Discussions of Ethics and Morality - Personal Statement Example

Discussions of Ethics and Morality Week one part one In a general sense ethics can be defined as a branch of study concerned with examining the proper course of action for mankind, it attempts to answer the question what should I do? What is right and wrong and how can one make morally correct choices even in difficult situations (Fischer, 2004)? More fundamentally though, ethics is a method by which people categorize and pursue their values, one often has to wrestle with dilemmas such as whether it is better to act in their best intrest of make sacrifices for the greater good. The value of ethics to human life cannot be overstated, without ethics actions would often be random and aimless and the humanity in humans would be highly diluted. People would pursue their objective with no regard whatsoever to how they may impact on others and this in a large scale would amount to chaos. To the extent which there is a rational ethical standard, people can organize their goals and actions in such a way that they can prioritize the most important values, flawed ethics greatly undermine this capacity. Ethics are important because they transcend and mediate between people and laws, while some assume that following laws is enough to lead a morally correct life, the truth is that laws are made objectively while humans are the epitome of subjectivity. The need to study ethics is further underscored by the fact that many of the principles people follow and depend on to live morally cannot be followed to their logical conclusion without undermining this very morality and studying and understanding ethics helps one to understand and reexamine their decisions. The golden rule as it is popularly referred to is one of the principles that appear clear and logical but followed blindly it can be misleading. It states that one should treat people the way they would want to be treated (Bennett, 1998). However, when for example a parent tries to force their child to become a doctor because they wished their parents had made them one, they are applying the principle but in an unethical way. In the same way the fact that someone wants to receive a bribe for doing their job does not justify their tolerating a corrupt system. Ultimately do unto others what you’d have them do to you only works when what you desire is right and once again their takes us back to the question of right and wrong which can only be answered after ethical consideration. Study of ethics helps people understand and appreciate the nature of personal responsibility more so in situations where laws and social cultural norms may obstruct the notion. One can distinguish between good intentions and right acts by recognizing that having good intention can nevertheless lead to wrong actions if one is mistaken about what is the best course of action in a given scenario. When one has an understanding of ethics, they will be aware of the factors that should be taken to account when deciding what is right or wrong especially if they are introduced to moral terminologies that they can refer to and apply. Week 1 Part 2 It is a common argument under cultural relativism that there is no such thing as right or wrong and that these are relative to the cultural setting and norms (Herskovits 1972). However arguing that morality is relative is misleading in the face of the fabric of human society today, this argument is bound to result in bizarre and illogical conclusions. Assuming that morality is relative implies that people should be allowed to do anything as long as it is allowed in their culture, this means that cultures that practice infanticide, forced marriage slavery and other action popularly considered to be immoral would be justified. In this premise, then the United Nations human rights would be irrelevant since some of its provisions such as gender and race equality are not recognized in some countries and such would be allowed to continue (Teson, 1984). Consider the issue of slavery, by virtue of the fact that it was sanctioned in ex post facto periods does not mean it was any more then than it is immoral today. Universal morality is in a sense like mathematical laws, even if one was to believe that 2 +2=3, they would still be wrong no matter how much they believed it or for how long they had held it to be true. The fact that generations believed the earth was flat has no bearing on the reality of its roundness and in the same way, that Africans were enslaved in America and Europe for centuries does not make it right. Human life is priceless irrespective of race, social status or gender, ergo by virtue of this no one has a right to enslave another most of those who do it today either do it in secret or in disguise. Morality is universal; it just takes special people to recognize it and fight to ensure that it is practiced by all. Individuals like Abraham Lincoln were among those who understood the evils of slavery and the immorality of human trade in a time when most people including some of the victims had accepted it as the natural order of things. Indeed, if humanity did not have a sense of universal morality, there would still be people today agitating for the return of slavery in the formal sense and the universal condemnation of it would not exist. Week 2 Part 1 In life one of often faced with challenging situations where they have to choose between acting in their own intrest or in the interests of others, by using the word chose the implications is that they are under no form of outward pressure to act and are only answerable to their own conscience. Ethical egoism as a philosophical position can be used to describe a situation where one is inclined to act only in their own intrest as opposed to those of other (Gauthier, 1970). An ethical egoist believes that actions such as self-sacrifice are not moral and one is only duty bound to help someone if they stand to benefit from it in the long run. A practical, albeit rather harsh example of this is a situation where one sees a young child struggling in a pool in danger of drowning. A non-egoist would feel morally obligate to drop whatever they were doing to assist the child, however an ethical egoist would not see it in this way, they might want to know what benefit they would get from doing it and if they don’t think it would be of any help to them in posterity they would probably just let