Notes on Practical Ethics

NOTES ON PRACTICAL ETHICS

1st Seminar: Demystifying Ethics

P

By

Professor Ian E Thompson

Principal Consultant with Corporate Ethical Services:

28 Links Street, Musselburgh, EH21 6JL, Scotland

Telephone: 0131 665 46741 — Email:

Demystification of Ethics

Unethical conduct and corruption in public life has been a constant focus of the mass media in recent years — whether it be Politicians fiddling their expenses claims, Stockbrokers involved in insider dealing on the Stock Market, Banks manipulating the Libor inter-bank rate that affects our mortgages and savings, corruption in the Police and others interfering in the course of justice, and journalists involved in phone-tapping in search of a scoop. This has all served to create a sense of moral crisis in our society, in government, business and communal life. Public opinion surveys have given evidence of a growing loss of public confidence in politicians, journalists, church leaders, and professionals of all kinds to give moral leadership, and public concern about the lamentable lack of ethical standards in private and public life.

The knee-jerk response to this situation has been for people to react into negative and defensive postures in relation to the challenges facing us. There are constant calls for Royal Commissions of Enquiry, or for new laws with more rigorous methods of ‘Fraud Management’ and harsher sanctions against those who abuse their power and influence. At state level new laws and statutory controls have been introduced and new disciplinary bodies created, with wide-ranging powers but these have not allayed public anxiety that there is ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark.’While there have beenrepeated calls for new Codes of Ethics or Codes of Conduct to improvestandards public life, there is little evidence that such ‘top-down’ and juridical approaches work and only serve to sustain the illusion that something is being done to improve things.

Apart from a few outstanding individuals, moral philosophers have not provided leadership in this situation.Most academic philosophers have been content to engage themselves in meta-ethical analysis and debate about ethical theory, and generally have been conspicuous by their absence from participation in public life, practical ethics or social reform.

This sense of moral crisis would appear to be connected with a number of threatening global trends, affecting publc confidence that impact on individuals and states, restricting their freedom of manoeuvre:

• The global economic crisis, recession, and the funding crisis for governments and 'welfare states'
• Destabilization of the geo-political order, proxy wars causing major political/demographic effects
• New types of terrorism exploiting the digital media to publicise, suicide bombings, beheadings etc.
• The Third World debt crisis and its impact on global human development and world health
• World-wide concern about degradation of the environment and its sustainable future
• The devastating economic and social effects of the HIV/AIDS, and other pandemics.

Public anxiety and moral panic about these issues has put traditional morality under pressure and challenges our personal values and the assumptions about the adequacy of ethical and legal means to address these issues constructively. The real challenge is how to build moral communities at all levels of our society. This means engaging people in the practical tasks of acquiring competence in individual and corporate values clarification, well-grounded ethical decision making and effective procedures for setting ethical policies to which people will be committed and apply in their daily work. These skills are essential to the exercise of our professional roles, effective participation in work-place teams, in corporate management, and responsible participation in the political ethics of inter-agencycollaboration and ultimately in national and international relations. Knowledge of ethical principles and study of ethical theory are not sufficient to change things. What we need is competency-based training in the core skills in practical ethics. As Aristotle observed over two thousand years ago: “Ethics is a practical science!”

THE PRACTICAL NATURE OF ETHICS

It is important to demystify ethics by restating four fundamental theses about ethics — presuppositions that are fundamental to most of the great religions and both Western and Oriental cultures and philosophy:-

• Ethics is a social or communal not a private enterprise
• Ethics is about power relations - with power-sharing and preventing the abuse of power
• Ethics is a practical, skills-based discipline applicable to the problems of everyday life.
• Ethics is the educational process of promoting moralcompetence and independence in people

We appear to be confronted with a stark choice [comparable to that facing people during the Great Depression and the run-up to the Second World War] namely, a choice between return to religious or nationalistic fundamentalism or rediscovery of faith in universal and fundamental moral principles, as the foundations for justice and peace and a willingness to work together to build moral community in our own society and the family of nations. Let’s not belittle the achievements of the United Nations and other international agencies, working to promote human development and world peace. They have achieved a great deal in my life-time. Instead of accepting the current divorce of ethics from politics we need to reaffirm that they should form a continuum. When Plato said that ‘The State is but Man writ large’ he was emphasising a fundamental truth(however we may disagree with some of his model Republic), namely that the fundamental ethical responsibility of the State is to promote human flourishing by encouraging us all to develop our talents and human potential, not simply for our own sake, but to promote the common good.

We must thus begin by de-mystifying ethics. Instead of adopting a predominantly negative and reactive approach, the real challenge is to address the basic ethical question: viz: "What are the essential conditions for human flourishing or well-being? We need to put ethics back in the public domain by restating the classical belief that ethics is fundamentally about justice and power-sharing. Unless the foundations of justice are in place, personal rights and choices are expensive luxuries, affordable only by the rich. Ethics is not just a private matter, but a quest for community. The concept of being part of a commonwealth is fundamental to the ethos of British society. Ethics is at its heart. It is the basis of our concern for others, and sense of duty to contribute from our common wealth to the commonweal.

In our classical tradition, ethics is concerned with 'the good'. This means developing consensus in our moral community about what constitutes the good of individuals and the common good, rather than focusing on crime, fraud or politicians' definitions of our 'common needs'. The first task of social ethics is to ensure that all of us are able to participate in the definition of our common social values, reasonable decision-making procedures and ethical policies, and support our systems for monitoring the common good. The second task is to work to ensure that we achieve our positive goals for individual and social well-being.

PRIVATISATION OF ETHICS

The chief obstacle to this enterprise has been a persistent tendency in the past century to'privatise' ethics. Ethics is confined to the sphere of personal and private living and comes to be dissociated from politics, economics, science and law. Alternatively ethics has become the domain of experts, religious authorities, the professions and politicians — and the power-struggles between them.

Both processes are associated with the attempt of increasingly powerful middle class groups to impose their values on society. These values are in particular, the ideals of individual autonomy, unrestricted competition, free enterprise economics and faith in technology to solve all our problems — summed up by Mrs Thatcher: “There is no such thing as society, only individuals and machinery of government!”

Privatised ethics and economic rationalism go together. The reduction of ethics to personal feelings and attitudes conveniently evacuates business itself of moral content. "Business is business" after all! Politics becomes a matter of "managing the economy" on the supposedly value-neutral "business criteria" of effectiveness and efficiency. This is, of course, a myth! It also distorts our whole European tradition of ethics as the collective exercise of responsibility for the common good!

A common view in our secularised modern world has been that ethics is an intensely private matter, concerned with one's personal feelings, attitudes and values. Of course our feelings, attitudes and personal values are important - particularly as they relate to our own life goals and striving for fulfilment, wellbeing and happiness. Such concern for our own fulfilment may be pursued in a selfish way, but self-concern is not necessarily selfish. Concern with being a fulfilled human being necessarily raises questions about the rights of other human beings.

One-sided emphasis on our personal feelings, attitudes and value choices can lead to the view that all ethical judgements are subjective or just matters of taste, and cannot be open to public scrutiny or debate. This view runs counter to both the moral traditions of East and West for these insist that ethics is a community enterprise, based on rational public debate, and the quest for social justice and fairness fundamental to that endeavour. Even the Judeo-Christian 'love ethic' is not based on how we feel about people, but about our mutual responsibility for one another in any moral community, and how we demonstrate care by our practical commitment to the well-being and fulfilment of other people, by what we do for them and with them.

Relegating ethics to the private sphere, of capricious and volatile feelings, tends to undermine confidence in rational debate and/or negotiation about our moral choices and value-judgements. It also has the serious consequence of driving a wedge between ethics and law, ethics and politics, ethics and business, ethics and science — where ethics is assumed to belong to the private sphere and law, politics, business and science to the public domain. Restating the principle, as old as Aristotle, that ethics is about power and power-sharing - whether in the domain of sexual politics, family life, education, business and professional life, or politics and inter-national relations - puts ethics back squarely in the public domain.

Our experience of being subjected to the moral authority of parents, teachers and religious figures, lends credence to the view that ethics, and moral codes, like the Ten Commandments, are handed down from above by God or his self-appointed agents, that they are absolute and set in stone. Such an approach tends to be absolutist, prescriptive and authoritarian. It infantilises people by denying them scope for the expression of their own moral autonomy through exercise of personal choice and responsibility.

If ethics is about how we negotiate and agree a set of common principles for the well-being of a community, and the skills we need to apply them, then ethics, as an human activity, must be about how we educate people for independence, to accept personal responsibility for what they do.

If all ethical choices and value-judgements are based simply on feelingsor hunches, 'the voice of conscience' or 'divine guidance' or ‘gut feeling’, then ethics cannot be the subject of rational investigation, practical problem solving, nor be a matter of intellectual knowledge and critical insight. Ethics is relegated to the sphere of the irrational or arbitrary personal caprice. By contrast, our tradition is that personal 'conscience' is an intellectual faculty (cum scientia) in which theoretical knowledge of principles and practical experience are combined and expressed in skilled application to the real problems of living.

An analogous difficulty arises if all moral difficulties are treated as 'dilemmas'. It has become fashionable to refer to every kind of moral difficulty or quandary as a ‘moral dilemma’. Strictly speaking a real moral dilemma involves an irresolvable conflict of duties, so to treat all moral difficulties or problems as irresolvable dilemmas encourages people to either avoid taking responsibility for making difficult decisions, or to treat the matter as simply a matter of personal judgement.

As a matter of fact only a very small proportion of moral issues turn out to be real dilemmas. To make difficult moral choices demands a particular kind of courage from us, willingness to take risks, and to accept personal responsibility for the consequences. All we can do is to choose the best available course of action, that causes least harm to others. To throw up our hands in despair or dodge making difficult choices, or to treat them as just a matter of arbitrary choice, shows lack of moral courage or understanding.

By far the greater proportion of ethical difficulties faced by professionals in everyday practice can be reframed as problems. Because we have methods for dealing with problems, we can generally find solutions to them, provided time is taken to look at them carefully. And we can develop greater competence by learning to apply systematic approaches to decision making about routine ethical problems.

However, some difficult dilemmas will always remain. Since there can be no general rules for dealing with dilemmas, it requires personal courage to tackle them. Faced with a crisis, which presents as a serious dilemma, we can only attempt to act as wisely as we can in the particular circumstances, and apply our principles to choose the best available solution [or the least harmful] and be prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences.

Moral decision making is not a mysterious or occult process. Exercising one’s ‘conscience’ involves applying our knowledge of moral principles and acquired experience of life to the interpretation of situations, and choice of the best known and available means to achieve good outcomes. Aristotle insists that ethics is a practical science, that is, it is not about grandstanding opinions, or getting lost in theoretical debate. Ethics is fundamentally about how we reach well-informed and justifiable decisions, so that we can act purposefully and responsibly and give a coherent account of how and why we undertook one particular course of action rather than another.

Aristotle did not speak of conscience but rather of ‘prudence’ or practical wisdom. In defining prudence he gave us the first logical account of sound moral reasoning. Prudence he suggests is the ability to apply universal moral principles to the demands of particular situations, using our knowledge, skills and past experience to make sound practical judgements about the best available means to achieve a good result or outcome. Here in analysing the nature of moral judgements and moral actions, Aristotle suggests that all human acts have the same basic structure, viz.: Causes -> Means -> Ends. If this is true, it is logical to suggest that in planning a course of action, making a rational decision, or acting in a purposeful way, then you should always:

Review the prevailing circumstances and the facts of the specific situation, including what principles and rules apply to the particular ‘ball-game’ in which you find yourself

Consider what practical options are available to you, what expertise, assistance or resources you need, and what means or methods you need to solve the presenting problem.

By anticipating the likely outcomes of each option, and having specific goals and realistic objectives it becomes possible for you to make an informed and responsible assessment of the likely outcome of your action.

There are many variants of problem-solving approaches to ethical decision-making that involve reviewing the factors involved in this basic Causes -> Means -> Ends structure of intentional acts. (C/f: ICAA [1997], Grace D & Cohen S [1998]App 1; & Seedhouse D [1988] Pt 3 Moral Reasoning). However we propose the following D.E.C.I.D.E. model, because it is a tried and tested method of systematic ethical decision-making.

The Causes -> Means -> Ends Structure of Human Acts

CAUSES
[Circumstances & Rules] / MEANS
[Agency and Methods] / ENDS
[Goals and Outcomes]
D / E / C / I / D / E
D-etermine the Facts / E-stablish the Rules / C-onsider Available Options / I-dentify Possible Outcomes / D-ecide on Action Plan / E-valuate the Results
Principilism or Deontological Ethics:
Focus: Ethical Principles, Legal and Moral Rights & Duties / Virtue Ethics / Prudential Ethics
Focus: Personal Competence & Institutional Integrity / Teleological/Utilitarian Ethics
Focus: Costs & Benefits, or Consequences & Efficiency

Similar problem-solving methods are widely used by health professionals, accountants, private and public sector managers, because it is necessary to take account of all three aspects {Causes, Means and Ends] of our moral actions and experience. The three classical types of ethical theory: Deontological, Axiological and Teleological can each be seen to emphasise just one aspect of the intentionality of human acts, and any adequate account of moral action must take account of the context and causal conditions giving rise to the need for action, and consideration of the available means for action and whether or not we are competent to act as required, and finally the ‘test of the pudding is in the eating’ — namely the outcomes of our action show whether or not we have succeeded in making a sound prudential judgement andshow whether or not we acted responsibly. To justify our actions to others, or before a court, we are normally required to given an account of how we formulated our action plan, to explain exactly what we did and how we would assess the success or failure of our action in reaching our objectives.

While on careful examinationmost ‘dilemmas’ turn out to be resolvable problems, some intractible dilemmas remain. Reframed as'problems' ethical quandaries or difficulties become amenable to the application of proven problem-solving methods; but what we require is practice in using these sound decision making methods and acquired confidence and competence in applying them to different situations. Faced with genuine dilemmas we cannot rely on our own knowledge or skills, or other people’s past experience. We may be tempted to ‘cop out’ and avoid making a decision, or if we must act, have to take courage and hope that informed by our best knowledge and experience we will act in such a way that the outcome is the best possible in the circumstances, or at least causes the least harm.