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A Case for Ethical Reasoning: Using the 8KQ to Guide Decision-Making in Daily Life1

Christian Early James Madison University

Introduction THIS ARTICLE MAKES A CASE FOR ETHICAL REASONING AND, BY EXTENSION, for creat- ing and supporting courses in ethical reasoning at our learning institutions as an aid to decision-making in everyday life. Ethical reasoning is a skill—much like critical thinking—but whereas critical thinking aims at what we ought or ought not to believe, ethical reasoning aims at what we ought or ought not to do. Ethical reasoning terminates in action, not merely thinking about action. Good ethical reasoning guides us to make better, more ethical decisions. Given these considerations, I propose a working definition of ethical reasoning as the skill of 1) identifying a situation as having moral aspects, 2) gathering salient moral information, 3) weighing its relative importance, and 4) making a decision that is guided by the reasoning process.

The article goes on to argue that we ought to teach ethical reasoning as the practical skill of making better, more ethical decisions in addition to teach- ing theoretical ethics, frameworks for ethical analysis, and professional codes. When we teach ethics, we introduce students to the philosophical discipline of reflecting on the moral quality of human life and behavior through a historically situated series of theoretical positions. As valuable as that is, it is problematic for two reasons: First, contemporary ethics is fundamentally fragmented with each theoretical orientation facing serious challenges, which can leave novices with a sense that ethics is a theoretically abstract game removed from daily life. Second, and related, while knowing about a broad range of ethical theories enriches our thinking and our capacities for ethical analysis, it is not clear that it makes much concrete difference for how we go about living our lives. But, the need for practi- cal guidance in our daily and professional lives is more urgent now than ever. It would therefore be very helpful to have a rational strategy for making better, more ethical decisions.

Teaching Ethics 22.1 (Spring 2022) doi: 10.5840/tej2022221121

Teaching Ethics 22:1 (Spring 2022)138

I am not suggesting that we stop teaching ethics. Ethics is essential and nec- essary for investigating what it means to be human together, grounding what is valuable, and articulating a vision of the good life. In addition, theoretical articu- lation is necessary for defining clearly by drawing conceptual distinctions what we mean by, say, rights and justice. I am proposing, instead, that there is a space for ethical reasoning between the messiness of lived experience and the abstract clarity of theoretical articulation, which makes contact with both experience and theory and which can guide us in the difficult decisions of daily life.

For example, let us say that you are a committed vegetarian and that you have invited a friend out to lunch. Your friend orders the steak—should you still pay for lunch or should you take occasion as an opportunity to withdraw your promise to pay and treat your friend instead to a précis of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (Singer 1975) or Christine Korsgaard’s Fellow Creatures (Korsgaard 2018)—depending on your theoretical commitments? Socially complicated and morally rich situations such as these arise all the time. They fall outside the boundaries of articulated codes, and we are in desperate need of a rational strategy that can help us in the moment to make a better informed, more ethical decision.

Finally, I want to offer Ethical Reasoning in Action’s Eight Key Questions (8KQ) approach as a model. Ethical reasoning can be taught in many different ways, and the 8KQ approach is only one, but it enjoys three considerable advan- tages: it is comprehensive with respect to what humans have taken to be morally relevant, it puts us in a better position to make a decision by reminding us to ask questions and gather more information about the situation at hand, and we know that it works (Linder, et al. 2020, Ames, et al. 2017). I suspect that any suc- cessful strategy will share many of its features.

Teaching Ethics Faces Two Issues Open any textbook aiming to introduce students to ethics and it will include separate chapters on Deontology, Utilitarianism, Virtue ethics, and more. If the book is recent, it will include chapters on Care ethics and possibly the ethical work resulting from the tools and insights of critical theory looking gender, race, and post-Colonial studies. The diversity of ethical frameworks is bewildering for students and there is no single agreed upon ethical framework currently avail- able. It looks unlikely that such agreement will be forthcoming, as we cannot find a way to agree on how to disagree and, consequently, we do not yet know how to have the kind of conversation that could eventually yield agreement (MacIntyre 2007).

Additionally, there seems to be a perplexing barrier between learning that happens in the classroom and living that happens outside the classroom in ev- eryday life. There is discouragingly little evidence to suggest that taking an ethics class makes a difference for the way in which students go on to make decisions and live their lives or the way that business is done in light of the current ethics

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crisis. Of the two, this is perhaps the bigger problem in part because we have tried (and failed?) to address it.

By “current ethics crisis,” I mean the fact that banks have been exposed to be involved in money laundering schemes, companies routinely violate the privacy of their employees, and we hear regular reports of shocking instances of corporate accounting malpractice. Sociologist Robert Putnam looking at a broad spectrum of data recently described it in this sobering way:

Books and newspapers of the day are filled with reports of scandal in both the personal and professional lives of society’s leaders, as journalists work to reveal the rotten core of an America run amok. Politicians are regularly exposed for corruption—trading in power and patronage and taking ad- vantage of their positions in increasingly creative ways. Sex scandals are also common among the elite, and even prominent religious leaders are not immune. Crime and moral decay are the ubiquitous subjects of popu- lar entertainment, contrasting indulgence at the top and indigence at the bottom.” (Putnam and Garrett 2020, 5)

Universities responded to the crisis by funding ethics centers and creating initiatives for ethics curriculum in profession-oriented degrees such as business, nursing, and teaching. The reality is, however, that requiring more classes on ethics has not turned the tide. To be fair, courses in ethics have traditionally not aimed at changing behavior; they have aimed at changing how we think about behavior. But the idea behind teaching ethical theories and frameworks has al- ways been that if we change how we think about behavior, then behavior will eventually change as well. That idea has a long history—it goes at least as far back as Aristotle and finds expression again in the modern period in Kant and in Mill—but surprisingly it turns out to have very little empirical evidence to sup- port itself (Schwitzgebel and Rust 2013).

In collaboration with professional associations, universities also responded by creating courses aiming at professional codes of ethics. These are often taught by faculty who are members of the profession rather than ethicists, which has often been a source of contention between departments. Should bioethics be taught by a biologist or an ethicist? What about engineering or social work eth- ics? Answers to these questions in the way of guest lectures or one-off courses have been dissatisfying. Evidence of the dissatisfaction with current models can be seen in the continued search for more integrated—and recently “embedded” (even more improved!)—models of course design. But what if no amount of in- tegrating and embedding ethics content (theories, frameworks, codes, and case studies) will actually make much of a difference? What is it is not a problem of knowing that, but a problem of knowing how?

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Improving Decisions in Daily Life: Ethical Reasoning as a Skill Is there anything that might have a chance of improving ethical decision-making and moral behavior at the work place and in daily life? I suggest that there is: in- creasing the skill of ethical reasoning. Recall at this point the working definition of ethical reasoning proposed above. Ethical reasoning is the skill of 1) identify- ing a situation as having moral aspects, 2) gathering salient moral information, 3) weighing its relative importance, and 4) making a decision that is guided by the reasoning process. I submit that the most effective way that humans have found to guide such a process is to leverage our natural curiosity by asking ques- tions. Asking a question directs our attention, allowing us to see what we did not see before, and primes us to take in more information about our world. It counteracts our tendency to project our (conscious or unconscious) bias onto the world, which is a hindrance to good ethical reasoning, by evoking a state of curiosity.

What questions should we ask to help us make better, more ethical deci- sions? Ethical Reasoning in Action (ERiA) at James Madison University has identified eight questions aimed at helping us to notice the ethical aspects in- volved when facing a decision. We call them Eight Key Questions (or 8KQ):2

1. Fairness: How can I (we) act justly, equitably, balancing interests?

2. Outcomes: What possible actions achieve the best short- and long-term outcomes?

3. Responsibilities: What duties and/or obligations apply?

4. Character: What actions help me (us) become my (our) ideal?

5. Liberty: How do I (we) show respect for personal freedom, autonomy, consent?

6. Empathy: How would I (we) act if (we) cared about all involved?

7. Authority: What do legitimate authorities (e.g., experts, law, my god) expect?

8. Rights: What rights, if any (e.g., innate, legal, social) apply?

Answers to these questions and their relative weight will vary from person to person, situation to situation, and culture to culture. No particular culture, con- text, or value-hierarchy is privileged as primary, ideal, or universal. The ques- tions themselves, however, are identifiable across context and across time in human experience. Responsibility may be identified differently, but it has trac- tion whether you are a villager in Indonesia or a city-dweller in Los Angeles. Questions strategically initiate and shape the process of ethical reasoning by helping us to uncover and clarify the rich and diverse moral dimension of hu- man experience as it is perceived, which in turn puts us in a position to make better, more ethically informed decisions.