the child take their chances. However this is not a sustainable position and if all humanity acted in their own best intrest without sacrificing their desires, we would quickly sink to anarchy as people would act in accordance to the untamed desires of their ID as described by Sigmoid Freud (Freud & Strachey, 1984). If for example one wanted to eat and they had no money they could simply walk into a café and have a meal then walk out without paying since to them the desire to eat is stronger than the right of the café owner to receive compensation. In the long run such a society would not benefit anyone including the egoist since it would be characterized by violence and anarchy as everyone tried to obtain whatever they felt they deserved irrespective of the effect it could have on the society. Furthermore, it has been argued that the more one acts in the intrest of others, the more they act in their own and under this premise, selflessness and altruism have been described as self-serving and self-fulfilling. For example by stopping to help a beggar Thomas Hobbes argued that he was actually helping himself by relieving himself of the negative emotion he felt from seeing the beggar’s suffering (Gunderman, 2008). In the selfsame way, acting in the intrest of others and sacrificing ones desires is actually therapeutic because even when one ignores another’s problems to pursue their own intrest, it could still have an indirect effect on their subconscious (Michalon, 2001). Week 2 part 2 This hypothetical dilemma is reminiscent of a short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”; plot is based in a village where people seemingly lead utopian lives free from illness suffering and even the pain of death. However on close investigation one learns the reason they are guaranteed such bliss, there is a child who has been locked up in an underground cell, tied up in chains and leading a life of slow suffering and near starvation (Le Guin, 1975). Similarly given the level of destruction and loss of life that has been a result of global terrorism for the last few decades since the gulf wars, keeping a person, presumably innocent in slow suffering would appear to be utilitarian if it could guarantee the end of terror. One could argue that in any case, there are already so many such people it would make little difference, in prisons like the Guantanamo bay in Cuba, there are claims that some of the prisoners are kept in inhuman conditions and tortured. Given that none can be sure if they are guilty or not, it is easy to presume that the image of the person being tortured is not as hypothetical as it would seem. However, this brings out the moral issue of whether a wrong should be carried out simply because it has been done before, and what exactly is the value of a human life as compared to another or other lives. Assuming that the individual in question is innocent, this scenario is different because those currently being tortured are suspected of being guilty and there is pretty compelling evidence otherwise they would not be there. However in this case study, the person being kept in pain would have to be completely innocent and the punishment would be for the sake of the world rather than his misdeeds. When put like that it has a religious, specifically biblical undertone, while this is an ethical issue for contemporary civilization, ex post facto civilizations may not have found this to be even a dilemma. Sacrificing one for the sake of many has been a historical theme that can be traced from the biblical days to the early Mayan and even Chinese civilization. For them the most important thing was the collective and the will of the individual had to be overlooked for the sake of the majority, in fact Christianity itself is based on the death of one person for the sins of others (Wellisch, 2013). However in contemporary times, the mode of thinking especially in the western world is predominantly based on a capitalist notion in which one person’s rights cannot be taken away from them even in the interests of others. The rules that unite us as human being such as the UN human rights are based on the principle of the sanctity of human life otherwise it would be common and acceptable to torture prisoners even in normal crimes if one felt it could help solve future crimes. Our morality is what makes us human at the end of the day should there be a time when the suffering of an innocent person is acknowledged and accepted by all, it will be the beginning of the end of humanity. The education and knowledge that characterize modern day civilization makes it; morally, politically, socially and in many cases religiously acceptable for the majority to sacrifice the well face of the few for the “greater good” greater in this case referring to numerical supremacy. In this hypothesis, torturing one person because it would benefit many is simply a miniaturization of the retrospective evils society has practiced against minorities. Slavery and anti-Semitism which resulted in the holocaust were both based on the assumption that the suffering and exploitation of the few would make life better for the majority. This was practical in the eyes of the Nazis and slavers and their lives were actually better for the atrocities they committed but this does not make it any more acceptable to promote evil because many stand to benefit. Week 3 part 1 Immanuel Kant argues that a rational human being should never be treated as a means to an end; they should be recognized as an end in themselves because human life is of infinite worth (Atwell, 1986). By virtue of saying that a person in an end in him/herself, the implication is that their inherent value is not dependent on the role they play in making other people’s lives better but simply that they exist is value in itself. While this is logical and it appeals to convectional ethics and morality, there are situations where people needs must be used as a means to an end. The issue here is recognizing their worth but essentially, when one “uses” someone else they do not actually consciously disregard their worth it simply does not apply. For example when one is riding a bus, it can be argued that they are using the bus driver as a means to and ends since their relationship is fundamentally based on the drives providing services in exchange of payment. However the same argument can be turned around and one can assume that the bus