Business Ethics HW Please see first attachment for requirement

Business Ethics – Thomas A. Package

Lecture 3

I. Case - "What Price Safety?"

What should Stan do?

II. Holmes Chapt. 2

A) 2.2 Right v. Rights. Holmes makes an interesting point about rights. He claims that one need not complicate the moral language with talk about rights. All of the work can be done by talking about what it is right or wrong to do. This is a simple application of the principle of Occam's razor. It's true that nothing is lost by talking about right and wrong instead of using the language of entitlements. Imagine you have made a contract with me to paint your house. Instead of saying you have a right to my performance on our contract we can just as easily understand what's happened if we say it would be wrong for me not to paint your house since you paid me to do just that. In other words, saying you have a right or entitlement to my performance can be understood as shorthand for saying it would be wrong for me to fail to paint your house since I was paid to do so. This would apply to duties as well. It would be wrong for me to fail to refrain from killing practically anyone; though it is easier for us to say people generally have a right to life, liberty, etc. This puts the deceptively simple idea of a right in need of justification. That is a deep and difficult task, but not an insuperable task. In any event, Holmes's formulation allows you to refrain from explaining exactly what a right is, natural or otherwise, and where one comes from

B) Forms of Moral Theories: Deontology vs. Axiology.

1) Deontological - "Deontic" - duty or law "ology" - the study of. Rightness is partly or wholly independent of value.

a) Strong - what is right is separate and independent of good. Another way to put this position is to say that for a Strong Deontologist "Consequences Never Matter. Moral Principles and Rules are the only way to determine appropriate conduct."

b) Weak - right is not entirely independent of good. Good is related though not necessary to right. In the vein from above, "Moral Principles are Primary in determining appropriate conduct, but Sometimes Consequences Matter."

2) Axiological - right is defined in terms of good. This type of theory develops a concept of the good or what is good in the world, and derives or defines right actions according to that theory of goodness. Value is prior to rightness or wrongness.

C) More Forms of Moral Theories: Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism

1) Consequentialism – an axiological theory where goodness and rightness is defined solely in terms of the consequences of actions. (Contra Strong Deontology)

2) Non-Consequentialism or Virtue(Character) Ethics – an axiological theory where goodness and rightness are defined in terms of an act or acts which are considered valuable for their own sake or performance usually in reference to a theory of virtue and vice, but apart from the consequences of the act.

These distinctions are helpful for categorizing or mapping moral theories but note that some theories can cut across the distinctions, or we can argue about how a theory should be classified. For example, what happens if somebody advocates a theory where actions are right if and only if they maximize adherence to a scheme of rights or minimizes rights violations?

D) Axiological theories are distinguished by how they answer three questions:

1) Where is the good which determines rightness located? Consequentialists think the good is located or is derived entirely from the consequences of an action. Teaching this class is a good and right act if and only if the consequences of teaching, like you learning something, are good. Non-consequentialists think right action derives from good acts, not consequences. Here, good acts must be defined independently of their consequences. For example, maybe my teaching is entirely ineffective and no good consequences result from my attempts to teach this class. However, my actions in teaching may still be right since my intentions were good. Or maybe teaching is good and therefore right, since that is what a good person would do, that is, attempt to teach and endeavor to persevere. This latter option is something like an ethics of virtue or character

2) What is the relevance of bad consequences? Put differently, nearly every action has good and bad consequences. Going to the dentist hurts or is at least unpleasant, though it does good by preserving your teeth. Getting drunk or high is fun, which is good, but it kills brain cells and often gives you a hangover, which is very bad. Consequentialists need some way of adding all of this up, a tremendous project to say the least. You can easily run into the problem of non-additive goods. How would you add up the goodness of fun minus the badness of lost brain cells? Let's say you could find some way to add goodness and badness. Which is more important and at what levels of acceptability? There are various strategies here like aggregate maximizing, or minimizing bad consequences, or maximizing good consequences simpliciter.

3) Which consequences are relevant and to whom? Here conceptions of consequentialism can fall between two theories at opposite ends of a spectrum:

1. ethical egoism - what matters is maximizing the good consequences to me.

2. utilitarianism - what matters is maximizing the good consequences to everybody.

Some theories consider the consequences to not only persons, but the consequences to collectives or groups of people and sometimes even sentient or feeling animals. If what we cared about was the avoidance of pain and it seems that some higher animals feel pain, it follows that we should allow their pain to factor into our right-making calculus. Another problem is deciding which consequences are relevant. Some things follow or a happen after an action and we refer to them as consequences since they happen as a direct result of an action. Some things just follow or happen after an action and we refer to these as consequents. A consequentialist needs a strong theory of what distinguishes these two. Without the distinction, a consequentialist justification could be given for just about any action when you consider that if you look far enough into the future you are bound to find enough good consequents to outweigh the bad consequences.

E) Micro vs. Macro ethics. Another distinction used mainly in Teleological theories, where some end or telos is maximized. The main point here is whether you allow something other than singular persons (usually) to have moral value. Micro ethics allows you to consider or calculate the effects of actions on individual persons or animals. Macro ethics allows either collectives or super entities to be counted in the calculus. The good of a nation, institution, or even the earth is considered not just as an aggregate of the people which comprise its membership, but as a good over and above or in addition to the people.

F) Conduct vs. Character. Most of the above refers to how actions are guided by moral theory and can be called an ethics of conduct. This can be juxtaposed with an ethics of character where the good of a person's character, or virtue, is judged apart from the deeds they do. This notion of character is notoriously difficult to define without reference to acts, which would collapse the distinction entirely. What is virtue besides the tendency to commit acts of a certain sort?

III. Bowie Article “Relativism, Cultural and Moral” and Homes Chapter 11

A) Take the statement "X is wrong." Do you think this statement has truth value, by that I mean, do you think the statement can be considered true or false in the same way a statement like "Y is a red car" can be true or false? Engaging the question in this manner treats the issue as a metaethical issue. Now, we don't think the truth or falsity of statements about the colors of cars will vary between cultures or from person to person, so what reason do we have to think statements about rightness or wrongness should vary across cultures? A red car is a red car in New York, Charlottesville, Bangladesh, Rome, Lhasa or anywhere in the universe. So why wouldn't an act X be wrong in all five cities?

B) One thing we want to distinguish is the difference between cultural diversity and moral relativism. Some of the authors we read are a bit confusing on the following points, and it’s best to be clear. There are certainly different practices and customs in different cultures and some of these practices are moral practices. But would any difference .indicate a difference in morality itself? Cultural diversity is a descriptive claim about the nature of culture and its variance around the globe and throughout history. Ethical or moral relativism is a claim about the nature of morality, namely that the truth of moral terms turns on the standard embraced by the relevant group, usually in the form of a culture. Cultural relativism is then best described as one form of moral relativism, one which anchors moral concepts to cultural practices. For example, some cultures support the practice of forced female genital mutilation as part of the transition to adulthood. Other cultures find this practice suspect, to say the least. Some cultures, like ours, consider the death-penalty permissible while other cultures consider the death-penalty to be barbaric and have long abolished the practice. The moral relativist is often persuaded by what's known as the "argument from variance." On this view, the fact that moral opinions vary not only from person to person, but, more importantly, from large cultural group to large cultural group, indicates nothing beyond local agreement, if that, is warranted on moral matters.

For those keeping track ...Here's a few new terms!

Objectivism - the view that the statement "X is wrong" has truth value and that value is determined by a standard external to the speaker

Subjectivism- the view that the truth value of the statement "X is wrong" is determined solely by the thoughts, attitudes, or emotions of the speaker. They are true when the accurately reflect the views of the speaker, but nothing more deep than that.

Nihilism - the view that statements like "X is wrong" have truth value, but they are all false, since no such concepts exist.

Emotivism - the view that statements like "X is wrong" mean "I don't like X" and are only reports of the speakers belief or preference, but nothing deeper. You are only emoting when you report your moral beliefs.

Relativism - the view that statements like "X is wrong" are true or false so long as they are indexed against some other, usually local, standard, but nothing deeper. "X is wrong" is true, around here.

Universalism - the view that statements like "X is wrong" have truth value and is true or false of and for everyone, by the same criteria, hence universality.

Few people are outright nihilists, fewer still nihilists take classes in ethics!

C) Bowie seems to think there are reasons to doubt cultural relativism with regard to moral practices. What seems like a difference in moral practices, like killing the elderly in some cultures, is really an application of a similar principle; avoid cruelty, under different particularized circumstances. Bowie's argument is that similar underlying principles are at play in different cultures. This seems reasonable. For example, most cultures agree about what should not be done to persons or agents, but they often disagree on exactly who turns out to be persons. Many really heinous crimes, like racial genocide, are perpetrated against people and groups of people the perpetrators didn't consider human.

He is right to point out what little difference the truth or falsity of cultural diversity has to the debate over moral relativism. From the fact that people disagree over moral facts and their status as facts, nothing follows for the ontological status of morality and nothing about the truth of moral relativism is indicated by this disagreement. When people disagree, nothing about the truth of who is correct follows from that disagreement. The only way variance could be taken as evidence would be to have previously agreed that convergence or consensus was necessary. As Holmes's example of Thoreau eloquently shows, variance can just as easily indicate that only one person is right.

D) Bowie also points out that moral relativism is inconsistent with much of our moral language. We use moral language to criticize not only other cultures, but also our own culture and moral practices. If moral relativism were true, inter-cultural moral comparisons would not make sense. We would not be able to speak sensibly about human rights abuses in China, Eastern Europe, or Sierra Leone. And we certainly do use language to make these comparisons and criticisms and we can often make them stick. The onus falls on the relativist to explain how such communication would be possible and how we could use language to lever agreement between cultures. We also use language to criticize our own moral practices. In both the domestic and international cases, the language we use is of static and unchanging ascriptions of moral qualities. Strictly speaking, if I oppose some local practice on moral grounds, and I become a vocal critic of that practice and successfully change the practice, I have changed right into wrong, though the act itself has not changed. In other words, if all you have to defer to is local moral practice then the reformer starts off as "wrong" and after her reform efforts, she is now "right." Note that the human rights practices of China start off as right in China and then after the efforts of Amnesty International succeed, what was right is now wrong, and something else is right. Again, this is just not how our language works. We think reformers are right all the way through, else we wouldn't end up agreeing with them.

IV The Argument From Variance

A) Relativism, Variance, and Consensus - Ethical relativism, like wholesale truth relativism, will commit a person to thinking some strange things at the pain of inconsistency. The sort of relativism we are concerned with here is the kind which may be thought to follow from cultural diversity. From the fact that many people and cultures disagree about moral claims, some think that no consensus has been reached with regard to moral claims, therefore there is no truth in an objective sense about moral claims. If you were convinced by the argument from variance, then you must have some prior commitment to consensus. But notice that if consensus were your criteria for establishing moral truth, then you would have no need for ethics classes, religious studies, or practically any classes on theoretic matters at all. All you would need to guide your actions was an accurate accounting of who thought what about moral matters. And you don't need a philosopher to do that, you just need to ask a sociologist, anthropologist, or someone trained in taking polls.

Another consequence of a commitment to relativism is that it leaves you no resources to adjudicate what seem like genuine moral quandaries when conducting business in countries other than your own. In fact, the relativist would have to say such quandaries don't exist in any meaningful way. How would an ethical relativist decide what to do when faced with dilemmas like the practice of forced labor in some countries in the Pacific Rim, or a racially biased distribution of rights and wealth (a problem here in the US as well), or child labor when she does business in parts of the world where such practices are common and accepted? She would probably think such practices are wrong, but she has no theoretic right to condemn or refrain from participating in anything other than some sub-scripted "for me" sense. So without moral philosophy, she is left high and dry.

