Ethics For Dummies E-Book

Christopher Panza

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 709

Beschreibung

An easy-to-grasp guide to addressing the principles of ethics and applying them to daily life How do you define "good" versus "evil?" Do you know the difference between moral "truth" and moral relativity? Whether or not you know Aristotle from Hume, Ethics For Dummies will get you comfortable with the centuries-old study of ethical philosophy quickly and effectively! Ethics For Dummies is a practical, friendly guide that takes the headache out of the often-confusing subject of ethics. In plain English, it examines the controversial facets of ethical thought, explores the problem of evil, demystifies the writings and theories of such great thinkers through the ages as Aristotle, Confucius, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, and so much more. * Provides the tools to tackle and understand today's important questions and ethical dilemmas * Shows you how to apply the concepts and theories of ethical philosophy to your everyday life * Other title by Panza: Existentialism For Dummies Whether you're currently enrolled in an ethics course or are interested in living a good life but are vexed with ethical complexities, Ethics For Dummies has you covered!

Leseprobe

Ethics For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

What You’re Not to Read

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please

Part II: Uncovering the Roots of Ethics

Part III: Surveying Key Ethical Theories

Part IV: Applying Ethics to Real Life

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please

Chapter 1: Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

Knowing the Right Words: Ethical Vocabulary

Focusing on should and ought

Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality

Putting law in its proper place

Requiring, forbidding, permitting: The most useful ethical vocabulary

Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical

Why be ethical 101: It pays off!

Why be ethical 201: You’ll live a life of integrity

Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life

Taking stock: Know thyself

Building your moral framework

Seeing where you need to go

Chapter 2: Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion?

Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person’s Opinion

Right for me and wrong for you: The subjectivist position

Recognizing that subjectivism can’t handle disagreement

They’re always right: Subjectivists make bad houseguests

Determining what subjectivism gets right

Cultural Relativism: Grounding Ethics in the Group’s Opinion

Discovering what it means to be a cultural relativist

Understanding why cultural relativism is always so popular

Living in many worlds: Some problems with cultural relativism

Looking at cultural relativism’s lack of respect for tolerance

Noting cultural relativism’s successes

Emotivism: Seeing Ethics as a Tool of Expression

Expressing yourself: Booing and cheering in ethics

Arguing emotionally: A problem for emotivists

Getting motivation right: A victory for emotivism

Part II: Uncovering the Roots of Ethics

Chapter 3: Human Nature and Ethics: Two Big Questions

Considering Human Nature and Ethics

Examining the idea of human nature

Linking human nature and ethics

Connecting Ethics and Freedom

Hard determinists: You’re not free!

Finding freedom: Examining two other theories

Human Nature: Good, Bad, or Neutral?

Human nature is disposed to the good

Human nature disposes you to be bad

Human nature is neither good nor bad

Chapter 4: Exploring Connections between Ethics, Religion, and Science

Clarifying the Relationship between God, Religion, and Ethical Codes

Knowing the difference between God and religion

Contemplating the diversity of religious ethical codes

Because God Said So: Understanding Divine Command Theory

God’s authority: Considering why God gets to be in charge

Figuring out what happens when divine commands conflict

Plato’s big challenge: Questioning what makes something ethical

The Age of Science: Figuring Out If Ethics Can Exist in a Secular World

Staying silent on the spiritual

Defining ethics in a materialistic world

Establishing good behavior without heaven or hell

Evolution and Ethics: Rising Above the Law of the Jungle

Seeing how selfish genes can promote unselfish behavior

Noting the irrelevance of (most) evolutionary theory to ethics

Chapter 5: Seeing Ethics as Harmful: Three Famous Criticisms

Understanding the Challenges to Ethics

Bias-based arguments

Status-based arguments

Integrity-based arguments

Nietzsche: Explaining the Need to Avoid an Ethics of Weakness

Seeing self-creation as the path to integrity

Eyeing traditional ethics as weakness

Examining Nietzsche’s new idea: The ethics of inner strength

Kierkegaard: Too Much Reliance on Ethics Keeps You from God

Overcoming your despair

The Abraham dilemma: When God tells you to kill your son

Embracing a God who’s beyond ethics

Taoists: Ethics Isn’t Natural

Putting some yin and yang into your life

Revealing how traditional virtue is unnatural

Highlighting the Taoist virtue of simplicity

Part III: Surveying Key Ethical Theories

Chapter 6: Being an Excellent Person: Virtue Ethics

The Lowdown on Virtue Ethics: The Importance of Character

Discovering why character matters

Connecting character with action

Seeing character as a way of life

Understanding What Virtues Are

Virtues are habits toward goodness

Breaking down virtues

Focusing on the Good

Grasping the nature of “the good”

Virtuous living leads to human flourishing

Aristotle and Confucius: Two Notions of the Good Life

Aristotle’s view of the human good

Confucius’s view of the human good

Virtue: The middle path between extremes

Figuring Out How to Acquire Virtues

Can virtues really be taught?

Confucius: Virtue starts at home

Mirroring virtuous people

Practice, practice, and more practice

Assessing Criticisms of Virtue Ethics

It’s difficult to know which virtues are right

Virtues can’t give exact guidance

Virtue ethics is really self-centered

Being virtuous is a lucky crapshoot

Chapter 7: Increasing the Good: Utilitarian Ethics

Paying Close Attention to Results: Consequences Matter

Consequences matter to everyone

Consequences ethically trump principles and character

Surveying What Makes Consequences Good

Utilitarianism says: More pleasure, less pain (please!)

Beethoven or beer: Recognizing why some pleasures are better than others

Putting Utilitarianism into Action

Whose happiness counts?

How much happiness is enough?

Focusing On Two Different Ways to Be a Successful Utilitarian

Directly increasing the good through your actions

Indirectly increasing the good by following the rules

Exploring Traditional Problems with Utilitarianism

Challenge 1: Justice and rights play second fiddle in utilitarianism

Challenge 2: Utilitarianism is too demanding

Challenge 3: Utilitarianism may threaten your integrity

Challenge 4: Knowing what produces the most good is impossible

Chapter 8: Doing Your Duty: The Ethics of Principle

Kant’s Ethics: Acting on Reasonable Principles

Defining principles

Noting the difference between principles and rules

Making sense of Kantian ethics: The struggle between nature and reason

Autonomy: Being a law unto yourself

Living by the Categorical Imperative: Reasonable Principles

Looking behind actions: Maxims are principles

Examining imperatives

Surveying the Forms of the Categorical Imperative

Form 1: Living by universal principles

Form 2: Respecting everyone’s humanity

Applying the Categorical Imperative to Real-Life Dilemmas

Using the Formula of Universal Law to distinguish imperfect from perfect duties

Applying the Formula of Humanity to ethical topics

Scrutinizing Kant’s Ethics

Unconditional duty: Can you lie to a murderer?

Making enough room for feelings

Accounting for beings with no reason

Chapter 9: Signing on the Dotted Line: Ethics as Contract

Creating Ethics with Contracts

Reviewing Hobbes’s state of nature: The war of all against all

Escaping the state of nature: Enter the sovereign!

Moving to the modern form of social contracts

Restructuring Social Institutions According to Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Taking stock of the original position and its veil of ignorance

Arriving at the liberty and difference principles

Beyond the Dotted Line: Criticizing Contract Theory

But I never signed on the dotted line!

Libertarianism: Contracts make people lose too much liberty

Communitarianism: Challenging the veil of ignorance

Chapter 10: The Golden Rule: Common Sense Ethics

Assessing the Golden Rule’s Popularity

Understanding why the Golden Rule endures

Making an appearance over the ages

Applying the Golden Rule Requires Seeing Yourself in Another’s Shoes

Eyeing the Golden Rule’s basic tenets

Reversibility: Flipping your perspective

Reviewing the core criticisms of reversibility

Fixing the problems with reversibility

Surveying the Two Types of the Golden Rule

The positive form of the Golden Rule: Promoting the good

The negative form of the Golden Rule: Preventing harm

Comparing the Christian and Confucian Common-Sense Approach

Christianity’s Golden Rule: Loving your neighbor and enemy

Confucianism’s Golden Rule: Developing others as social persons

Chapter 11: Turning Down the Testosterone: Feminist Care Ethics

The Feminist Challenge: Traditional Ethics Is Biased toward Men

Getting a grasp on the feminist approach

Seeing how bias seeps into your life

Exploring how bias infects ethics

A Case Study of Male Bias: Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

Examining Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development

Understanding how ideal ethical reasoning is more abstract

Considering Gilligan’s Criticism of Kohlberg’s Model

Viewing the differences in how women and men think

Highlighting male bias in Kohlberg’s thinking

Discovering the importance of hearing women’s voices

Surveying a New Feminist Ethics of Care

Putting relationships first

Letting feelings count: Cultivating care

Embracing partiality

Care avoids abstraction

Reviewing Criticisms of Care Ethics

Care ethics and public life: An uneasy fit

Do some relationships really deserve care?

Could care ethics harm women?

Part IV: Applying Ethics to Real Life

Chapter 12: Dealing with Mad Scientists: Biomedical Ethics

Examining Some Principles of Biomedical Ethics

Paternalism: Getting rid of the old model of medicine

Autonomy: Being in the driver’s seat for your own healthcare decisions

Beneficence and nonmaleficence: Doing no harm

Taking a Closer Look at the Intractable Issue of Abortion

Deciding who is and isn’t a person

A right to life from the beginning: Being pro-life

The freedom to control one’s body: Being pro-choice

A 21st Century Problem: Attack of the Clones

Understanding the growing use of cloning in medicine

Determining whether cloning endangers individuality

Anticipating Ethical Problems with Genetic Technologies

Testing to avoid abnormalities

Finding cures for diseases with stem cell research

Considering genetic privacy concerns

Manipulating the genome to create designer people

Dying and Dignity: Debating Euthanasia

Dealing with controversy at the end of life

Making autonomous choices about death

Killing the most vulnerable

Chapter 13: Protecting the Habitat: Environmental Ethics

Canvassing Environmental Ethics

Recognizing environmental problems

Expanding care past human beings

Determining Whose Interests Count

Starting with the 4-1-1 on interests

Anthropocentrism: Only humans matter!

Sentientism: Don’t forget animals

Biocentrism: Please don’t pick on life

Eco-centrism: The land itself is alive

Turning to Environmental Approaches

Conservationism: Keeping an eye on costs

Deep ecology: Viewing interconnection as the key

Social ecology: Blaming domination

Examining Criticisms of Environmental Ethics

Eco-fascism: Pushing humans out of the picture

Valuing things in a nonhuman-centered way: Is it possible?

Chapter 14: Serving the Public: Professional Ethics

Exploring the Ethics of Work

Knowing the difference between jobs and professions

Exploring the relationship between professions and society

Walking the line: What professionals are required to do

Examining two general problems in professional ethics

Analyzing the Diversity of Professional Ethics

Journalism: Accurately informing the public

Engineering: Solving technological problems safely

Legal work: Honorably practicing law

Accounting: Managing people’s money honestly

Medicine: Doing no harm

Chapter 15: Keeping the Peace: Ethics and Human Rights

Taking Stock: Human Rights 101

Eyeing what human rights are

Having rights and being in the right

Comparing rights, duties, and laws

Determining what justifies human rights

Grappling with Two Different Notions of Human Rights

Negative rights: Protecting the individual from harm

Positive rights: Contributing to the good of others

Understanding Human Rights through the Ethical Traditions

Ambivalence about rights: Utilitarianism

A close tie to rights: Deontology

Worried about rights: Virtue ethics

Criticizing Human Rights

Considering human rights as imperialistic

Understanding why human rights aren’t what they seem

Chapter 16: Getting It On: The Ethics of Sex

Focusing on Sexual Ethics: The High Stakes of Intercourse

Explaining the standard view of sexual morality

Evaluating the morality of sex under the standard view

Debating Homosexuality

Looking at natural law theory and the ethics of being LGBT

Pondering tradition and same-sex marriage

Tackling Exploitation in the Ethics of Pornography

Wondering whether pornography is simply freedom of expression

Understanding the anti-pornography perspective

Paying for It: Is Prostitution Ethical?

Chapter 17: Looking Out for the Little Guy: Ethics and Animals

Focusing on the Premise of Animal Rights

Questioning whether humans really are superior to animals

Seeing why Peter Singer says animals feel pain too

Being wary of speciesism

Experimenting on Animals for the Greater Good

The main rationale for experimenting: Harming animals saves humans

Debating animal testing of consumer products

To Eat or Not to Eat Animals: That’s the Question

Understanding why ethical vegetarians don’t eat meat

Responding to ethical vegetarians: Omnivores strike back!

Looking at factory farming’s effects on animals

Vegans: Eliminating animal servitude

Targeting the ethics of hunting animals

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 18: Ten Famous Ethicists and Their Theories

Confucius: Nurturing Virtue in Good Relationships

Plato: Living Justly through Balance

Aristotle: Making Virtue Ethics a Habit

Hobbes: Beginning Contract Theory

Hume: Eyeing the Importance of Moral Feelings

Kant: Being Ethical Makes You Free

Mill: Maximizing Utility Matters Most

Nietzsche: Connecting Morals and Power

Rawls: Looking Out for the Least Well-Off

Singer: Speaking Out for Modern Utilitarianism

Chapter 19: Ten Ethical Dilemmas Likely to Arise in the Future

Making Designer Genes

Creating Thinking Machines

Managing the Growing Population of Planet Earth

Dealing with Dramatic Increases in the Human Lifespan

Fighting Wars Using Synthetic Soldiers

Exploring and Terraforming New Worlds

Using Computers to Manage Vital Services

Maintaining Your Authenticity with Social Networking

Integrating Humans with Networked Computers

Being Immersed in Virtual Worlds

Ethics For Dummies®

by Christopher Panza, PhD, and Adam Potthast, PhD

Ethics professors at Drury University and Missouri University of Science and Technology

Ethics For Dummies®

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Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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About the Authors

Chris Panza was born and raised in New York. After trying unsuccessfully for many years to figure out how to live the right way, he enrolled at the State University of New York at Purchase, where he figured philosophy and literature degrees would help. It provided hints, but no answers. After college, he spent a few more years working in business and hammering away at the question of value. More hints, but no answers. Finally, he attended the University of Connecticut and earned a master’s degree and doctoral degree (in philosophy) hoping to finally learn how to live a good and ethical life. More degrees and more hints, but no definite answers. What to do? Well, with all these degrees you may not know exactly how to live ethically, but you can at least make a living teaching. So he did that, and he has been an associate professor of philosophy at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, since 2002.

Chris received the university’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2004, probably for getting a lot of students to join him on the endless quest to understanding what it means to live a good life. In addition to his teaching interests in ethics, Chris also teaches classes in existentialism (and is the co-author of Existentialism For Dummies), Confucianism, free will, metaphysics, and modern philosophy. Chris is married to his wife Christie, a social psychologist, and has two beautiful little girls: a 4-year-old named Parker and an almost 2-year-old named Paige. Chris is hoping to one day infect his own children with the same desire to investigate life that has long invigorated him and as a result made his life a continuously interesting and mysterious experience.

Adam Potthast was born and raised in Missouri. After directors stopped casting him in plays, he had no choice but to fall into the seedy underbelly of intellectualism that thrived at Truman State in Kirksville, Missouri. Trying to do the hardest thing he knew he could do well (and not being able to do physics and music very well), he found philosophy. He went on to get his masters and PhD in philosophy at the University of Connecticut where he discovered that far from all being a matter of opinion, ethics was stimulating and a lot of fun.

He’s currently an assistant professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, Missouri, where — when he’s not pestering his engineering colleagues about the value of ethical thinking — he teaches courses in virtually every kind of ethics, political philosophy, and the meaning of life. His research interests are practical and professional ethics, the connections between ethics and personal identity, and the apparently very high tolerance people have for listening to him carry on about the connection between freedom and morality in Kantian ethics. When he’s not working, he enjoys travel, hiking, riding bikes, subjecting friends to culinary experiments, and Canadian independent music. Go places!

Dedication

From Chris: I would like to dedicate this book first and foremost to my wife, Christie, and to my two daughters, Parker and Paige, who are the lights of my life. I also would like to dedicate the book to my mom, Janice, who has been a source of strength and inspiration for me my whole life, and to my dad, Tony, for his quirky sense of humor and great cooking. Lastly, to my sister, Amy, and her husband, Jay, not to mention my young nephew, Aiden.

From Adam: This book is dedicated first to my parents, Ferd and Joan. I’m forever grateful to them for having the good sense to leave behind vows of chastity, take up with one another, and later teach me the power of words, courage, and kindness. Second, to my brother, David, whose creativity and perseverance is always an inspiration. Finally, to my undergraduate advisor, Patricia Burton, and my graduate advisor, Joel Kupperman, who had the patience to put up with me learning to be a philosopher. I couldn’t have asked for better or more virtuous philosophical exemplars.

Authors' Acknowledgments

From Chris: My primary acknowledgement is to my wife, Christie, and my daughters, Parker and Paige. They all had to endure months of me locked away in an office instead of being with the family. They have been more than understanding. I’d also like to thank Drury University for the sabbatical that partially opened up the time for writing this book. Lastly, and certainly not least, I’d like to thank my co-author, Adam. He’s been a great friend for many years, and he proved to be just as good a co-author. The book was easy and fun to write with him alongside all the way through.

From Adam:I’d like to thank my co-author, Chris, first of all, for being a good friend through the years, bringing me on board this project, and tolerating my idiosyncratic writing style and relationship with deadlines. I’d also like to thank my department chair, Dick Miller, for the philosophical companionship, jokes, and institutional support he’s joyfully given through the years and during the drafting of this book. To my friends, current and former students, and colleagues around the world: You’ve been an unforgettable source of support through the whole project, and I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to the DJs at KMNR, KDHX, WMBR, CBC Radio 3, and Erika for keeping me in good music throughout the process. Thanks to the Giddy Goat, Keen Bean, and Meshuggah Café for renting me a place to write for the unreasonably low price of a cup of coffee (and in the case of Jo’s back porch, not even that). And finally, we couldn’t have written such a good book without the helpful suggestions and support of our editors Chad, Jessica, and Michael.

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Introduction

As the authors of this book, we feel strongly about the importance of ethics. Ethics marks off one of the most fascinating — and difficult — aspects of human life. Whether you’re a university student who’s taking an ethics course and needs some of the theories clarified or you’re someone who wants to live a life that’s more aligned with what’s right, Ethics For Dummies is just for you. Philosophy courses on ethics can be pretty stuffy material, but this book tries to cut to the chase and gives you what you need to know while making you smile at the same time.

To take ethics — or the investigation of what ought to be — seriously is to engage head on with the question of value. Of course, it also involves jumping into the thick controversy that involves debating what you ought to do and why. Taking ethics on involves applying different answers about what you ought to do to the world you live in. That means thinking about how to interact with other people, animals, perhaps your colleagues at work, and the environment. By the time you’re done reading this book, ethics will no longer be mystifying. It will seem like familiar territory.

About This Book

We — your humble authors — are both university professors. Each of us regularly teaches courses on ethics at our colleges. As a result, we’re well acquainted with how difficult and frustrating a subject ethics can be for students or other people who know little about the subject and are approaching it for the first time. We were there once too.

Our first-hand knowledge of the difficulties of teaching ethics puts us in a good position to write this book for you. We’ve laid out the book in a particular way that helps you get a better grasp on the many topics in ethics that you’re likely to study. Basically, we want to translate these sometimes confusing topics into plain English. No matter whether you’re taking a college ethics course and need some clarification or you’re just taking an interest in this field, we hope our explanations help you grasp the main concepts.

Most importantly, we’ve arranged this book so you don’t need to read it straight through like a novel. Feel free to jump around. You can open up the book wherever you want and start reading. It’s written so you can understand any part of it without needing to read the others. At the same time, the book also is arranged in a way that makes it worthwhile to read straight through from start to end. Ethics has many side topics and points that you don’t need to fuss with right now, so we give you just the need-to-know information on a topic.

We’ve also written this book with humor foremost in our minds. Philosophy and ethics can sometimes be dry, so we’ve done our best to make sure that our book doesn’t come across that way. We want Ethics For Dummies to be informative and helpful, but we also want it to be enjoyable to read.

Conventions Used in This Book

In our book, we’ve used a few conventions to help make the text more accessible and easier to read. Consider the following:

We boldface the action parts of numbered steps and the keywords of bulleted lists.

We italicize new terms and provide definitions of them so you’re always in the loop.

We also include some conventions that are strictly ethics related. We tend to gloss over some things in this book in order to get the basic points across and not make things too complicated. So instead of constantly using caveats and pointing your attention to fine print or footnotes at the end of the book, keep in mind the following conventions we use:

The uses of terms like morality and ethics are typically seen as separate in ethics. We use them interchangeably. To see why, head to Chapter 1.

We wrote this book as if you believe it’s important to want to be a better and more ethical person. This is a bit of a slide toward virtue ethics, but studying ethics won’t do you much good unless you actually try to implement what you’ve learned.

We believe that people of all faiths and spiritual belief systems — even those without faith or spiritual beliefs — can join together in a critical discussion of ethical issues and their foundations. So we didn’t write this book for one group or another. Everyone can benefit from reading it.

Occasionally it may seem like we’re being preachy or ruling things out too quickly. We usually do this because we’re trying to challenge you, not because we’re holier-than-thou philosophers. And sometimes it’s because we can only stick so many pages between the covers. Trust us, what’s in these pages are just the tips of argumentative icebergs.

What You’re Not to Read

Because we poured our hearts and souls into this book, we’d love for you to read everything word for word. However, we also know that as a student of ethics, you’re likely short on time and want to get what you need and get out. For that reason, we want to tell you upfront that you don’t need to read the shaded sidebars that pop up throughout the chapters in this book. They’re super-interesting tidbits that we’re sure you’ll enjoy, and they’ll make you more fun at parties, but they aren’t necessary to be an ethics whiz kid. It’s not unethical to skip them!