driver uses the passenger as a means to an ends since they are the reason he/she has a job in the first place. Framing of his famous argument the categorical imperative, Kant proposes that one should avoid contradiction and when challenged about what he is morally obliged to do (Johnson, 2014). For example when faced with a situation where he is required to give the location of an intended victim to a murder he argues that one is morally duty bound to provide the information since lying would be tantamount to treating the murder as a means to an end. This is however and example of the problem with Kant’s philosophy, its focus is myopic and in the long run contradictory not to mention in this case it has its moral priorities upside down. By providing a murderer with information that could lead to the death of an innocent person, one would be putting their personal convictions which could be right or wrong, since they are not absolute over the life of another person whose right to live is unequivocal. Furthermore, by telling on the victim, one would still be using him as a means to and end which in this case is to preserve their sense of “philosophical purity”. Week 3 part 2 Human nature is actually indirectly the source of the very word human, when someone is compassionate and empathetic they are described as humane while those who are cruel and unfeeling as described as inhumane of inhuman. From a philosophical and entomological point of view, it one can surmise that that which makes humans human is their ability to feel the pain of others, sympathize and share their grief, in a word empathy. Empathy is not the most basic of human emotions but it is the one that mediates the interactions between individuals and the suffering of others and ultimately spurs them into action where need arise (Decety, 2004). Consider the difference between human and animals, in the educational text, “Pedagogy of the oppressed”; Paulo Freire (2000) contends that the primary difference between human and animals is that animals are immersed in the world while humans transcend it. He justifies this by arguing that humans act on the basis of their emotions and reason while animals will only respond to their inborn instincts. In most case these exist to enable them acquire food and avoid predators. For example, whenever people witness inhuman actions or simple injustice against others they tend to respond either directly or indirectly by either lending assistance of making some form of protest. However even when they do not react, they are not indifferent to the suffering of others. People who do not feel for others are a minority and it is from this minority that criminals more so violent offenders terrorist and serial killers more so psychopaths emerge. In most cases people who have no sympathy for others tend to find it easy to inflict suffering on them repeatedly and in every civilized society they end up being separated from the populace mostly through imprisonment. This is however not to say that all who are in prison fall under this inhuman category, the fact that prisons function as corrective institutions is evidence that most people are capable or recognizing the damage they have done to society and it is only after they have reconciled themselves with this that they can be considered fit to inhabit it. Week 3 part 3 Aristotle argues that human virtue is determined by ones ability to balance between extremes of deficiencies and those of excess or vices (Bostock, 2000). In my interaction with my friends and collegues as well my personal introspection and reflection, I have come across various habits I find excessive. Several or my friends do not seem capable of limiting the amount of alcohol they consume and even on a light Wednesday outing, I find some will drink as if it was the Friday before a long weekend. From an Aristotelian point of view it would appear that if they had virtue they would control themselves better and derive pleasure from being able to resist overindulging even when they can rather than from binge drinking. Another excessive habit if find in people although in this case not necessarily my friend is the tendency to make decision rashly without considering all the factors, I have seen a senior colleague at work fly into a range because they were not provided with some information by a subordinate although it was at the moment lying on their desk. However, I am also not immune to excess and I tend to also pass judgment on people without always learning all there is about them which has caused me several embarrassing faux pas in the past. However I have learnt to deal with this and other vices by reflecting on them and trying to moderate my actions as I try to achieve what Aristotle describes as a mean between excess. References Atwell, J (1986). Ends and principles in Kants moral thought. Oklahoma: Springer. Bennett, M. J. (1998). Overcoming the golden rule: Sympathy and empathy. Basic concepts of intercultural communication: Selected readings, 5, 191-214. Bostock, D (2000). Aristotle’s Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews, 3(2), 71-100. Fischer, J. (2004). Social responsibility and ethics: clarifying the concepts. Journal of Business Ethics, 52(4), 381-390. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum. Freud, S., & Strachey, J. (1984). On metapsychology: The theory of psychoanalysis (pp. 239-403). A. Richards (Ed.). Middlesex and New York: Penguin Books Gauthier, D. P. (1970). Morality and rational self-interest. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Gunderman, R. B. (2008). Giving ourselves: The ethics of anatomical donation.Anatomical sciences education, 1(5), 217-219. Herskovits, M. J. (1972). Cultural relativism; perspectives in cultural pluralism. New York: Random House Johnson, R. (2014). Kants Moral Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = . Le Guin, U. K. (1975). The ones who walk away from Omelas. The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, 275-84. Michalon, M. (2001). " Selflessness" in the Service of the Ego: Contributions, Limitations and Dangers of Buddhist Psychology for Western Psychology.American journal of psychotherapy, 55(2). Teson, F. R. (1984). Internatioal Human Rights and Cultural Relativism. Va. j. Intl L., 25, 869. Wellisch, E. (2013). Isaac and Oedipus: A Study in Biblical Psychology of the Sacrifice of Isaac (Vol. 196). London: Routledge. Read More