Imagine this: You are riding on a trolley one day when it loses its path and is headed towards five workers. The trolley is quickly moving and headed downhill with no chance of stopping. However, you realize you are standing right next to a lever which can change the course. If this lever is pulled, you will still hit one other person. What would you do? Would the situation change if you had a relationship the one person versus the five people? Every day we face ethical decisions. These decisions may not include the pulling of a trolley lever, but they do put our moral compass and values into question. The following are five universal approaches to consider when making those decisions. Utilitarian Approach What benefits and what harms will each course of action produce, and which alternative will lead to the best overall consequences? This question answers the dilemma of which option will produce the greatest benefits and least harm. Rights Approach What moral rights do the affected parties have, and which course of action best represents those rights? The rights approach follows the belief that individuals have the ability to make their decisions freely. It believes that if it does not respect everyone’s moral rights, it is wrong to act. Fairness/Justice Approach Which course of action treats everyone the same, except where there is a morally justifiable reason not to, and does not show favoritism or discrimination? This approach gives the individual the opportunity to reflect if the action is fair to the people. Common Good Approach Which course of action advances the common good? This question helps drive our choice to decide if the action taken will be good for ourselves and the community. It opens the door to other questions related to the type of society we want to become and how to achieve that. Virtue Approach Which course of action develops moral virtues? Each of us hold internal values and morals that we strive to maintain and hold on to. This question reflects on what kind of person you should be and what it will do to your character.
Course Hero uses AI to attempt to automatically extract content from documents to surface to you and others so you can study better, e.g., in search results, to enrich docs, and more. This preview shows page 9 - 12 out of 32 pages. Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre,Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer
Moral issues greet us each morning in the newspaper, confront us in the memos on our desks, nag us from our children's soccer fields, and bid us good night on the evening news. We are bombarded daily with questions about the justice of our foreign policy, the morality of medical technologies that can prolong our lives, the rights of the homeless, the fairness of our children's teachers to the diverse students in their classrooms. Dealing with these 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 check 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 To analyze an issue using the utilitarian approach, we first identify the various courses of action available to us. Second, we ask who will be affected by each action and what benefits or harms will be derived from each. And third, we choose the action that will produce the greatest benefits and the least harm. The ethical action is the one that provides the greatest good for the greatest number. The Rights Approach Of course, many different, but related, rights exist besides this basic one. These other rights (an incomplete list below) can be thought of as different aspects of the basic right to be treated as we choose.
In deciding whether an action is moral or immoral using this second approach, then, we must ask, Does the action respect the moral rights of everyone? Actions are wrong to the extent that they violate the rights of individuals; the more serious the violation, the more wrongful the action. The Fairness or Justice Approach Favoritism gives benefits to some people without a justifiable reason for singling them out; discrimination imposes burdens on people who are no different from those on whom burdens are not imposed. Both favoritism and discrimination are unjust and wrong. The Common-Good Approach The common good is a notion that originated more than 2,000 years ago in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. More recently, contemporary ethicist John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage." In this approach, we focus on ensuring that the social policies, social systems, institutions, and environments on which we depend are beneficial to all. Examples of goods common to all include affordable health care, effective public safety, peace among nations, a just legal system, and an unpolluted environment. Appeals to the common good urge us to view ourselves as members of the same community, reflecting on broad questions concerning the kind of society we want to become and how we are to achieve that society. While respecting and valuing the freedom of individuals to pursue their own goals, the common-good approach challenges us also to recognize and further those goals we share in common. The Virtue Approach Virtues are attitudes or character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways that develop our highest potential. They enable us to pursue the ideals we have adopted. Honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, fidelity, integrity, fairness, self-control, and prudence are all examples of virtues. Virtues are like habits; that is, once acquired, they become characteristic of a person. Moreover, a person who has developed virtues will be naturally disposed to act in ways consistent with moral principles. The virtuous person is the ethical person. In dealing with an ethical problem using the virtue approach, we might ask, What kind of person should I be? What will promote the development of character within myself and my community? Ethical Problem Solving
This method, of course, does not provide an automatic solution to moral problems. It is not meant to. The method is merely meant to help identify most of the important ethical considerations. In the end, we must deliberate on moral issues for ourselves, keeping a careful eye on both the facts and on the ethical considerations involved. This article updates several previous pieces from Issues in Ethics by Manuel Velasquez - Dirksen Professor of Business Ethics at Santa Clara University and former Center director - and Claire Andre, associate Center director. "Thinking Ethically" is based on a framework developed by the authors in collaboration with Center Director Thomas Shanks, S.J., Presidential Professor of Ethics and the Common Good Michael J. Meyer, and others. The framework is used as the basis for many programs and presentations at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. |