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This openness and lack of appeal to rational, universal standards could evoke a relativist worry. That is understandable, but I think it is misdirected. The relativist worry arises out of the reality that human cultures and traditions are irreducibly diverse and that at any moment social interaction may break down to reveal tribal groupings competing for dominance. Coming out of the nightmares of religious and political conflict, modernity and the Enlightenment attempted to escape the messy diversity by appealing to universal methods and rationality. After three centuries of looking, no single candidate for a universal method and rationality has convincingly emerged from the attempt, thus potentially return- ing us to the conflictual situation at the beginning of modernity.

Stephen Toulmin, reflecting on this Omega-shaped trajectory of moder- nity, argues for a recovery of practical philosophy—humanizing modernity by reconnecting science and philosophy to the humanities and prioritizing reason- ableness over the (seemingly interminable) contestations of formal theory—in order to provide us with the “elbowroom we need in order to protect diversity and adaptability” (Toulmin 1990, 183). For Toulmin, humanizing modernity in- volves a return to the particular, local, and timely. It is a call to appreciate along Aristotelian lines the need to nurture wisdom (phronesis), not just for grasping theory (episteme) and mastering technique (techne), because our chance to act wisely in a practical field “depends upon our readiness to take decisions pros ton kairon—that is, ‘as the occasion requires’” (Toulmin 1990, 190). The 8KQ ethical reasoning strategy goes a long way to respond to the call for practical philosophy.

Another concern might be that questions are too general to be practical and helpful. As a matter of practice, however, questions are used effectively and suc- cessfully in many disciplines and professions. Take journalism and midwifery. Journalists are taught to identify the central aspects of a story by asking five (key?) questions: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, and Why? Midwives are taught to assess whether a new-born baby is in urgent need of attention by asking five (key?) questions: Activity?, Pulse?, Grimace?, Appearance?, and Respiration? By habitually asking these questions, journalists learn to report compelling stories and midwives learn to save the lives of new-born babies who are at risk. It seems at least prima facie reasonably plausible that by habitually asking the 8KQ, ethi- cal reasoners can also learn to make better, more ethically responsive decisions.

Lived Experience, Guidance for Action, and Ethical Theory The 8KQ stand at a three-way intersection, making contact with human lived experience (moral sense), practical guidance for action, and ethical theory. Most of us know the felt experience of something unfair happening to us. Many of us know the felt sense of a weight when a responsibility lands on our shoulders. Some of us know the sense of our liberty having been violated. The 8KQ are re- sponsive to the lived and felt moral experience of being a social animal.3

The purpose of the questions, however, is to gather information in order to guide behavior. It is necessary but insufficient, from an ethical reasoning

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perspective, to register that something is unfair. The point, rather, is to direct our attention to what we should do to act fairly, justly, and equitably balancing interests. To be very concrete, imagine standing near the end of a line at a pizza party, and seeing the person in front of you taking two slices when taking one would leave enough for everyone behind the person to have one slice. That will register as being unfair. Now imagine being that person and noticing the num- ber of pizza slices left and the number of persons behind you in line, and (even though you may be very hungry) taking one slice because it is the fair thing to do. That is using the fairness question to guide and direct behavior.4

Note that each of the 8KQ make contact with particular loci for theoretical exploration and articulation. The outcomes question, for example, makes contact with considerations raised within the Utilitarian outlook. The character question makes contact with considerations raised within a Virtue Ethics perspective. The responsibility question makes contact with the Deontological perspective—and so on. The 8KQ avoid, however, the problems mentioned at the beginning of the article, which are associated with theoretical purity in a diverse space and insisting that all moral considerations must either be made to be consistent with a particular theory or be removed from consideration.

