaking examples for the purpose of this ethical comparison. For stealing, let's go with stealing a pen from work for no good reason. For breaking a promise, let's go with making pancakes because you forgot that you promised to make waffles. Ethically speaking, I think we can all agree that stealing the pen will usually be more unethical than making the wrong breakfast. I concede that there might even be a few instances in which even something as innocuous as making the wrong breakfast could actually be more unethical than stealing a pen, but such instances would be really rare.

[ June 23, 2007, 13:25: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

@Drew, Since my choice of answer was that 'stealing' was worse I guess I agree with you but I did look at the question thoughtfully before choosing. My mother taught me that a promise once made should be kept but she also taught me stealing was wrong. Therefore assuming the stealing and the broken promise are equivalent I will always have a hard time choosing which is worse. To me they are equally bad.

 

And leaving them in a pattern of behaviour that's not good for them or believing that everything is good would be helping them even when it's not? Would you only be building them a higher platform to have knocked out from under them when the truth comes out? I contend that they would be harmed worse when the truth does come out.

And they usually are. But it takes time for that to happen. But in the mean time, the law is the law. In some cases, civil disobedience is part of the process of changing the law...

Bottom line, property matters more than truth, is that right?

 

I got 6 care and 3 justice, which seems to be pretty accurate... I think.

 

Again, this depends on the situation. If someone is currently suicidal and holding a gun to his head, it probably isn't the best time to tell him the unvarnished truth. It's generally better to wait until he's not chomping at the bit to end his own life before you tell him that his wife left a Dear John letter and ran off with the kids. Better to tell him about it when he's in a healthier state of mind.

No. Actions which cause harm are worse than actions which don't cause harm. There are instances where breaking a promise is worse than stealing, but it always comes down to what was stolen versus what was promised. You're not about to argue that failing to mow the lawn when you promised to do it is worse than stealing a car, are you?

 

That has nothing to do with justice. Some people will follow "the law" to the letter without realising that there are criteria for "the law" to be the law. It needs to be lawfully introduced into force, for one. Such laws are most often unconstitutional and/or in violation of international laws, as well. Next, on the philosophical level, they are subordinate to the natural law. Violating the natural law, they stop being morally binding.