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Ethics in America II Discussion Guide

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Ethics in America II Discussion Guide TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………………… i 1. DOING GOOD AND AVOIDING EVIL: Fundamentals of Philsophical Ethics ......................................... 1 2. THE THEORY BEHIND THE PRACTICE: Why We Choose the Right and Refuse the Wrong.............41 3. CHOOSING JUSTICE: Elections and Judicial Independence............................................................................59 4. THREE FAREWELLS: Medicine and the End of Life........................................................................................90 5. WAR STORIES: National Security and the News ...............................................................................................120 6. MY BROTHER'S KEEPER: Personal Ethics......................................................................................................149 7. A BETTER BRAIN: The Ethics of Neuro-enhancement..................................................................................182 8. RISK, REWARD, RESPONSIBILITY: Ethics in Business...............................................................................217 INTRODUCTION Welcome to Ethics in America II. As with the original Ethics in America—brilliantly conceived and launched by the late Fred Friendly, Edward R. Murrow Professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism—this six-part series of programs and accompanying materials covers diverse topics of public, private, and professional ethics. It will be broadcast on public television, available as DVDs, and can be found on the Annenberg Media Web site, learner.org. The Discussion Guide starts with an introduction to the terms and reasoning of ethics ("Doing Good and Avoiding Evil"), moves on to a swift career through ethical theories ("The Theory Behind the Practice"), and then follows up with six chapters that trace the six programs in the series, introducing them, placing them in ethical context, and reflecting on possible solutions for the dilemmas presented. The Ethics Reader is a selection of historically important writings on ethics, which are cited explicitly in the Discussion Guide chapters and implicitly in the vigorous dialogue captured in the video programs. Up to now you have probably been doing ethics without benefit of any kind of academic recognition. Why bother to have courses in stuff we all do naturally? Because too often we don't do it very well. Ethical presuppositions are built into all of our moral judgments, but they are not all defensible. The political party official who ensures, for the sake of the comfort of his colleagues, that the minority applicant does not get the district appointment probably does not think of himself as "prejudiced"— he probably makes no connection at all between what he has just done and his ready affirmation that "all men are created equal." We need practice to put our present actions in the context of our genuine beliefs. Similarly, the congressional leader who quietly covers up the evidence of a colleague's improper fondness for teenage pages working in the Congress, no doubt thinks of himself as doing what is best for the institution of the Congress, not as possibly endangering young pages in the future. Much the same thoughts may have gone through the heads of the Catholic bishops who quietly transferred the priests who had been molesting children. Ethics requires that we place our actions out for the public to view, to be judged against the ethical standards we profess. Is it all a matter of figuring out who's "right" and who's "wrong"? Absolutely not. There are matters where good and thoughtful people should not be ashamed to disagree. The agreement is not important, but the thoughtfulness is. There are reasons why we will not always ultimately agree, for ethical principles may ultimately conflict; but we should be clear on why we disagree, and learn enough of the terminology, modes of reasoning and traditional principles of ethics to carry on an intelligent discussion about the ethical disputes of the day. The Discussion Guide has eight chapters. The first begins by introducing you to the forms of moral discourse and provides an introduction to some of the technical terms that are used throughout the book. Chapter 2 acquaints you with the ethical traditions of the Western world, an extended conversation on the nature of right and wrong, good and evil, that spans the centuries and now includes you. i Chapters 3 through 8 correspond to the video presentations that serve as a core for this series. These chapters follow the same basic outline, incorporating the following sections: introductory questions, an essay on the concepts covered in the chapter, a summary of the video program dialogue, a synthesis and discussion of the issues, questions for further reflection, and finally, suggested further readings. This Discussion Guide and the accompanying Ethics Reader offer materials that can broaden and deepen your understandings of the ethical issues presented in the video programs. With the first two chapters as background in thinking about these ethical dilemmas, you can move through the other six chapters in any order that suits you. Enjoy the journey. ii CHAPTER 1 DOING GOOD AND AVOIDING EVIL Fundamentals of Philosophical Ethics Part I: Principles and Reasoning 1. Philosophical Discourse: Defending Judgments Ethics, in its origins and in its current location in the curriculum, is a branch of philosophy. Philosophy is primarily the study of discourse—a particularly thorough examination of the ways that we talk about things, the judgments we make, and the categories and conceptual orders we put upon our experience. It helps us to interpret that experience for ourselves and to find the handles that will let us operate effectively in the world as we experience it. Ethics is a systematic study of morality and human conduct that attempts to extract from our moral codes and traditions our most basic beliefs, the concepts on which all morality ultimately rests. Doing ethics, then, is first of all talking about talking about morality—figuring out how we state moral judgments, how we justify them if we are challenged, what kinds of reasons weigh significantly in the discussion, and how we shall know, if ever we will, when we have reached a demonstrably true conclusion. There turn out to be three kinds of sentences distinguished by the way we verify them, that is, by the way we find out whether they are true. 1. Logical, or formal, statements are definitions or statements derivable from definitions, including the entirety of mathematical discourse (e.g., 2+2=4 or "A square has four equal sides"). Such statements can be verified by a formal procedure derived from the same definitions that control the rest of the terms of the field in question (i.e., the same axioms define 2, 4, and the procedure of addition; the four equal sides and right angles define the square). True formal statements are analytic: they are true logically, necessarily, or by the definitions of the terms. False statements in this category are self-contradictory. (If you say, 2+2=5, or start talking about round squares, you contradict yourself, for you assert that which cannot possibly be so—you conjoin ideas that are incompatible.) A logically true, or logically valid, statement can never be false or disproved by any discovery of facts; it will never be the case that some particular pairs of 2 do not add up to 4, or some particular squares turn out to be circular—and if you think you've found such a case, you're wrong! 2+2=4 is true, and squares are equilateral rectangles, as philosophers like to say, in all possible Page 1 worlds. For this reason we say that these statements are true a priori: we can know them to be correct prior to any examination of the facts of the world, without having to count up lots of pairs of pairs, just to make sure that 2+2 really equals 4. 2. Factual, or empirical, statements are assertions about the world out there, the physical environment of our existence, including the entirety of scientific discourse, from theoretical physics to sociology. Such statements are verifiable by controlled observation of that world, by experiment, or just by careful looking, listening, touching, smelling, or tasting. This is the world of our senses, the world of space, objects, time, and causation. These empirical statements are called synthetic, for they put together in a new combination two ideas that do not initially include or entail each other. As a result they cannot be known a priori, but can be determined only a posteriori, that is, after investigation of the world. When they are true, they are true only contingently, or dependently, as opposed to necessarily; their truth is contingent upon, or depends on, the situation in which they are uttered. (As I write this, the statement "It is raining out" is true and has been all day. The weatherman tells me that tomorrow that statement will be false. The statement 2+2=4, like the rectangularity of squares, does not flick in and out of truth like that.) 3. Normative statements are assertions about what is right, what is good, or what should be done. We know these statements as value judgments, prescriptions and proscriptions, commands and exhortations to do or forbear. There is no easy way of assigning truth value to these statements. The criteria of truth that apply to formal and factual statements do not apply to normative statements. We can certainly say of such judgments (formally) that they conform or fail to conform with other moral judgments or with more general and widely accepted moral principles. We can also say (empirically) that they receive or fail to receive our assent as a society, as compatible or incompatible with our basic intuitions of what is just or right (as determined by a poll or survey). We may also say that a judgment succeeds or fails as a policy recommendation on some accepted pattern of moral reasoning, like adducing consequences of that judgment and estimating how human wants will be affected should it become law (see the section "Moral Reasoning," below). But the certainties of math and science are forever beyond the grasp of any normative system, which is, possibly, as it should be.
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