Take the consideration of intention. Does the intent behind an action mat- ter, morally speaking? Utilitarians would insist that it does not matter, but Virtue Ethicists would insist that it does matter. Prior to making any decision at all, the- oretical purists argue that we ought first to decide whether we are Utilitarians or Virtue Ethicists and then one can figure out what one should do—which seems impractical. Alternatively, one could also first determine what one wants to do, and then identify the theory that would support (excuse?) the behavior—which seems perverse. From an ethical reasoning perspective, however, both outcomes and intentions matter in terms of moral information that we should think about, but which matters more is for the ethical reasoner to determine in a particular situation. Sometimes, it is the thought that counts. A gesture of goodwill might entirely misfire, but can still be recognized as goodhearted in spite of the out- come. At other times the outcomes far outweigh considerations directed at in- tent. In the field of education, the “no child left behind” laws paradoxically had the effect of teachers in the classroom teaching primarily to the few students who might with some help pass the test to advance to the next grade thus leaving chil- dren whom teachers had assessed as not able to pass behind. Surely intentions here are irrelevant. Something similar can be argued regarding the laws that have disproportionately and unjustly impacted non-white US citizens.

Note, finally, that the 8KQ also makes contact with articulated codes of ethics. The authority question—What do legitimate authorities expect?—directs our attention to consider the guidance offered in the articulated codes of pro- fessional organizations to which we belong, by the experts on whose advise we rely, and in the prescriptions for behavior that follow from our spiritual com- mitments (if any). Leaving aside for a moment the discussion concerning what

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counts as a legitimate expert or religion—a rule of thumb might be that a legiti- mate expert or religion is one whose guidance is consistent with other values and considerations identified by the 8KQ—an important future task will be to spell out, in much greater detail than can be done within the scope of this article, the mutually supportive relationship between the 8KQ and a particular professional code with accompanying practical scenarios (see below). In this way, the 8KQ might help in the crucial work of providing a concrete way for codes to gain more traction in everyday and professional decision-making.5

Practicing Ethical Reasoning Using Scenarios and Noticing Moral Situations

Ethical Reasoning in Action has identified several ways in which anyone can practice using the 8KQ.6 One such way is to work through a scenario in a group setting. Scenarios are realistic thought experiments in which an urgent situation is presented that calls for an action. At JMU, each incoming student participates in a program that we call “It’s Complicated,” in which students wrestle with a dif- ficult choice. The current scenario is called “Overdose” and students must decide whether to accept a donation of Narcan that has been offered to the university for distribution among the student population. At first glance, it may seem obvi- ous to accept the resource, but counter-weighing voices point out that an opioid overdose is a medical emergency and administering Narcan requires training. Moreover, students at the university already have access to Narcan and there are underserved populations in the area surrounding the university campus, which could benefit greatly from the donation. Finally, having Narcan readily available may constitute a moral hazard as students might engage in more risky behavior thinking that they can be revived in case of an emergency. Students engaging this scenario ask questions such as:

Fairness—Is it fair that relatively well-served college students receive more resources when inner city urban and rural areas are under-served? Are we privileging one addiction over another in terms of allocating resources?

Outcomes—Will it save more lives to have Narcan readily available on cam- pus or will it put more lives at risk because it could provide a false sense of safety?

Responsibility—Whose responsibility is it to administer Narcan? Is it a stu- dent’s or a trained medical professional?

Character—Who do we want to become as a university and as a campus? Supporting and caring of those who struggle with addictions, or do we want to emphasize personal responsibility?

Liberty—Is it necessary to have consent before administering Narcan or do “Good Samaritan” rules apply? Will there be a list of students who have

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access to Narcan and what are the criteria for getting on the list? Who will have access to that list?

Empathy—How would a parent feel sending their son or daughter to our university given a variety of personal and family histories? Would it feel comforting or concerning?

Authority—Should we listen to economists who tell us that this is a statis- tics problem or should we listen to first responders and ER doctors who say that this is a value of every single human life issue?

Rights—Do students, who are adults, have a right to take their own life?

Notice that asking the 8KQ gathers a remarkably rich spectrum of morally relevant considerations and allows for substantive deliberation from multiple perspectives in a group setting—far richer and more substantive, arguably, than any single theoretical perspective can encompass or capture.