Foolish Assumptions

As authors, it’s difficult not to make some basic assumptions about the subject you’re writing about — and, more importantly, about the readers you’re communicating to. So before we started writing, we made the following assumptions, thinking that at least one or more of them were likely true of you:

You may be a student in an undergraduate ethics course and need some clarification of the sometimes confusing topics you’re studying. If so, look through the table of contents. You’ll notice that it’s arranged in a way that makes course referencing easy: You’ll see theories, applications, and starting questions. Typically, university syllabi are organized in a similar manner.

You don’t know too much about the subject, but you have an informal interest in ethics. We’ve tried our best to argue as strongly as we can for all the theories within this book — without taking any sides. It’s important that you make up your own mind about what’s right, so we’ve tried to stay balanced. (However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have our favorite theories. In fact, we don’t agree about which ethical theory is the best one!)

You’re annoyed by some of the crazy stuff going on in the world today and want a way to think about it. If you need a more sophisticated language through which you can express that frustration, we provide it for you.

How This Book Is Organized

If you’d like to get a feel for how we organized this book, the following sections explain the overall aims of each particular part. This overview may help you to get a feel for where you’d like to get started.

Part I: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please

Ethics is a big field, so there’s a whole lot to talk about! However, because the landscape is so vast, you first need to get your footing by looking at some basic issues and questions that should be addressed before you dive into the more complex stuff. We provide that footing in Part I, looking at the basic question, “What is ethics?” We examine some basic vocabulary and distinctions and ask why being ethical is such a big deal. Finally, we move into a discussion of relativism, which examines whether ethics is true, justified, or just a matter of opinion.

Part II: Uncovering the Roots of Ethics

It’s difficult to avoid the fact that when people think of ethics, they want to know whether it fits into a larger context. With this question in mind, in this part we devote chapters to thinking about how ethics and human nature may be related and to the possible connections and misconnections between ethics and God and ethics and science. We finish the part with a chapter that hashes out the three famous challenges to the idea of ethics.

Part III: Surveying Key Ethical Theories

This part is the meat of the book. We dedicate chapters to each of the central theories in ethics. We start off with what we think of as the “big three” — virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism. These theories usually are the three main contenders for most important theory, but no one can agree on which of them gets the title. We then move to three other approaches that are popular: ethics as a kind of contract, ethics as the application of the Golden Rule (yes, the same one you were taught as a kid!), and the feminist criticism that ethics should center more on relationships.

Part IV: Applying Ethics to Real Life

It’s nice to get knee deep in theory and figure out what it’s implying, but at some point you really do need to do some work on the ground. In this part, we look at work that has been done in applied ethics. We devote chapters to the following topics: biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, professional ethics, human rights, sexual ethics, and animal ethics. If ethical application is your thing, you’ll get your fill here!

Part V: The Part of Tens

All For Dummies books have a Part of Tens, so we’re not about to rob you of one for this book. Here we list ten of the most popular writers on ethics, pointing out their most famous ethical works and the main ideas in them. We then list ten of the most gripping ethical dilemmas society will likely face in the future, including why they’ll prove so problematic down the road.

Icons Used in This Book

Every For Dummies book uses icons in the margins to identify and point out important text. We use the following icons in this book:

This icon calls your attention to items and explanations that are important to keep in mind when trying to decipher ethical theories.

When you see this icon, you’re alerted to one of those siren-and-red-light-blasting moments when you should beware of possible misunderstanding. This icon says to slow down and think more carefully through the section.

At times, some good juicy primary material from the authors helps to make a point clear. Or sometimes what they say is famous or just plain cool. When you see this icon, it draws your attention to the use of text from the original authors themselves.

This icon tells you when you’ve stumbled upon something strange or counterintuitive — usually assumptions or beliefs that may require further thought.

This icon points out shortcuts and helpful hints that can assist you in figuring out the theory or argument presented.

Where to Go from Here

We’ve arranged this book in a way that makes it accessible for a lot of different purposes, and it can be read in different ways. If you’re just getting started with ethics, you may find it helpful to begin with Part I, which provides the basics. Or, if you want, jump to the table of contents and index to see what topics we include in the book. If you’re taking an ethics course that deals heavily with major ethical theories, go right to those and check them out. If you’re more interested in applied questions, thumb to Part IV and read up on one of the subjects that strikes your interest. There’s really no unethical wayto read this book, so use it in the way that makes most sense to you and your situation!

Part I

Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please

In this part . . .

Ethics is the most practical kind of philosophy, but that doesn’t mean that all you need to study it is basic common sense. You also need to know some of the lingo and some of the basic assumptions about the field. That’s what this part of the book is about.

Here we discuss some basic distinctions, and then we cordially invite you to ask why you should care about ethics in the first place. Because you also need to avoid some really important pitfalls in your ethical thinking, such as the idea that ethics is really just a matter of opinion, we devote a chapter to this topic. Getting away from this idea is important so you can appreciate the rich debates about ethics in the rest of the book and what they have to do with living an ethical life.

Chapter 1

Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care?

In This Chapter

Surveying fundamental ethical definitions and distinctions you need to know

Understanding why you should be ethical

Determining what’s involved in making a commitment to an ethical life

You probably wouldn’t try to make a cake without ingredients, pots, and pans, right? Well the same goes for making a recipe for an ethical life. You have to know some things before you start cooking. And although living an ethical life isn’t always easy, the basic tools are easy to master.

This chapter starts with some basics regarding ethics to help you get a better grasp of the subject. We help you by clarifying some basic distinctions that quickly emerge in your study of ethics. We also explain why being ethical is important. We finish the chapter with a discussion of what’s involved in making a commitment to living an ethical life. Consider this chapter your jumping-off point into the wonderful world of ethics.

