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Volume 3 Number 1 January
7, 2005 |
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Paralysis by analysis Can we spend too much time on ethical decisions? Being ethical is fine, a
reader writes in response to my last column, but if you have to stop and
consider the ethical implications of every act, then you'll end up like the
caterpillar who can't walk any more because he's thinking too much about
which foot moves first. If you remember, I was
talking about Clarence Thomas' receiving more gifts -- including cash -- than
any other Supreme Court Justice. A law professor trying to pooh-pooh the
story claimed that we were being "over-ethicized." The reader is wrong on But let's suppose he
was, like the reader, talking about the paralyzing scrutiny of each and every
act we consider. That would, as the reader suggests, reduce us to standing
still and scratching our heads, trying to decide where to go next. It's an affliction that
would affect only those people who place themselves in the Utilitarian -- or
consequentialist -- mindset. For those who haven't been paying attention,
consequentialists (a term that includes Utilitarians) think that only those
actions are right that bring about the greatest amount of good over evil. Or,
in more populist terms, believe that "the end justifies the means." Critics of
Utilitarianism picked up on that a long time ago, and offered the same
objection. If you had to stop and consider the ethical impact of each and
every act, then we could bog ourselves down so much that we wouldn't act at
all, never mind ethically. Utilitarians, of course,
have an answer for everything. Their first answer for this objection was to
say that if stopping to evaluate the act would itself result in less good
being done, then we shouldn't stop to evaluate. That's an unpalatable
solution for a lot of reasons. Primary among those reasons is that if we
don't stop to consider morality, then there seems little point in considering
it at all. And then we end up some place we don't want to go. A second, much more
palatable solution was to create what they called "Rule
Utilitarianism," an approach that I find has a great deal of appeal.
Rule Utilitarianism says that we should live according to a set of rules, and
that the overall effect of the rules should bring about the greater amount of
good. People who believe this are called Rule Utilitarians to contrast them
to those who consider each act individually -- or Act Utilitarians. Key to Rule
Utilitarianism is that we evaluate the rules by their overall effect and not
by the effect of a rule in any one, particular circumstance. This means that
there may be one time or one instance in which the rule doesn't necessarily
give us a greater amount of good over evil, but over the long haul the rule
does. As an example, we don't
allow 16-year-old people to make contracts. There are a lot of good reasons
for this -- their lack of experience, their inability to foresee too far into
the future, and the fact that many 16-year-olds are easily manipulated. This
doesn't rule out the fact that we may occasionally encounter a precocious
16-year-old who would be more adept at making the necessary decisions than
many older people. The precociousness of a
single individual, however, doesn't render the rule silly or meaningless. The
rule is still a good rule. Society is well-served by not allowing youngsters
to enter into contracts before they're mature enough to do so. It's
impossible to make this decision on a case-by-case basis, so an overall rule
is the best approach. An interesting side-note
is that whenever people try to overturn a law or a rule, they bring in the
exceptional case -- the one that makes the law look silly -- and try to argue
that this means the law or rule should be abolished. These are the exceptions
that make the evening news and get the sound bites. What these people, and
the media, fail to mention is the overwhelming percentage of cases in which
the law works perfectly well in furthering the aims of society. Deontologists, those who
believe that ethical actions should be dictated by rules or duties, don't run
as much of a risk of "paralysis by analysis," because they're
already operating from a rule-based approach. However, no matter which
theory you subscribe to -- even Act Utilitarianism -- I don't think we run
the danger of paralysis in saying that Supreme Court Justices shouldn't be
taking envelopes full of cash from people who aren't close relatives. I can't
think of any job, whether in the public or private sector, where this would
be tolerated. If you hear of one, let me know. |
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© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |