Study of Ethics Philosophy
Assignment 1
( 1 page) excluding the short narrated powerpoint slide
Ethical Dilemma Memoir
Describes an ethical dilemma you experienced. Your dilemma should be detailed, use description, dialogue, and should center on a specific ethical problem you faced. Create a short narrated PowerPoint slide (5 slides max) show that orally presents your ethical memoir.
Assignment 2( 1 page)
Helen’s Wisdom of Friends Dilemma
Helen wants to move to a new community, and she is applying for a job with a small retail establishment. She is confident that she is fully qualified and will be able to perform well if she gets the job. The employer, however, has advertised for someone with three years of retail experience, and Helen only has two-and-a-half years. She is considering whether to exaggerate slightly on her resume in order to improve her chances of getting the job.
Helen asks three friends to offer their advice on what she should do.
Henry says, “Go ahead and claim three-and-a-half years of experience; they’re going to be so happy with your work that by the time they check (if they ever do) it won’t matter.”
Jennifer says, “I’m sure you’ll arrive at the best decision on your own; I’ve always known you to be an honest person.”
George says, “It is never all right to lie, even when you are unlikely to get caught and it seems relatively harmless to do so.”
Let’s discuss some of the following questions:
Which of the Three Primary Schools of Ethics is each of Helen’s friends relying upon?
Can you imagine other people using the same approaches to arrive at different kinds of advice?
Do one of these Three Primary Schools of Ethics feel like the style you usually use already?
Lesson
Three Primary Schools
This week’s reading includes an article by Kidder called “Tough Choices.” The reading takes us to Three Primary Schools of Ethics, three ways of thinking ethically that will be reflected throughout the course. You need to master these Three Primary Schools right at the start.
Normative Ethics uses the three primary schools extensively. Each of the schools is aimed at a different purpose, but all share the role of helping ethicists to sort through confusing situations and then make the difficult decisions. There will be a great deal more about these three primary schools as the course moves ahead.
What is significant about these three schools is that each one presents a single criterion for making decisions, so by choosing to work with a given school, you also choose a criterion for evaluating the ethical dilemma facing you. Your choice to use a given type of ethical system may give you a single criterion or a tightly interconnected set, but the purpose is to bring clarity and structure to confusing situations.
Master the Three Primary Schools of Ethics
Deontological theories are rules-based and focus on duties and rights, the principles we choose to follow in making tough decisions and our most general expectations for human behavior: be fair to everyone involved, respect the basic dignity of human beings, and simply do the right thing in every situation. Working with deontological ethics asks you what principle you will follow in making tough decisions, a decision about valuing the principle even before you meet the decision itself.
Consequentialist theories are ends-based and emphasize the good that result from human actions: the pleasure, wealth, or happiness that might come about as a consequence of our individual actions or social policies. Outcome-specific methods of thought often imply ideas like, “The ends justify the means.” Working with consequentialist ethics asks of you what outcomes you wish to have achieved after making the decision.
Care-Based theories ask you to empathize with others by making decisions based on what you would wish done for yourself if in the same circumstances as the people who will be impacted by your decision. Care-based ethics calls you to ask how you would make a decision if you were to be acted upon by it – then to make that decision as it impacts another person.
Assignment 3 ( 1 page)
Study of Ethics Philosophy
3The study of Ethics and Philosophy is one which brings many different kinds of “thinkers” together. One person’s philosophy on Ethics is another person’s philosophy on Evil. We will be working this term on constructing personal ethical bases and understanding how Ethical Codes (both personal and professional) are created and followed.
Let’s discuss the differences and similarities between these views. To do this, let’s look at the role of right and wrong, laws which regulate behavior, principles vs. morality, and the role of ethics in our society.
To start out , answer some of these questions .Pick one of the following and respond to your classmates thoughts and views:
Do we need ethics if we have laws? Why or why not?
Is it ethical to change our own views of ethics based on the situation we are in?
Can we “legislate” ethics?
How does Aristotle’s “virtue ethics” (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. mirror your ethical view, or how is it different? ( see attached files)
Solution Preview
Question 1
Ethics is highly significant in our lives despite having laws to guide us what is wrong and what is right. Hence, there is an existing relationship between ethics and law since the laws will rely on ethical choices that have arisen in a given situation. Law will be applied once a criminal act has been committed, where the omission will be wrong. However, not every law will be morally right as asserted by Ruggiero since over time law will change.
(590 words)