Knowing the Right Words: Ethical Vocabulary

Although ethics and morality are essential parts of human life, not many people understand how to talk about them. Good, evil, right, wrong, great, and bad: Who could possibly sort through all that mess? Getting a firm grasp on these words and distinctions is important so you don’t fall into any misunderstandings later. The following sections explain important ethics vocabulary words and how to use them.

Focusing on should and ought

Fortunately you don’t really need to sort through lots of different terms. In fact, most of ethics and morality can be boiled down to one simple concept that can be expressed using the words should and ought. “Good” or “right” actions are actions that you ought to do. “Bad” character traits are ones you should try not to develop. “Evil” traits are those you should really try to avoid. Isn’t it cool how just these two words can unify so many ethical concepts?

To clearly understand what ethics means in terms of should and ought, consider this example: Most people are comfortable considering what science is about. Science tries to figure out the way the world is, was, or will be. The following are all scientific questions (some easier to answer than others):

What will be the effect of detonating a nuclear weapon in a major city?

What led to the extinction of the dodo bird?

Is there a beer in the fridge?

Ethics isn’t just about the way the world is. Sure, you have to know a lot about how the world works to answer ethical questions, but ethics is about something a little more ambitious than science. It’s about the way the world ought to be or should be. Focusing on how the world should be gives ethical questions a different nature altogether. Ethical questions look more like this:

Ought we to be detonating nuclear weapons around large numbers of people?

Should endangered species be protected from human hunting?

Should I really have that last beer in the fridge before driving home?

Lots of people miss the point about ethical discussions because they assume “ought” questions are really “is” questions. How many times have you heard someone defend his unjust actions by saying “Yeah, well, life isn’t fair?” That person may be right about how the world works, but that doesn’t mean it should continue to work that way. And in all likelihood, he’s contributing to keeping the world in a way that it ought not to be. The world may not be fair, but it should be.

You probably have a big question dawning on you right about now: How do I find out what I ought to do? It’s a great question; it’s the subject of the rest of this book.

Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality

Although the terms ethics and morality have two different definitions in the dictionary, throughout this book we use them interchangeably and don’t make any effort to distinguish between the ideas. The truth is that you can argue all day about whether something is immoral or just unethical, whether someone has ethics but no morals, or whether ethics is about society but morality is about you.

The reason these arguments don’t go anywhere is that in the end, both ethics and morality are actually about the same: What you ought to be doing with your life. If it’s true that an act is immoral, then you ought not to do it. The situation doesn’t change if the act is unethical instead. It’s still something you ought not to do.

“But wait!” you may say. “Ethics and morality can’t be the same thing. Something can be unethical but still moral.” Some people think, for instance, that Robin Hood’s stealing to feed the poor was unethical but still moral. That thought may be true — we’re not saying that words don’t get used in that way. But in the end, what do you really want to know about Robin Hood? You want to know whether he ought to have been doing what he did. Ditto with something that seems immoral but may still be ethical, like selling goods at hugely inflated prices. If ethics and morality say different things, you need to find out what the relationship between you and your customers should be and how you should act, feel, and think toward them based on that relationship.

So, seriously, don’t worry about the difference between ethics and morality. Your ethical conversations will make a lot more progress if you just concentrate on the “oughtiness” of things. Professional philosophers don’t bother distinguishing between the two lots of the time, so you shouldn’t either.

Putting law in its proper place

Even though you don’t need to differentiate ethics and morality, you should distinguish between the concepts of ethics (or morality) and legality. If you don’t, you may end up confusing the ethical thing to do with the legal thing to do. There’s some overlap between ethics and the law, but they aren’t always in line with one another. For example, consider speeding. Speeding is illegal, but that doesn’t mean it’s always unethical. It seems ethically acceptable to speed in order to get someone to the hospital for an emergency, for instance. You may still be punished according to the law, but that doesn’t automatically make your act unethical.

The law also sometimes permits people to do unethical things. Cheating on your partner is usually ethically wrong, for instance. But breaking romantic commitments isn’t typically illegal (and even where it is, laws against adultery aren’t usually enforced).

Should all unethical things be illegal? Probably not, but it’s worth noting that unless ethics and legality are separate concepts, it’s not even possible to ask that question. The law may be inspired by ethical standards, but in many cases it’s better not to make laws about unethical behaviors. People usually sort out these kinds of things on their own. Besides, it could simply be too expensive to enforce some laws. (Lying is usually unethical, but how full would prisons be if they had to hold all the liars in addition to the thieves, tax-cheats, murderers, and rapists?)

If ethics and legality were the same thing, all laws would be ethical, and all ethical acts would be permitted under the law. In other words, an unjust law couldn’t exist. But this thinking seems to be false. If, for example, Congress passed a law that all brown-haired people had to wear polka-dotted pants on Thursdays or go to prison, this law would be terribly unjust. But it could only be labeled unjust if an independent ethical standard existed against which laws can be evaluated. Because ethical standards can actually be used to judge laws, ethics and legality must be separate concepts.

Perhaps the best historical example of an unjust law would be the slavery of blacks in the South before the Civil War. Whether or not people knew it then (and it’s a fair bet they had some idea), by today’s standards this law is seen as deeply flawed and immoral. But without the separation between ethics/morality and legality, such justification wouldn’t be possible.

Requiring, forbidding, permitting: The most useful ethical vocabulary

Even when you know what ethics is, you still need a way of explaining your position on issues. Sure you can use words like “right,” “wrong,” “evil,” “bad,” “good,” and so on, but they’re not very precise. It’s best to be as precise as you can in ethical matters, because they’re hard enough to solve without confusing words.

The best vocabulary for classifying any position, action, or character trait is to put it one of three classes: “ethically required,” “ethically permitted,” and “ethically forbidden.” These three classifications fill the gaps left by simple distinctions between good/bad, right/wrong, and so on. (Keep in mind that because ethics and morality are one and the same, we could have just as easily used “morally” required, permitted, and forbidden. See the earlier section “Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality” for more information.)

