Skip to main content

Posts

Nature and Scope of Ethics

What is Ethics? A few years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, “What does an ethic mean to you?” Among their replies were the following: “Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong.” “Ethics has to do with my religious belief.” “Being ethical is doing what the law requires.” “Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts.” “I don’t know what the world means.” These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of “ethics” is hard to pin down and the views many people have about ethics are shaky. Ethics and Feelings: Like Baumhart’s first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one’s feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical. Ethics and Religion: - Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most r

Thinking Ethically A Framework for Moral Decision Making

Introduction: Dealing with the moral issues is often perplexing. How, exactly, should we think through an ethical issue? What questions should we ask? What factors should we consider? The first step in analyzing moral issues is obvious but not always easy: Get the facts. Some moral issues create controversies simply because we do not bother to cheek the facts. This first step, although obvious, is also among the most important and the most frequently overlooked. But having the facts is not enough. Facts by themselves only tell us what is; they do not tell us what ought to be. In addition to getting the facts, resolving an ethical issue also requires an appeal to values. Philosophers have developed five different approaches to values to deal with moral issues. The Utilitarian Approach: Utilitarianism was conceived in the 19 th century by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill to help legislators determine which laws were morally best. Both Bentham and Mill sugge