Ethical Overview

Ethics is moral philosophy. It deals with reasoning from ethical principals to create a means of acting morally in a social setting. It is also one of the few areas of philosophy that has everyday practical applications. Examples of this are sports ethics and business ethics (i.e. applied ethics). These subjects are frequent areas of public and legal policy debate. While saying something is ethical or unethical is common, it should also come as no surprise that there is great debate over what one means by making such a statement. So, the purpose of this blog post is to briefly review what such a statement means.

First thing to discuss is the purpose of ethics from a social standpoint. When humans get together in large numbers, we have a bad habit of getting on each others nerves (and as I am writing this right before the Thanksgiving holiday, you may well be more acutely aware of this than at other times of the year). Inevitably, as people got together and created societies in prehistory codes of conduct were created to avoid the kinds of hostilities that result when people get on each others nerves. These codes of conduct are the origins of what is now ethical reasoning.

In ancient Greek philosophy, most ethics revolved around reasoning from first principles. This usually involved defining ideal virtues, like justice and self determination, and using that as a basis for how one should properly conduct themselves in society. Later, in more modern times, philosophers put forward ideals about how the results of an ethical decision should drive the outcome of that decision. Examples of this are utilitarianism or consequentialism, both of which are concerned with creating the most societal happiness or utility or the greatest benefit to society (depending on the theory). These views contrast with another major branch of ethical thinking, that of theologically based ethics. This system being one from which the principles of ethical action are either laid down in the holy books of the religion or deduced from the actions of its patron saints (or other holy figures).

Now it is worth pointing out that not all codes of social conduct are, strictly speaking, ethics. Manners are one such codes of conduct. While none would doubt the value of being mannerly it is unlikely to rise to the level of ethical behavior.  After all, whether you say please and thank you or eat daintily are unlikely to affect societal happiness (at most you might disgust the people around you). Similarly, societal laws are not ethics, even though when you act illegally, you are frequently acting immorally. What I mean is that while one can safely argue that breaking a criminal law is likely unethical, it is not as clear that a business not having an independent auditor or audit committee (as is required by various corporate and securities laws) is unethical (though, in the case of Enron, it did result in the company making many unethical decisions).

So what can we deduce from all this? That when someone says a certain action is unethical or immoral, that in order to really understand what they mean we need to know what school of thought their judgment derives from. Do they mean that the action violated an ideal of justice, was the action not designed to maximize societal happiness, did it violate a theological principal for right action? You don't know. At best you know that they don't approve of that action. Just be careful in asking them to explain, not everyone reacts positively to having their ethical judgments questioned.

So, having run through the above, hopefully when future discussions run towards applied ethics, you will have a little more insight into what people are talking about.