Consider the ethical issue of capital punishment for murderers. People’s positions vary, but usually they think it’s either right or wrong. Those who think it’s wrong don’t have a difficult time making their point. They think people ought to be forbidden from performing capital punishment. But the crowd that thinks capital punishment is right has some explaining to do. “Right” could mean two different things that you have to disentangle.

It can mean that society is ethically required to kill all murderers, which would be a strangely absolutist view.

It also can mean that society is ethically permitted to kill some murderers for their crimes if the circumstances are awful enough. Most supporters of capital punishment hold this position.

Just using the term “right” can cause one to overlook the differences between these two conflicting positions.

Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical

During your studies of ethics, you probably have wondered about the most basic question of all: Why be ethical? Without an answer to this question, you don’t have a lot of reason to continue reading this book! So this section looks at the two basic responses to help you get ethically motivated.

Why be ethical 101: It pays off!

People often ask, “Why should I be ethical?” And there’s at least one answer that never seems to go out of style: Ethics can be in your self-interest. In other words, ethics pays off. In the real world, people tend to get annoyed when you steal their stuff, murder their friends, and cheat on them. As a consequence, they tend to do things like call the cops, try to murder you in return, or take your kids and move to Idaho. Things don’t look so rosy when you fail to be ethical at least on a basic level.

Although some ethical rules and practices may put a serious damper on a good party, by and large people who follow those rules tend to live in harmony with those around them. Doing so creates a certain amount of happiness. So if, for example, you demonstrate that you can be trusted with wealth, you benefit materially.

The ethical life also can pay off in other ways. Barring some bad luck along the way, ethical people often have less stress in their lives than unethical people. They don’t have to worry about the stress of hiding lies (or bodies!). Ethical people also seem capable of living happier, more fulfilled social lives. They even can develop much richer relationships with those around them because those people trust the ethical person to do what’s right — and not to throw them under a bus whenever it may be more profitable.

If you don’t believe us, consider the words that famous English philosopher Thomas Hobbes used to describe life where people hadn’t come together to cooperate in an ethical manner: “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes believed that choosing a sovereign to judge right from wrong allowed human beings to come out of that nasty and unwelcoming state in order to live together and create things. This arrangement would be much more in your self-interest than would living in the brutish state of nature. Refer to Chapter 9 for more on Hobbes.

Hobbes’s point also leads to an additional reason to be ethical: Even if your own life doesn’t fare particularly well by following ethical rules, some level of ethical behavior is necessary for having a cohesive society. By being ethical you contribute to that cohesiveness. And as Hobbes would be glad to point out, living in a cohesive society turns out to be much more beneficial to an individual than living in a culture of backstabbers and thieves.

So far in this section you’ve seen how ethics may be a benefit to you in this life. But some religions, particularly the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam promise benefits after death to those who follow the right ethical path. If that promise doesn’t get a religious person to be ethical (especially with the threat of hell hanging over her head when she isn’t), it’s difficult to see what would motivate such a person to be ethical at all.

Why be ethical 201: You’ll live a life of integrity

When answering the question of why being ethical is important, consider the possibility that some compelling reasons for being ethical have nothing to do with payoff. Living with integrity is the most important of those reasons. Ethics is required if you want to live a life of integrity, and it simply allows you to do what’s right. Lacking integrity, on the other hand, suggests a kind of cowardliness or weakness in one’s life. In our discussion, two features of integrity stand out:

Integrity involves a state of wholeness or completeness. This state of wholeness implies that when a person lacks integrity, that person lacks something that he should (as a self) have. We refer to this type as internal integrity. This type of integrity involves first having a strong sense of who you ought to be. It requires having a vision of your ideal self, and a strong conception of how a good life should be lived. You achieve internal integrity when the person you are right now matches the ideal sense of who you think you ought to be. You’re whole, and what you do isn’t in tension with what you think you ought to do, or how you ought to be.

Being able to compare your life to how you think you ought to live is a distinctively human activity. Dogs don’t sit around asking themselves what type of life they oughtto live and then bemoaning their lack of integrity when they fail to measure up. But you’re not a dog, and without integrity your life would look, well, animal-like. The importance of living in this kind of way outstrips concerns about ethics “paying off.”

Integrity includes the importance of commitment to living in accord with ethical principles, embodying ethical character, or performing ethical behaviors. This type is external integrity, which points to the need of making sure that the principles, character traits, or behaviors that compose your ideal way of living are the rightones. The only way to figure that out is to engage with the ethical theories we outline in this book and see whether your conceptions about what is right are ethically justified, and if not, the book provides the tools you need in order to make the appropriate adjustments.

In fact, this need for external integrity highlights a central component of being motivated to be ethical: It’s just right. Can’t that be compelling on its own? It may be nice if morality and ethics pay off (and they often do). However, getting away from the fact that ethics can be compelling in and of itself is difficult. If murdering small children is wrong, it shouldn’t matter whether it would pay to do otherwise.

Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life

In order to get your ethical life moving, you need to create an ethical life plan. Doing so is particularly important because making a commitment to being ethical is important. Of course, we realize that you may want to read this book just to discover the ins and outs about the theories, and if that’s your goal, this book can meet your needs. However, all the authors of the theories in this book would hope that as you read along you think a bit more about the importance of you living the ethical life. The following sections walk you through the actions you can take to start down the ethical path.

