Is a theory of ethics that says a person looks to an outside source for ethical rules or commands?

Course Hero uses AI to attempt to automatically extract content from documents to surface to you and others so you can study better, e.g., in search results, to enrich docs, and more. This preview shows page 1 - 2 out of 5 pages.

Knowing the difference and relationship between them is important though, because they can conflict with one another. If the law conflicts with our personal values or a moral system, we have to act – but to do so we need to be able to tell the difference between them.

Ethics

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that aims to answer the basic question, “What should I do?” It’s a process of reflection in which people’s decisions are shaped by their values, principles, and purpose rather than unthinking habits, social conventions, or self-interest.

Our values, principles, and purpose are what give us a sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful in our lives. They serve as a reference point for all the possible courses of action we could choose. On this definition, an ethical decision is one made based on reflection about the things we think are important and that is consistent with those beliefs.

While each person is able to reflect and discover their own sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful, the course of human history has seen different groups unify around different sets of values, purposes and principles. Christians, consequentialists, Buddhists, Stoics and the rest all provide different answers to that question, “What should I do?” Each of these answers is a ‘morality’.

Morality

Many people find morality extremely useful. Not everyone has the time and training to reflect on the kind of life they want to live, considering all the different combinations of values, principles, and purposes. It’s helpful for them to have a coherent, consistent account that has been refined through history and can be applied in their day to day lives.

Many people also inherit their morality from their family, community or culture – it’s rare for somebody to ‘shop around’ for the morality that most closely fits their personal beliefs. Usually the process is unconscious. There’s a challenge here: if we inherit a ready-made answer to the question of how we should live, it’s possible to apply it to our lives without ever assessing whether the answer is satisfactory or not.

We might live our whole lives under a moral system which, if we’d had the chance to think about, we would have rejected in part or in full.

Law

The law is different. It’s not a morality in the strict sense of the word because, at least in democratic nations, it tries to create a private space where individuals can live according to their own ethical beliefs or morality. Instead, the law tries to create a basic, enforceable standard of behaviour necessary in order for a community to succeed and in which all people are treated equally.

Because of this, the law is narrower in focus than ethics or morality. There are some matters the law will be agnostic on but which ethics and morality have a lot to say. For example, the law will be useless to you if you’re trying to decide whether to tell your competitor their new client has a reputation for not paying their invoices, but our ideas about what’s good and right will still guide our judgement here.

There is a temptation to see the law and ethics as the same – so long as we’re fulfilling our legal obligations we can consider ourselves ‘ethical’. This is mistaken on two fronts. First, the law outlines a basic standard of behaviour necessary for our social institutions to keep functioning. For example, it protects basic consumer rights. However, in certain situations the right thing to in solving a dispute with a customer might require us to go beyond our legal obligations.

Secondly, there may be times when obeying the law would require us to act against our ethics or morality. A doctor might be obligated to perform a procedure they believe is unethical or a public servant might believe it’s their duty to leak classified information to the press. Some philosophers have argued that a person’s conscience is more binding on them than any law, which suggests to the letter of the law won’t be an adequate substitute for ethical reflection.

1 BUSINESS, LAW & ETHICS misbahuddin azzuhri

2 Ethical Dilemmas Venn Diagram for Ethical Decision Making 2b 3 1 2a
Area 3: Legal and ethical, but not profitable. Find ways to seek profitability Area 2a: Profitable and legal. Proceed cautiously Area 2b: Profitable and ethical. Probably legal too. Proceed cautiously Area 1: Profitable, legal, ethical. Go for it! Ethical Responsibility Legal Responsibility Economic Responsibility 1 3 2b 2a

3 Business, Law and Ethics
Ethics – A set of moral principles or values that governs the conduct of an individual or a group. What is business and/or lawful conduct is not always ethical conduct. The business and/or law may permit something that would be ethically wrong.

4 Moral Theories and Business Ethics
Ethical Relativism Ethical Fundamentalism Utilitarianism Kantian Ethics Rawls’s Social Justice Theory

5 Ethical Fundamentalism
Ethical fundamentalism - When a person looks to an outside source for ethical rules or commands. Critics argue that ethical fundamentalism does not permit people to determine right and wrong for themselves.

6 Utilitarianism A moral theory that dictates that people must choose the action or follow the rule that provides the greatest good to society. This does not mean the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Has been criticized because it is difficult to estimate the “good” that will result from different actions.

7 Kantian Ethics (Duty Ethics)
A moral theory that says people owe moral duties that are based on universal rules. Based on the premise that people can use reasoning to reach ethical decisions.

8 Kantian Ethics (Duty Ethics) (continued)
Deontology’s universal rules are based on two important principles: Consistency – all cases are treated alike with no exceptions. Reversibility – the actor must abide by the rule he or she uses to judge the morality of someone else’s conduct.

9 Kantian Ethics (Duty Ethics) (continued)
Thus, if you are going to make an exception for yourself, that exception becomes a universal rule that applies to all others. A criticism of this theory is that it is hard to reach a consensus as to what the universal rules should be.

10 Rawls’s Social Justice Theory
Rawls’s social contract A moral theory that says each person is presumed to have entered into a social contract, with all others in society, to obey moral rules that are necessary for people to live in peace and harmony.

11 Rawls’s Social Justice Theory (continued)
Rawls’s Distributive Justice Theory Fairness is considered the essence of justice. The principles of justice should be chosen by persons who do not yet know their station in society. This “veil of ignorance” would permit the fairest possible principles to be selected.

12 Rawls’s Social Justice Theory (continued)
There are two major criticisms of this theory: Establishing the blind “original position” for choosing moral principles is impossible in the real world. Many persons in society would choose not to maximize the benefit to the least advantaged persons in society.

13 Ethical Relativism A moral theory that holds that individuals must decide what is ethical based on their own feelings as to what is right or wrong. There are no universal ethical rules to guide a person’s conduct. If a person meets his or her own moral standard in making a decision, no one can criticize him or her for it.

14 Ethical Relativism (continued)
A criticism of this theory is that an action usually thought to be unethical would not be unethical if the perpetrator thought it was in fact ethical.

15 Theories of Ethics – Summary (1 of 2)
Theory Description Ethical fundamentalism Persons look to an outside source or central figure for ethical guidelines. Utilitarianism Persons choose the alternative that would provide the greatest good to society. Kantian ethics A set of universal rules establishes ethical duties. The rules are based on reasoning and require (1) consistency in application and (2) reversibility.

16 Theories of Ethics – Summary (2 of 2)
Theory Description Rawls’s social justice theory Moral duties are based on an implied social contract. Fairness is justice. Rules are established from an original position. Ethical relativism Individuals decide what is ethical based on their own feelings as to what is right or wrong.