B) Moral Language and Relativism - An important point stressed by both Bowie and Holmes is that the moral language is not friendly to relativism. We do not speak as though relativism is correct. We talk about right and wrong in simple, straightforward ways that don't reference cultural standards at every utterance. This is most evident when we discuss the moral reformers like Mohandas K. Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. We think they were morally right to oppose the racially unjust systems they did oppose. If ethical relativists are correct, then both Ghandi and King were wrong when they started to oppose the racially unjust system. If they succeed in changing the culture, then Ghandi and King become morally justified, but only AFTER they succeed in wreaking massive cultural change. Had their efforts not succeeded, the relativist would have to be committed to saying Ghandi and King were wrong all along. Let's take an example from literature. At the end of Huck Finn, Huck is struck with what he takes to be a moral problem, one where he feels he can't do the "right" thing. Huck knows his society legally and morally requires him to turn in his friend Jim, he knows that turning Jim in is the "right" thing to do. But since Jim is his friend, Huck decides to help Jim escape to freedom, at what Huck thinks is a risk to his immortal soul. Of course, we know, as Twain probably knew, that what Huck was doing was the right thing. But the relativist is forced to disagree. In other words, there is no room in the relativist scheme to talk about any deep sort of moral reform. Notice that the position of the relativist would force you to deny that any tension or conflict can result between moral and conventional considerations. In chapter 1 of Holmes, we had the example of the Chinese woman whose son is experiencing trouble in kindergarten. The relativist would be forced to say such conflicts are not moral conflicts at all, they are just cases where someone has failed to understand the moral force of her cultures practices.

C) At this point the relativist may then ask, if there is a correct or true moral theory then which moral theory is correct? If relativism isn't true, then what is your argument for the true conception of morality? As Bowie notes on p. 383, the appropriate response is to try to justify your conception of morality and duties and obligations. When faced with some moral choice, such as the "What Price Safety?" case, you need to have a set of beliefs and justifications from which to adjudicate a decision. Philosophers have been debating the three main options: virtue theory, consequentialism, and deontology. To answer the relativist, or just to have an answer for your own moral problems, you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of competing moral theories and that is the exercise of this class.

D) Universalism and Imperialism. Throughout human history, much harm has been done in the name of moral truth. Those claiming to have access to the truth about moral matters have committed many horrible acts, from religious crusades to religious inquisitions to genocide. This has led some people to embrace some form of relativism. They reason that if we don't think we have the truth where others don't, or put differently, if we don't feel we have a better opinion than someone else on moral matters, then we will be less likely to engage in wars or conflicts over very weighty concerns. In other words, they think relativism will lead to greater levels of tolerance. Strictly speaking, the consequences of accepting relativism would not make the doctrine either true or false. But if we are adding up the consequences to decide which theory to embrace, then I think we would again have to refer the matter to sociology or some discipline other than philosophy. As Holmes notes, there seems to be as much evidence that relativism would lead to intolerance as it would lead to tolerance. Inter-cultural disagreements would possibly be resolved more often by wars and conflicts since there would be no way to decide these disagreements by argument, because no such resolution would be conceptually possible. Further, intra-cultural intolerance would go on entirely justified under such a scheme, since no resources would be available for dissent. So how would the acceptance of relativism improve tolerance? Keep in mind that having the truth about some moral matter does not necessarily license someone to take any action. One would want to separate the truth of some matter from what one would be justified in doing while in possession of the truth. Again, if embracing relativism would lead to fewer nefarious actions and less suffering in the name of supposed moral truth, then we would have to defer to the social scientists to figure this out. But whatever verdict they return would not affect the truth or falsity of the doctrine of relativism.

Questions to Answer

1. What is the difference between deontological and axiological theories of morality? How does "strong" and "weak" apply to these theories?

2. What is the distinguishing characteristic of consequentialism? What are the types of consequentialism?

3. What is cultural diversity? What is cultural relativism? What is the motto of cultural relativism? Are there other types of moral relativism, besides cultural?

4. What is the argument from variance? Does it establish the conclusion of cultural relativism?

5. What would cultural relativism say of a moral reformer, such as Martin Luther King Jr.? How does cultural relativism treat a person who acts against their cultural tradition?

6. Suppose cultural relativism is not true. How does one defend an answer to the question of "What should I do?"