Approaches to Ethical Thinking

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Approaches to Ethical Thinking

• Where have we been all semester?

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Approaches to Ethical Reasoning

• Principles
• Cases
• Virtues

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Possible sources of ethical principles

• Kantian ethics
• Utilitarian ethics
• Rights-based theories
• Religious ethics
• Feminist ethics (?)
• Communitarian ethics

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Kantian Ethics

• Core Idea We can use our reason to discern that
  some actions are wrong based on the nature of the
  action and apart from its practical consequences

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Utilitarianism

• Core Idea Ethics should be based on facts about
  the results of our actions upon human happiness
  and suffering in the real world

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Rights

• Has a legitimate role in ethical reasoning
• Grounded in basic theory of human flourishing
• Sets constraints on maximizing good
• Sets constraints on majority rule
• In our culture, too often used to stop, not
  pursue ethical dialogue

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Rights (cont.)

• Indicates the realm of stranger ethics
• Compare
• Childs right to an open future
• Childs right not to be abused or neglected

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Religious ethics

• Not explicitly addressed in class
• Argue No need to allow a concern for separation
  of church and state in pluralistic society to
  exclude religious ethics from public dialogue as
  a possible source of wisdom

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Feminist ethics

• Negative value
• Critique of ethical conclusions that were arrived
  at without hearing the voices of the less
  powerful or without considering the standpoint of
  all involved people
• Positive value
• Ethics of caring, relationships
• Role of emotion in ethics

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Communitarian ethics

• Can serve as important corrective to excessive
  reliance on individual rights, autonomy
• Reminds us that we are often most accurately
  described as most real as members of families
  and communities, not as isolated individuals

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Approaches to Ethical Reasoning

• Principles
• Cases
• Either-or or both-and?

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Abstract principles
Concrete specific judgments
PRINCIPLES
CASES
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Abstract principles
REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM
Concrete specific judgments
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Reflective Equilibrium

• Look for best overall fit
• Reason both from cases to principles and from
  principles to cases
• Sometimes a specific case judgment will seem
  better grounded, other times a principle will
• Be willing to revise ethical judgments based on
  new ideas and insights

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Snapshot vs. videotape

• What does it mean to do the right thing now?
• Rules, principles, case study
• What does it mean to live a morally good life?
• Virtue

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Virtue Approach

• Focus on questions of character and integrity
  (professionalism)
• In health care important values such as
  compassion and courage
• Because more self- than other-oriented, wont
  work as complete system of ethics

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A Better Understanding

• A S, p. 9
• Human life and behavior is exceedingly complex
• To be workable as a theory or model, must be
  simpler than real life
• Therefore, any one theory will have gaps and
  blind spots but may be good partial description
  of the moral life

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Blind Men and Elephant
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A Helpful Metaphor?

• Approach each ethical problem as a job
• Ethical theories are tools in your tool box which
  you bring to the work
• Part of job is picking the right tools to perform
  that job well