Taking stock: Know thyself

When trying to figure out how you ought to live your life in the future, start off with a solid understanding of where you are now. The two central components of this exercise involve identifying your current customary practices and ethical intuitions. In order to take stock of yourself, do the following:

Determine your mindfulness. Where you are now ethically requires what the Buddhists call mindfulness. A mindful person is one who’s aware at all times. A mindful person pays close attention to what he normally does, to how he feels in response to certain situations, and to how he feels about certain actions. A mindful person is sensitive to his own thought patterns and is acutely aware of the beliefs and intuitions that form the moral core of who he is.

Keep a record of your actions, thoughts, and routines for a week. Are you friendly with others? More distant? Do you eat meat (we talk about it in our animal ethics discussion in Chapter 17)? Do you tend to focus on what’s good about people or what’s bad? Do you tend to find abortion wrong (see the bioethics discussion in Chapter 12)? Does the contemporary debate on torture evoke strong feelings in you (jump to the human rights discussion in Chapter 15)? Do you find that you tell white lies when you think it’s appropriate? Do you think its okay to treat others in ways you yourself may not appreciate (head to Chapter 10 for a discussion of the Golden Rule)? Do you recycle (check out our description of environmental ethics in Chapter 13)? Are you lazy or a hard worker? Are you abusive or sensitive with subordinates at work (read up on professional ethics in Chapter 14)?

In each of these cases, think about whether you consider your practices to be obligatory, forbidden, or perhaps just plain permissible. Think about whether your thoughts match up to what’s ethically right. Being critical is important here, because building an ethical life plan is serious business. You need to know what you do, what you think, and how you ethically feel about things.

Identify what your moral intuitions are. Identifying your intuitions and beliefs is important because they form your moral core. They form the basic value-based glue that holds you together. So know more about your core by asking yourself some questions: When you think of the death penalty, abortion, or being nice to others, do you find that you have strong intuitions about human rights (refer to Chapter 15), fetal rights, property rights, or human dignity (Kant is big on human dignity; see Chapter 8)? Note those intuitions. Is family important to you? Some virtue ethicists demand this (check out Chapter 6). Is it okay to cause unnecessary pain (see Chapter 7)? As you train yourself to be mindful about your intuitions regarding ethical value, you’ll get better at homing in on them and seeing what they are.

You may notice that some of your practices and core intuitions conflict. Don’t worry. It happens. To have internal integrity, you want to resolve those conflicts at some point, but at this early stage just be mindful that they exist. Eventually, your practices should flow from your moral core. If not, you’re living out of sync with ethics, or at least out of sync with your own conception of what ethics is.

Building your moral framework

Although it’s important to figure out where you are now (see the preceding section to find out how), you also want to realize that your current moral core could be ill-founded. Some of your moral intuitions could be all wrong. Figuring this out involves thinking more about ethical theories to see whether any frameworks agree with your own. It also requires criticizing your intuitions from the standpoint of opposing theories. Out of this engagement with the theories and their applications to different important issues and problems, you’re sure to emerge with a stronger moral core.

This book is well designed to help you study your moral framework. As you read through each of the theories (which you can find mostly in Parts II and III), you encounter a different perspective on what’s right and how to think about ethics. Be mindful of your intuitions and use them to identify the theory that most closely approximates your way of thinking. You may strongly identify with the core values proposed by one theory in particular. If so, try to understand that theory to the degree to which you can use it to really hone your intuitions. Building your moral framework requires serious work. In fact, it may even involve resisting some claims that your favorite theory makes, but that’s the price of taking ethics seriously.

Even if you have a favorite theory, don’t forget the others! Read through all these theories as a way of criticizing your way of conceptualizing what is right or good. Or just do it as a scholastic exercise, just to see which one has the best arguments. Take every theory seriously, and see each one as a worthy opponent. After all, those theories may have suggestions that will make you think, leading you to tweak your moral intuitions. When you dismiss claims or assumptions, make sure you can articulate why. All these theories have weak spots and criticisms that have been lodged against them. So even if you pick one as the best or strongest one, don’t shy away from trying to pick away at solving some of the biggest attacks against it.

Seeing where you need to go

Solidifying your moral intuitions and coming up with a solid moral core are only two parts of the journey in developing an ethical life plan. In addition to making ethical judgments, you have to go and do things! Figure out what your moral intuitions call upon you to do. They may require you to do things that you don’t currently do. They may even make demands on you to reject some of your old habits. Don’t complain: If ethics isn’t difficult, then it’s just not worth doing.

A real commitment to the ethical life isn’t contained in your head. You also need to fashion a life of action out of your choices. If, for instance, your chosen principles or character traits call for relieving suffering wherever possible, you may determine that you need to give up eating meat. A person with a true commitment to ethics tries to avoid making excuses for herself when things get tough. If you’re a utilitarian (see Chapter 7), meat eating is difficult to justify. So if you find utilitarianism to be the most similar to your way of thinking, don’t ignore the glaring problem that there’s a steak on your plate. You can’t opt out of applying ethics to your life when it gets difficult. Figure out who you need to be, and then make sure that you follow through, assuring that your life plan and actions reflect your core intuitions and values. There’s no other way to live ethically and to live with integrity. So get to it.

Making your own (piecemeal) moral theory

With the information in this chapter, you can construct your first “map” of your moral intuitions. This map is a simple form of moral theory in the form of a table. For each vertical column of the table, write in an issue or action that you have an ethical position on. Then put an X in the box to designate whether you believe it’s ethically required, permissible, or forbidden. For instance, take a look at the following table.

Eating meat

Working on the Sabbath

Refraining from killing people

Ethically required

X

Ethically permissible

X

Ethically forbidden

X

Try it yourself! Make a table with as many ethical issues as you can think of and try to figure out which box you think the X goes in. Then, after you’ve read more of this book, come back and see whether any of the theories you studied give you a more systematic way of deciding where the X goes.