ETHICS

A Unique Area of Knowledge

IN TOK IT’S NEVER THAT SIMPLE...

It just depends

The difference between what is moral and what is ethical

• In TOK, we will consider morality to be our sense of right and wrong and ethics to be the area of knowledge that examines the sense of morality and the moral codes we develop from it. Since all of us are involved throughout our lives in moral decision making, ethics is an AOK whose subject matter concerns us personally. And it is to your own thoughts that we turn next. • Reflection: • How did you gain your own sense of right and wrong? How do you justify it?

Discussion

• Exchange your ideas in small groups, looking for points of similarity and differences. • Conclude by making a summary list of the sources suggested in your discussion.

What is it that makes ethics different from other

• • • •

AOK’s

It is still studying human action- but studies not how human beings do act (human science) nor how they have acted in the past (history) but rather how they should act.

How very much like many works in the arts. We have numerous works in the arts which apply value judgments of “right” and “wrong” to human action. They praise, condemn, or counsel; they declare or imply that people should act or should not act in particular ways. However, many works of art make no judgment at all (consider abstract art). Moreover, the judgments are particular to the works themselves.

Ethics, on the other hand, takes moral judgments as its only topic and seeks to be general- to comment not just on individual stories but to comment on them all- to give general perspectives that can

apply to particular cases.

What does the critic in ethics examine?

• Ethics has no equivalent area that is specifically its own. • It treats instead a specific aspect of all the subject matter and methods of all areas of knowledge. • It examines our everyday decisions and actions from the most private and personal to the most public and political. • It surveys all that human beings do and persistently asks questions such as, “ What does it mean to be good?” “What should I do or not do?” “How do we justify our moral decisions?” And then it explores possible ways of thinking about the questions and possible ways to answer.

• Ethics is essentially an area of criticism, or formalized critical thinking, applied to all that people do, and possibly even think.

So, what are we dealing with anyways?

• Ethics, then, deals with moral choices- choices we make that reflect our values. Choices that meet with approval are “moral” and those that meet with disapproval are “immoral. ” Here, we use the term “moral choice” to mean any choice in accordance with our moral values, whether we applaud or condemn that decision. • Almost any choice, however, has the potential to be a moral choice within a particular context (consider items as simple as how we dress, what we eat, and how we greet one another). • Although it is difficult to disentangle our moral choices from those which are amoral- which are subject to no moral judgment- a few characteristics have been proposed to distinguish them. Consider these yourself, and decide whether you think they draw the line successfully between the amoral and the moral.

Possible Criterion 1

• For the choice to be subject to any kind of moral judgment, whether condemned or praised, it has to be a conscious and deliberate choice. • Possible Argument 1: If you accept this premise, you may argue that accidents are amoral (cannot be judged). • For example, actions taken under threat or force.

Possible Criterion 2

• For an action to be subject to any kind of moral judgment, it has to affect someone else other than the person acting. • Possible Argument 2: If you accept this premise, you may argue that self-mutilation, taking drugs, or joining a cult are amoral because the person acting only affects himself.

• In ethics there is no truth of the matter. (But that is not to say that all ethical claims are equally acceptable—some are better than others) • For some people—for many people—that can be very frustrating, and as a result, they simply reject the whole business. Consider this “the flight from the grey”: people can’t understand something in the simple terms of black and white, so they pretend it doesn’t exist or isn’t important. • Keep in mind that you don’t have to figure out the absolute single right thing to do; you just have to figure out as much as you can. You don’t have to make the best decision; just try to make better decisions, more carefully considered decisions.

• Furthermore, evaluating arguments about ethical issues is no different from evaluating other sorts of arguments. So, as with other arguments, when you are presented with an argument about an ethical issue, go through the same steps: identify the issue, identify the point, and identify the premises supporting that point (both those explicitly stated and those assumed); then evaluate the premises, considering whether or not they’re true or acceptable, whether or not they’re relevant, and whether or not they’re sufficient to support the claim. • Then decide whether the argument is strong enough for you to accept its conclusion, usually a judgment about whether something is right or wrong.

• As for forming our own moral judgments, making our own arguments about ethical issues, unfortunately, ethically speaking, most of us are quite undeveloped; we haven’t updated our childhood training.