Another significant way in which some students at JMU practice ethical reasoning is by submitting a weekly “moral situation.” Students go into each week with the 8KQ in mind and at the end of the week they report if a situa- tion in which one or more of the 8KQ applied. At the beginning of a semester, students confess to being skeptical that they will have anything to write about because their lives are uneventful, morally speaking. By mid-semester, they express surprise at how morally complicated their lives are. They report on matters such as a hall-mate with whom they have just become friends asking for answers to an online quiz they have not yet completed—should you give the answers? In a friend group, two of the friends are seeing each other but you become aware that one is cheating on the other—should you tell? Parents are helping with college tuition but the major that was originally agreed to and which secured the help turns out not to be a good fit—should you change your major? The scheduled space between your work and a mid-term is very tight and you are under pressure to get a good grade—should you call in sick? On and on the list goes of real-life matters that students face—that we can all face—any given week.

Do students find using the 8KQ in daily life to be helpful? I asked the students explicitly on their student evaluations, and this is what they reported:7

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Notice that 87 percent of students responding report that using the 8KQ in daily life made them more aware of moral aspects of a situation, 87 percent of students responding report that using the 8KQ in daily life also helped them to make a more ethical decision, and roughly 65 percent of students report that using the

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8KQ changed the decision that they made. This is only one set of data points, so no conclusions can be drawn from it. It does indicate, however, that practicing ethical reasoning is a promising target for making a difference.

Conclusion In this article I argued that ethical reasoning is a promising approach to address- ing the urgent need for guidance in daily life by helping us to make better, more ethical decisions. I proposed a working definition of ethical reasoning as the skill of 1) identifying a situation as having moral aspects, 2) gathering salient moral information, 3) weighing its relative importance, and 4) making a decision that is guided by the reasoning process. The article offers the 8KQ as a model example of what an effective ethical reasoning strategy can look like. I gave an example of a scenario that students wrestle with as well as examples of some of the situations that arise in the lives of students during the course of a semester. I provided a set of data points, which suggest that practicing ethical reasoning can and does make a difference in daily life. The claim throughout has been that ethical rea- soning should be taught in addition to ethical theories, analytic frameworks, and professional codes of ethics in order to support the overall goal of our world becoming more just, more caring and equitable, for more of its inhabitants.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this article was presented at the twenty-first annual conference of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, October 12, 2019.

2. Arranged in this order, their first letters spell the acronym FOR-CLEAR. It is not an indication of priority or importance.

3. There is good evidence to suggest that other social animals have a sensitiv- ity to moral aspects of social interactions.

4. Students in my classes are often very good at identifying unfairness in the world around them, particularly with respects to roommates and grades, but they are not as good at using the fairness question to guide their own behavior. Researchers call this a bias to self.

5. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for this suggestion. The fact that there are connections between professional codes and the 8KQ has of course oc- curred to me before, but what I had not appreciated and what the reviewer’s com- ments helped me to see, is how practically valuable it might be for professionals to have those connections spelled out in detail. Take, for example, engineering. Engineers regularly face moral situations and even though they may nominally be

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committed to their ethical code, they need the help of ethical reasoning skills for that code to gain traction as became abundantly clear from the many excellent presenta- tions at the 22nd annual conference on Ethics across the Curriculum hosted by the Colorado School of Mines (thank you to conference directors Sandy Woodson, Qin Zhu, and Daniel Wueste).

6. https://www.jmu.edu/ethicalreasoning/ 7. Student evaluations from PHIL150-0001: Ethical Reasoning (Spring 2021)

taught at James Madison University.

References Ames, Allison, Kristen L. Smith, Elizabeth R. H. Sanchez, et al. 2017. “Impact and

Persistance of Ethical Reasoning Education on Student Learning: Results from a Module-based Ethical Reasoning Program.” International Journal of Ethics Education 2 (1): 77–96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40889-016-0031-x

Korsgaard, Christine. 2018. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Linder, Fletcher, Allison Ames, William Hawk, et al. 2020. “Teaching Ethical Reason- ing: Program Design and Initial Outcomes of Ethical Reasoning in Action, a University-wide Ethical Reasoning Program.” Teaching Ethics 19 (2): 147–169. https://doi.org/10.5840/tej202081174

MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, third ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Putnam, Robert, and Shaylyn Romney Garrett. 2020. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Schwitzgebel, Eric, and Joshua Rust. 2013. “The Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors: Relationships among Self-Reported Behavior, Expressed Normative Attitude, and Directly Observed Behavior.” Philsophical Psychology 3: 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2012.727135

Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon Books. Toulmin, Stephen. 1990. Cosmopolis: the Hidden Agenda of Modernity. New York:

The Free Press.

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