Carlton Vogt's

Enterprise Ethics

Volume 3 Number 20 July 22, 2005

What is 'ethics?'

And when do we have to pay attention to right and wrong

Readers ask interesting questions. "What do we mean by ethics?" is one. "Is ethics synonymous with altruism?" another wants to know. And another person states "I think that we need to decide first what it is that brings any particular concern into the realm of ethics." And he asks me to weigh in on the subject.

That's a pretty tall order, especially within the confines of a column, but I think I'll give it a shot and try to hit at least the salient points.

Ethics -- as you might have figured out -- is the branch of philosophy that studies the rightness and wrongness of actions. Some people try to draw a distinction between "ethics" and "morals" and have all sort of distinguishing characteristics. I use the two terms as synonymous and interchangeable.

Ethics, as a branch of study, can be subdivided into several categories. Some of these are what we call "normative," or they deal with actually telling us what to do. Normative ethics can either be practical -- rules for right and wrong -- or speculative, trying to understand how we arrive at the rules and principles we follow.

Non-normative ethics can include "descriptive ethics," trying to explain how certain people behave -- more properly a subset of anthropology -- or what we call "meta-ethics," which gets into such arcane areas as what we mean by "good" or "ought" and whether evaluations such as "not worse than" are transitive.

Why do we do this? Aristotle says we study ethics in order to "assign praise and blame." When we look at an action, it helps to have some organized framework with which we can evaluate the action and its consequences, to determine whether it was a proper action and whether the person acted well or poorly.

We also do it because it helps us in determining whether our actions, or proposed actions, are the right things to do in the circumstances. And we often do it in the abstract so that when called upon to act we don't have to spend a lot of time, which often isn't an available luxury, in trying to come up with the right answer.

I used to tell my students that some of the most common ethical failures aren't because people thought things through and then decided on a wrong course of action. Often, people fall short ethically because they never thought about it, had no framework, and were called upon to act in a situation that demanded an immediate response. Other times, lacking a framework, people who have the luxury of time simply have no mechanism with which to decide, and they just take a shot into the dark or fall victim to self-interest or an apparent good.

I often compare studying ethics to taking part in emergency drills. It may seem silly at the time, but when push comes to shove, it's much easier to make the right decision.

Does being ethical require us to be altruistic? I really don't know where that question comes from -- perhaps from a misunderstanding of what ethics demands or how we go about arriving at the right action.

Altruism can best be described as satisfying the interests of other people -- at the expense of our own interests. While that, in some cases, can be edifying, it doesn't seem to be ethically required as a matter of course. It would, in fact, seem to go beyond the demands of ethics.

Sometimes altruism could be considered, if not unethical, at least psychologically damaging. If we constantly subordinate our own interests to the interests of others, it could be considered unhealthy. Some may do it from a religious or clearly thought-out ethical motivation, which could be laudatory. Others, we call them co-dependents, could do it from a poor sense of self-worth and an inability to establish boundaries between themselves and others.

However, the confusion may come from a misunderstanding of what "interests" are and why they are important. And it may also come from the fact that ethics requires us to consider the interests of others when evaluating actions. "Considering," however, doesn't translate into "giving precedence to." And, not all interests are created equal.

I have an interest (a desire) in going to the baseball game tonight. It's hard to see where that interest creates any ethical demand on anyone -- except perhaps a restriction against unjustifiably denying me the right to go. If you let the air out of my tires simply to prevent me from going to the game, then you have done something ethically wrong. However, you don't need to drive me to the ballpark, buy me a ticket, or even give me the night off of work.

There are other "interests," however, that are more important and which come into play in doing ethical evaluations. These are what we call "welfare interests." They have nothing to do with the political-economic system we call "welfare."

"Welfare interests" are a vaguely defined set of core interests that make our lives go better. They transcend such temporary and passing interests as my wanting to go to the baseball game and focus more on those things that make my life worth living -- continued existence (or the persistence of the organism that is me), bodily integrity, financial security (not wealth, just freedom from extreme want), freedom from pain and disfigurement, the ability to make the important decisions affecting my life, and so forth.

Anything that interferes with these interests makes my life goes worse. And any other person's action that -- without sufficient justification -- diminishes these interests could be considered unethical.

And that, to respond to the third reader's statement above, is what brings something into the realm of "ethics." When evaluating whether an action has an ethical dimension, we need to consider and account for the interests of other people. And if an action has a potential adverse effect on the welfare interests of another person or persons, then our ethical evaluation needs to be more rigorous, and we need to account for those interests. Please notice that I said "account for" and not necessarily "satisfy."

I've talked before about what are called "self-regarding" and "other-regarding" actions. Self-regarding actions are those that have no effect, or no significant effect, on other people. Other-regarding actions are those that have such an effect.

Suppose I have some belief that requires me to arise every morning at 3 a.m. and go through religious exercises. That should present no problem. Whether I do so or not is between me and whoever it is who expects me to do this. It's pretty much a self-regarding action. If I fail to do it some morning, I may say bad things about myself, but certainly no one else, at least no one who doesn't share my belief, could say anything. It's pretty much none of their business.

Now, suppose I live in an apartment building, and also suppose that my 3 a.m. religious exercises involve drums, loud gongs, and vigorous dancing and chanting. My religious devotion has ceased to be self-regarding. It is now an other-regarding action, and I could be said to be violating the welfare interests of other people in the building. Their lives are going much worse as a result of my religious devotion.

Unfortunately, not all cases are as clear-cut. Sometimes, it's a tough call. As the reader pointed out, we are all at least indirectly connected to one another and our actions indirectly affect one another. That's true. But often the effect is only on transient or unimportant interests -- or the action we take is justified.

Often, people who want to make a case that something is unethical will claim that something affects them, when the connection is tenuous or non-existent. Suppose my neighbor sits on his back patio and smokes cigarettes. The cigarette smoke drifts off into the nearby woods and affects no one.

Someone may try to claim that the man is acting unethically because he will most likely develop smoking-related illnesses at an early age and place a burden on the health-care system. This, they will try to claim, affects them and therefore is an ethical illness.

It's patent nonsense, of course. The man may indeed develop health problems, but most of us engage in behaviors that will ultimately place a strain on the health-care system -- whether it's eating too many Wowie-Burgers, drinking too much beer, eating too many chocolates, or simply being a couch potato. So, it's not clear that this behavior is any more other-regarding than anyone else's. Now, if the man were smoking in a place where the second-hand smoke adversely affected people in their own homes, causing discomfort and health problems, we would have a different story.

I once spent a half hour in line waiting for last-minute bleacher seats for an important ballgame. The man in front of me went up to the window and ordered 80 tickets. The man behind the window said they only had 60 left. The guy in front of me took the 60, and the ticket seller, just like in the cartoons, slammed the window in my face. That certainly affected my interest in seeing the game. However, it wasn’t a welfare interest -- and the guy in front of me was perfectly justified in buying as many tickets as he could (even though I had a passing fantasy of finding his car and letting the air out of the tires).

Again, this is where the study of ethics comes in. It allows us to think, often in the abstract, about what interests are welfare interests and worthy of our consideration, and what sorts of actions might be considered justified or unjustified. In the heat of the moment or under the pressure of self-interest, we may not be able to think clearly. We could allow ourselves to be led astray by emotion, rather than defensible reasoning.

© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt