How do we make ethical decisions, decisions that will stand up to challenges?

Description

How do we make ethical decisions, decisions that will stand up to challenges?
Consider the following case.
1.1
The Impaired Driver
You have stayed about an hour longer than you intended to at a very pleasant party with
your old college friends. While you were getting your law degree and starting prac-
tice, your roommate Marty made it big on Wall Street. He hosted the party in his huge
Riverside Drive apartment. All the old college ties were there—great memories, beer,
booze, marijuana… hadn’t seen
that
in awhile. Good stuff, too.
Realizing you’re late, you race to the parking garage, elevator to the third floor, hop in
your SUV, and tear around the turn toward the exit. Smash! Car parked in just the wrong
place. You hit it dead center. You back up, get out, note that there is extensive damage
to the other car—both doors on the driver’s side badly dented—but none to yours. What
should you do?
You know damn well what to do. There’s clearly damage, lots of it, so you have to
take out your cell phone, call the police, and wait there till they come. Watching you prop-
ping yourself up against your SUV, they’ll insist on the inconvenience of a breathalyzer
test. When they get the results of that, they’ll give you a chauffeured ride to the precinct
station and insist further on a urine test. When they get the results of that, you may get
to know the folks in the precinct very well before you see the sky again. You may very
well—probably will—lose your license to operate a motor vehicle. The fines will be sub-
stantial; you may lose your SUV. You may even go to jail. The damage to your reputation,
and to your position in your law practice, will probably be irreparable; depending on the
state, they may yank your license to practice law. That’s a lot to think about. Meanwhile,
you are the only occupant of this parking garage at this hour. You could just drive back to
Connecticut and not say anything to anyone.
What to do, indeed. The standard ethicist’s injunction, “Do the right thing,”
may entail a terrible cost, and it is the agent, not the ethicist, who has to absorb it.
Let’s think about it.
Chapter 1
Cases and Decisions
L. Newton,
Ethical Decision Making: Introduction to Cases and Concepts in Ethics
,
SpringerBriefs in Ethics, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00167-8_1, © The Author(s) 2013
How do we make ethical decisions, decisions that will stand up to challenges?
Consider the following case.
1.1
The Impaired Driver
You have stayed about an hour longer than you intended to at a very pleasant party with
your old college friends. While you were getting your law degree and starting prac-
tice, your roommate Marty made it big on Wall Street. He hosted the party in his huge
Riverside Drive apartment. All the old college ties were there—great memories, beer,
booze, marijuana… hadn’t seen
that
in awhile. Good stuff, too.
Realizing you’re late, you race to the parking garage, elevator to the third floor, hop in
your SUV, and tear around the turn toward the exit. Smash! Car parked in just the wrong
place. You hit it dead center. You back up, get out, note that there is extensive damage
to the other car—both doors on the driver’s side badly dented—but none to yours. What
should you do?
You know damn well what to do. There’s clearly damage, lots of it, so you have to
take out your cell phone, call the police, and wait there till they come. Watching you prop-
ping yourself up against your SUV, they’ll insist on the inconvenience of a breathalyzer
test. When they get the results of that, they’ll give you a chauffeured ride to the precinct
station and insist further on a urine test. When they get the results of that, you may get
to know the folks in the precinct very well before you see the sky again. You may very
well—probably will—lose your license to operate a motor vehicle. The fines will be sub-
stantial; you may lose your SUV. You may even go to jail. The damage to your reputation,
and to your position in your law practice, will probably be irreparable; depending on the
state, they may yank your license to practice law. That’s a lot to think about. Meanwhile,
you are the only occupant of this parking garage at this hour. You could just drive back to
Connecticut and not say anything to anyone.
What to do, indeed. The standard ethicist’s injunction, “Do the right thing,”
may entail a terrible cost, and it is the agent, not the ethicist, who has to absorb it.
Let’s think about it.
Chapter 1
Cases and Decisions
L. Newton,
Ethical Decision Making: Introduction to Cases and Concepts in Ethics
,
SpringerBriefs in Ethics, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00167-8_1, © The Author(s) 2013
2
1
Cases and Decisions
How do we make decisions in these cases
? This is as good a place as any to
introduce some of the terminology we’ll be using more systematically in the parts
that follow.
1.
What course of action will cause the greatest good to the greatest number,
minimizing pain to all parties and maximizing happiness? We call this kind
of thinking
consequentialist
, or
teleological
(from the Greek word for “end”
or “goal”), since it judges the moral quality of the action by its consequences
or by the end it achieves. In classic
Utilitarianism
, as set forth by
Bentham
(1823) and
Mill
(1863) the only consequences that matter are
happiness and
unhappiness
, pleasure and pain, for everyone affected by the act. Measuring
pleasure and pain for all parties, including your family, the owner of the
other car, even the world at large, it looks like your best course is to take off
for Connecticut without doing anything at all. Drive slowly so you don’t get
stopped. After all, the pain felt by the car owner upon finding his damaged car
is nothing compared to the pain that you and your family would feel if you lost
your ability to earn a living, let alone if you went to jail. Besides, his insurance
will probably cover the whole bill.
2.
Yes, but think of it this way. That law is there for a purpose. What you are sup-
posed to do, as a citizen, right now, is call the police. That’s your
duty.
You’ve
enjoyed all the benefits of citizenship, now it’s time to honor your part of the
bargain.
What if everyone who got into an accident just took off? Would
the world be a better place?
Could you approve of a law that said, when you
find you’ve caused damage to life or limb or property, if it isn’t convenient to
stay around, just take off? If you can’t, and you probably can’t, then you have
no right to make an exception of yourself in this case. That rule is the sub-
stance of
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
, which he set forth in his
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): Act so that you can simul-
taneously will that the maxim of your action (the reasoning that led you to do
it) should become universal law. In heading back to Connecticut without calling
the police, you set yourself above the law and contribute to a lawless society.
