The author says “I’m an ethicist and a lawyer, and the president of ProEthics, Ltd.” (Okay, there’s a part of me that sniggered at “ethicist” and “lawyer” being the same person. But it might be a better world if more lawyers were concerned about what’s morally ethical as opposed to legal ethics. But, then again, that would depend on the lawyer.)
I’ve certainly thought about ethics, but I have never put that level of thought into it. I’ve certainly never studied ethics.
I’m curious at to the opinions of it from people who have studied ethics.
Maybe you could summarize a few of the points that the writer makes, and give us your take on them?
Or do you really expect people to read 14,000 words in order to give you thread fodder? I realize this is MPSIMS, but at least put some effort into it.
I skimmed about halfway through it, to where it started to sound like it was just restating previous entries. Indeed, further down, it looks like each entry is peppered with references to previous ones. Really, the list is far longer than it needs to be.
I also noticed several places (or at least two) that mentioned the Clinton-Lewinski business, and it got me to wondering: what is the threshold/criteria at which we should become concerned with other people’s behavior? If it is really of no genuine consequence to us, why should we care? And how do we decide when we should care?
Those are excellent questions, eschereal. I am not a professional ethicist, but I like to think that I have a set of ethics, so I’ll take the first stab.
We need to be concerned with someone else’s ethical behavior not just when it affects us directly, but when it affects anyone else besides the actor(s). That is, if A tells a lie to B, and it only affects A and B, probably none of our ethical business. But if A tells a lie to B about C, and B tells D, and D breaks up with C (or murders C) as a result, then we can start to be concerned about the ethics of A’s lie. (This, incidentally, is the premise for Poirot’s last case.)
The threshold is two-fold: does it affect someone else other than the actor(s), and is the magnitude of the act material. The scenario above may seem to be, and may actually be, trivial in real life. If it is not trivial, and since it did affect other people, then the act of A’s lie becomes legitimate concern for anyone else’s ethical judgment. We might not do anything about it except make the judgment, but it has passed the threshold of why we should care.
This is kind of an application of the golden rule: if we were harmed by a third party’s unethical behavior, we would want other people at the very least to judge that behavior accordingly, even if the outcome did not affect them directly.
The issue of affecting other people than the actor(s) is kind of a gray area. There may be acts done by one person that affect no-one else that would still be considered unethical because the impact on that person is so great - I’m trying to think of such an act, but I can’t. This area is too complex to address in a message board post, so I’ll leave it for another time.
I skimmed it, at least the first few. I think there are the kinds of things people do all the time, even though they know it’s wrong and would probably deny doing it. Most people are OK with doing a little wrong now and then if they personally benefit from it. Not that I would ever do anything like that, of course.
For anyone who can’t be bothered clicking the link, here are some of the headings:
The Golden Rationalization, or “Everybody does it”
Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it.”
The “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse, or “They had it coming”
Consequentialism, or “It Worked Out for the Best”
The Unethical Tree in the Forest, or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
I read the whole thing. I was impressed that the author managed to identify so many distinct varieties and subvarieties. It’s a well-written, rational parsing of irrational thinking in support of ethical breaches large and small.
That being said:
I, too, had issue with the repeating wallpaper pictures of Middle Eastern figures. This is a subtle form of suggestion which I respectfully submit is also a violation of ethics. My ethics, anyway. If you wish the content to be considered fairly by everyone regardless of their background or circumstances, then deliver the content without a pictorial subtext.
I personally have certain objections to #30, mostly with respect to laws that are relatively recent and are being changed in many places even as we speak.
The most effective articles of this nature that I have read took care to cite examples from a variety of public figures, including those of the author’s own affiliation. If it is meant specifically for an audience of a particular political affiliation, that’s one thing. But once again, if you want to be perceived as a truly impartial observer, (and thus in my opinion more appropriately qualified to expound on ethics) I believe it is best to keep your own biases from showing so transparently.
Which, as I see it, looks to be in partial conflict with #5: to be ethical, you must obey the law, even the bad law, but you cannot claim that complying with laws and rules makes you ethical. To me, that looks a bit like shoelaces tied to each other.
More problematic is the rant down in #48: … Hate is just very intense dislike, and as a feeling, it is well within the realm of personal rights. Hate crime is a variety of thought-crime. The politically-motivated legal monstrosities known as “hate crimes” have inspired this rationalization by making it plausible to argue that dislike itself is wrong, even when what is being disliked, criticized or hated is objectively wrongful conduct. All “haters” are lumped together, whether the object of hate is Lance Armstrong’s cheating, the NFL’s conspiracy to hide the effects of concussions, or Barack Obama’s ineptitude, in a linguistic trick that suggests that sincere critics are no different from people who hate the United States, minorities, decency, true love and puppies. They are all haters, hate is bad, and it’s the haters who are the problem, not the corruption, dishonesty, and betrayals they criticize (In popular culture, the supposed motive for the hate is envy and jealousy, as in the juvenile rejoinder, “You’re just jealous!”).
This is not only incoherent, it calls into question the judgement and perception of the author. If he is wholly unable to grasp this subject or the notion of false equivalencies, he really ought not be splattering his material with foam and spittle.
Consequentialism isn’t a denial of ethics, it’s a valid source of ethical reasoning and can be worked out as a good way to reason through ethical dilemmas in a way which allows us to live with the results. Naïve consequentialism isn’t a good thing, but, hey, neither is naïve deontology.
His definition of “hate crime” must be factually incorrect, based on this, which renders his entire rant a total non sequitur. It’s as if he ranted against rainbows while under the impression they were animals which crawled up your pant-legs and bit the inside of your rectum. It is, really, too far wrong to even critique.
Which also makes his lawyer claim be of dubious merit.
Scrolling through his list, the first problematic thing that jumps out at me is his “reverse slippery slope” fallacy, when what he describes is just the regular slippery slope. The ending is still bad, while the reverse slippery slope has the last part be good.
An example I saw online once was that legalizing marijuana would lead to more relaxed people, which would lead to lower crime rates, which would lead to less money needed for law enforcement, which would lead to more money to be spent on foster care and adoption. You do care about orphans, don’t you? So vote to legalize marijuana.
Honestly, the whole thing seems haphazard, and not like anything by an expert.
#3-Consequentialism conflicts with #16-Consistency. In #16, he criticizes Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which is essentially the opposite of consequentialism. I find it difficult to envision a viable ethical system that focuses solely on the action without giving consideration to effects, side-effects and outcomes. The broader the scope of an action/decision, the more effort the actor ought to put into understanding the consequences – to not do so would be, well, unethical.
Now, look at #37, “Nobody said it would be easy”. This one utterly confuses me, inasmuch as what he is describing does not seem to relate to ethics in any way. Failure or disaster are not ethical issues, why would he suggest that they are?
In one sense, I feel kind of bad to be simply criticizing this “expert” by pointing out his mistakes and silliness while offering little of value. Yet, on the other hand, he is doing no more than pointing out flaws in reasoning without offering anything in the way of addressing them: his piece is a big old chunk of negativity, with the implication, “stop doing that”. I am not sure how to approach these matters in a positive, constructive way, but it seems pretty obvious to me that his approach is not that way.