Ethical analysis

"We are dealing with no small thing, but with how we ought to live." (Socrates)

Ethics:

  1. What should we do?
  2. Why should we do it?
  3. How should we do it?

Social ethics critically evaluates the organization and structure of a society and examines its customary practices, beliefs, and values. It asks not what people do value, but what they should value. It is prescriptive, not descriptive.

Typical ethical arguments do one of two things:

  • appeal to abstract principles of justice (deontology) or
  • make an argument that actions or rules should be done because they will bring about good consequences or avoided because they will bring about bad consequences (utilitarianism).

Here is an example of a student weaving an ethical argument into an argument about dioxin contamination:

In the book Dying From Dioxin, we learn that dioxin is present in our bodies at levels that pose a significant risk to our health. The EPA has claimed that we should not be exposed to dioxin at levels of over 0.0006pg/kg/day (83). But even levels below that may cause cancer as the Ninth Report on Carcinogens from the National Toxicology Program shows. It is wrong for people in our society to be exposed to toxins that are harmful to our health.

I know I was never asked if I wanted to be endangered by medical waste incineration or by the bleaching of paper to make it white. I don't see what would be wrong with using tan paper instead of white. This contamination violates my rights as a member of this society. The ethical principle of informed consent says that people should not be hurt without being told about the harm that may come to them. The risks of living where they do, eating the food they choose to, or using bleached paper should be explained to them in a way they can understand. Otherwise we are not really freely choosing the lives we live because we are unknowingly being hurt in ways we might choose to avoid. Therefore, the dioxin contamination of our environment is wrong.

The Kodak Corporation is therefore wrong in refusing to correct its smokestack according to the safest technology available. . . .

 

Ethical reflections on Economic Integration and External Debt - A special forum on "Ethics" made a unique contribution to the Summit of the Peoples of the Americas held in Santiago de Chile in April of 1998. The forum evaluated the basic principles underpinning the global economic system according to universal human values. (Http://www.web.net/comfront/freekit_main_ethics.htm)

Students Promoting Environmental Equality in Chester: Students at Swarthmore list the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC. Also listed in Dying From Dioxin, Appendix D.

Bunyan Bryant's comments on environmental justice and poems. A site created by a professor at University of Michigan.

snycorva.cortland.edu/~russellk
Created by Kathryn Russell
 SUNY Cortland - Philosophy
Last modified on 3-19-01