Kantian reasoning is called
non-consequentialist
, or
deontological
(from the
Greek word for “duty”), since it looks not at the consequences of the action but
at the law or duty that governs it.
3.
Here’s another way to think about what you’re doing, or about to do. When
you get home, suppose you find your father, or the rector of your church, or
your older brother, or anyone you trust, love, and admire, sitting in the kitchen.
Somehow he knows what happened in that garage, and he asks you to explain
just what you did, confronted with that difficult situation, and your reason-
ing to your decision.
Why did you do what you did?
Well, how would you
explain it? How would you justify taking off like that, when you were clearly
in the wrong? If that scenario doesn’t suggest an approach to the problem,
put a reporter from
The New York Times
(or
The Wall Street Journal,
if you’re
that type) sitting beside him in another kitchen chair. The reporter is going to
describe the whole situation, including your reasons for acting as you did,
in
3
the newspaper tomorrow, on the front page
. What kind of person would you
look like in that story? Is that the kind of person you want to be? There are
certain traits that we value in ourselves and others, traits like honesty, integrity,
and courage, that we call
virtues
. Morality is not just about consequences, nor
is it just about laws and duties—often it’s about the sort of person you are, your
very being, so we call the reasoning that draws on these considerations
virtue-
based
or
ontological
, from the Greek word for “being.”
Aristotle
(4th century
BC) based his Ethics upon ontological reasoning; we’ve never really lost track
of it.
These are agonizing decisions, and they govern life—the future life of the per
–
son who has to make them, and the way history will judge her or him. More com-
plex decisions are addressed in the discipline of ethics, and the rest of this chapter
will consider more complicated dilemmas; but we must not forget that the funda-
mental moral quantities are honesty, integrity, and courage, those that the impaired
driver must call upon right at the moment he finds himself alone in that garage
with a smashed car in front of him.2
1
Cases and Decisions
How do we make decisions in these cases
? This is as good a place as any to
introduce some of the terminology we’ll be using more systematically in the parts
that follow.
1.
What course of action will cause the greatest good to the greatest number,
minimizing pain to all parties and maximizing happiness? We call this kind
of thinking
consequentialist
, or
teleological
(from the Greek word for “end”
or “goal”), since it judges the moral quality of the action by its consequences
or by the end it achieves. In classic
Utilitarianism
, as set forth by
Bentham
(1823) and
Mill
(1863) the only consequences that matter are
happiness and
unhappiness
, pleasure and pain, for everyone affected by the act. Measuring
pleasure and pain for all parties, including your family, the owner of the
other car, even the world at large, it looks like your best course is to take off
for Connecticut without doing anything at all. Drive slowly so you don’t get
stopped. After all, the pain felt by the car owner upon finding his damaged car
is nothing compared to the pain that you and your family would feel if you lost
your ability to earn a living, let alone if you went to jail. Besides, his insurance
will probably cover the whole bill.
2.
Yes, but think of it this way. That law is there for a purpose. What you are sup-
posed to do, as a citizen, right now, is call the police. That’s your
duty.
You’ve
enjoyed all the benefits of citizenship, now it’s time to honor your part of the
bargain.
What if everyone who got into an accident just took off? Would
the world be a better place?
Could you approve of a law that said, when you
find you’ve caused damage to life or limb or property, if it isn’t convenient to
stay around, just take off? If you can’t, and you probably can’t, then you have
no right to make an exception of yourself in this case. That rule is the sub-
stance of
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
, which he set forth in his
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): Act so that you can simul-
taneously will that the maxim of your action (the reasoning that led you to do
it) should become universal law. In heading back to Connecticut without calling
the police, you set yourself above the law and contribute to a lawless society.
Kantian reasoning is called
non-consequentialist
, or
deontological
(from the
Greek word for “duty”), since it looks not at the consequences of the action but
at the law or duty that governs it.
3.
Here’s another way to think about what you’re doing, or about to do. When
you get home, suppose you find your father, or the rector of your church, or
your older brother, or anyone you trust, love, and admire, sitting in the kitchen.
Somehow he knows what happened in that garage, and he asks you to explain
just what you did, confronted with that difficult situation, and your reason-
ing to your decision.
Why did you do what you did?
Well, how would you
explain it? How would you justify taking off like that, when you were clearly
in the wrong? If that scenario doesn’t suggest an approach to the problem,
put a reporter from
The New York Times
(or
The Wall Street Journal,
if you’re
that type) sitting beside him in another kitchen chair. The reporter is going to
describe the whole situation, including your reasons for acting as you did,
in
3
the newspaper tomorrow, on the front page
. What kind of person would you
look like in that story? Is that the kind of person you want to be? There are
certain traits that we value in ourselves and others, traits like honesty, integrity,
and courage, that we call
virtues
. Morality is not just about consequences, nor
is it just about laws and duties—often it’s about the sort of person you are, your
very being, so we call the reasoning that draws on these considerations
virtue-
based
or
ontological
, from the Greek word for “being.”
Aristotle
(4th century
BC) based his Ethics upon ontological reasoning; we’ve never really lost track
of it.
These are agonizing decisions, and they govern life—the future life of the per
–
son who has to make them, and the way history will judge her or him. More com-
plex decisions are addressed in the discipline of ethics, and the rest of this chapter
will consider more complicated dilemmas; but we must not forget that the funda-
mental moral quantities are honesty, integrity, and courage, those that the impaired
driver must call upon right at the moment he finds himself alone in that garage
with a smashed car in front of him.