• It doesn’t have much in the way of conceptual complexity and subtlety; it doesn’t make the fine distinctions that are necessary; it’s not as precise as it needs to be. For example, “Don’t steal” is fine unless you’re starving or the person from whom you’re stealing doesn’t rightfully possess what you’re stealing. Then things get a little difficult.

• • • Many ethical arguments attempt to establish a general principle that can then be used as a guide for decisions about moral right and wrong. Many such arguments can be put into deductive form, usually with a universal positive premise that articulates some general ethical principle. To this extent, they are similar to categorical deductive arguments of the form “All A are B, C is an A, therefore C is a B”—“All A are B” is the general principle (for example, “All stealing is wrong”).

Also, these sorts of argument involve definition to a great degree, and great pains are taken to establish a definition that is sufficiently precise with respect to features and conditions, as well as sufficiently inclusive and exclusive For example, “Don’t steal” is a general principle, and in order to use that as a guide for decisions, you must have a clear definition of what counts as stealing (for example, is it stealing if the person you’re taking from doesn’t rightfully possess what you’re taking?).

You’ll need to make an argument to support the principles you advocate as guides for decision-making. For example, why exactly is stealing wrong?

Upon reflecting

• Overall, ethics demands the most from you in terms of reflection on your own ideas, willingness to exchange views with others, and readiness, even if you own views are firm, to listen for what justifications persuade others. What touches us most deeply can be contestable. • Ethics often appears messy and confusing. It is not a weakness in ethics but a characteristic of what it takes as a subject. It is dealing with not only human beings but human values and trying, despite the immense complexity, to give an understanding of moral choice.

How Do We Know What is Right and Wrong?

Only four men survived the ship wrecked Mignonette in 1884, floating for three weeks in the Atlantic in a lifeboat. On the 19th day the captain Thomas Dudley suggested they drew lots to decide who would be killed and eaten, but one man objected. On the 20th day Dudley told the others to look away, offered a prayer and cut the throat of the cabin boy, aged 17, who was sick from drinking seawater. They ate his body. Four days later they were rescued by another ship and the three survivors were charged with murder in the law case The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens.

It is significant that murder and cannibalism could be argued to be reasonable in this case. On utilitarian grounds the actions of Dudley are justified because they promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. However, using deontological ethical theories, murder is wrong in itself, regardless of the consequences for others. If cannibalism is disgusting and our emotional response is that what happened is intuitively wrong, we might ask ourselves if our disgust is reasonable? Would we have done otherwise? Or could the case be put that Dudley acted rationally?

• In TOK ethics, it is tempting to conclude that because there is no agreement about standards of right and wrong, it follows that there is no knowledge in ethics. After all, individuals and cultures do not have the same moral standards. However, our ethical judgments are just that - judgments. We can make better or worse judgments in ethics and our task in TOK is to know the difference. Paul Grobstein stated that: "there is no such thing as 'right', the very concept needs to be replaced with 'progressively less wrong.' • " So although certain knowledge in ethics is hard to find, we can make progress by arriving at moral judgments that are considered. So in your response to the case above, ask yourself 'why do I think that?'

• In ethics we are dealing with a plurality of truths. It'll be worth questioning the basis there might be for ethical truth across cultures. What are good reasons for holding our moral beliefs? Pay close attention to the words used to express moral viewpoints; we know that in the language of war, 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter', and in the above case, 'one man's cannibalistic murderer is another man's hero with superior survival instincts.' Perhaps the challenge in TOK ethics is to look for what moral knowledge cultures might have in common. Even the notion of right and wrong is shared across cultures, even if the standards to which this approximates, differs. The idea of shared values is embodied in the idea of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

So to conclude, tolerance of other people's views is a fundamental principle but it does not follow that all moral views are of equal value. Freedom of speech and the right to express your own view is essential, but there may be some moral views that are not as sound as others. The task of ethics is to examine the grounds on which we hold our moral beliefs. How do we decide about the case above; killing a person as a means to an end is objectionable, but the instinct to survive in extreme conditions might demand we re-think our moral paradigms? It's for you to decide.