Ethics summary
1 Introduction
Ethics:
The discipline of questioning whether we still agree with what is commonly accepted as right
and wrong in society. It is aporetic: which means that it does not provide answers
undecidability. Ethics criticizes morality; the whole of the current norms and values, i.e.
ideas about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in society.
The is-ought fallacy:
From the observation that something is the case, we think something ought to be the case.
For example: We say that there is injustice in society, but that does not mean there ought to be
injustice in society.
Ethics has to engage with these 3 concepts refer to society’s beliefs of right and wrong
Values: enduring beliefs about what makes a preferable existence
Norms: beliefs about what we find valuable and that tells us how we should act day-to-day
Principles: moral laws that we adhere to because they have a rational appeal
Relativism:
The application of different moral standards to different ethical problems
Rejected by most ethicists:
- It assumes that there are no basic goods that need to be protected in society.
- It uses a logic that is not able to offer compelling arguments against abuses.
,Ethical subjectivism:
The belief that individuals don’t need to justify their actions to others.
Ethical absolutism:
The belief that there is one conception of right and wrong that should hold for people at all
times.
Ethical imperialism:
Refers to a position that allows the proponents of one ethical position the right to criticize
others and to convince or coerce them to adopt their specific point of view.
Business ethics:
Studies good and bad in organizations. The central question has been how ethics could make
business more profitable.
2 Stakeholder Theory
Ed Freeman: “A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the
achievement of a corporation’s purpose. Stakeholders include employees, customers,
suppliers, stockholders, banks, environmentalists, governments and other groups who can
help or hurt the organization.”
Contrary views on stakeholder theory: Milton Friedman vs Ed Freeman
Milton Friedman:
- The only responsibility for a corporation is to increase its profits as much as possible.
Thus, the only stakeholders are the stockholders.
- Stakeholder theory is dangerous because it undermines democracy (the distribution of
wealth). This is because society has 2 tasks.
1. To create wealth.
2. To distribute wealth; normally done by politicians you can vote in or out, you cant
do that with entrepreneurs so it undermines democracy.
- Stakeholder theory is a form of socialism, because it does not take democracy
seriously. Friedman’s point can be seen as shareholder capitalism.
- Friedman thus argues that politicians and business people have different tasks, and it’s
best that they don’t interfere. Business create wealth and politicians distribute wealth.
Ed Freeman:
- Reasonable pluralism: we need a plural perspective on the relation between business
and society.
- Separation fallacy: the economy cannot be separated from all other domains of
society, it is influenced by and part of culture, ethics, and society etc. Therefore,
thinking that economy does not belong to the social is systematically wrong-headed.
- Friedman argues the opposite; the economy can be separated from other domains.
, - Freeman wants to link businesses and society, while Friedman wants to let businesses
do their own thing and not interfere with anything.
Philantro-capitalism
Hyper agents: big moneymakers like Bill Gates, who have the power to influence the world
because they have so much money.
Critique:
You cannot vote away these hyper agents, thus this philanthro-capitalist project is
undemocratic.
Mental models:
Show the ways companies and managers think about themselves, their products and
processes, their responsibility to stakeholders, and how they are perceived by outsiders in
different contexts.
Criticism stakeholder theory:
- Theoretical flaws
- Too much emphasis on powerful stakeholders
- Thinking is not acting
- Refusal to really think about ethical implications to others
Ontology:
What it means to be.
Emanuel Levinas:
Sensemaking in Western philosophy is simply the reduction of sense data to an individual’s
personal experience. So based on ontology, our understanding is a selfish totalization of our
own experience. Levinas makes a distinction between the “Other”, that which is not me or the
same as me, and the “Same”, that which is the same as me.
- According to Levinas it seems that stakeholder theory is only concerned with firms
instead of individuals.
Zygmunt Bauman:
Has the same ideas as Levinas about the Other and the responsibility that comes forth from
encounters with the Other. Dividing responsibility among many in institutional and
organizational projects remove the face-to-face encounter with the Other bureaucracies
therefore can’t respond to stakeholder needs.
Analysis of Levinas & Bauman reminds us that any confrontation with the Other explains the
infinite responsibilities we have toward each other and we can never escape this
accountability.
, 3 Moral decision making
Moral decision-making:
Is about questions like, are you allowed to lie to somebody to protect him or her from the truth
which might be too hard for him or her to consider?
- Consequentialism: means that people will make the decision that has the most
beneficial consequences for them. Also known as rational choice theory. One of the
most important types of consequentialism is utilitarianism(Jeremy Bentham):
decisions are considered good if they are useful. In other words, when the outcome of
an action is good, then the action itself is also good.
Jeremy Bentham:
He wanted to provide ethics and morality with a scientific basis. According to Bentham,
conflicts within a society were all about morality, so if we act more rational, there would be
no conflicts.
- 2 things that lead our decisions: pain and pleasure.
- Not about individual pain and pleasure, but as many people as possible; utility.
- Hedonistic calculus: is used to represent the virtuousness of a certain action in terms
of numbers. In other words, you give something a score to evaluate it (1 to 5)
- Bentham proposes a moral arithmetics: a scientific approach of morality moral
judgment should never be based on feeling of disgust.
John Stuart Mill:
Makes a distinction between quantity and quality pleasures. Bentham however did not allow
for this as then the hedonistic calculus wouldn’t work (because the items that you count
should be the same). There are some problems with Mill:
- Goods are ‘onvergelijkbaar’, there is no common measure for it.
- Better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
- He does state the goal is maximizing pleasurable outcomes for the greatest number of
people in a society.
Immanuel Kant:
Came up with the categorical imperative: for every action it is already decided if it’s good or
bad. If an action is good or bad depends on your intentions. 2 formulations categorical
imperative:
1. Never treat anyone as a means to an end
2 For something to be a moral law it must hold for all people at all times
Moral development theory (Lawrence Kohlberg):
There are 3 different stages in life that contribute to how you make moral decisions:
1. Pre-conventional (age 3-7): moral reasoning, based on reward and punishment.
2. Conventional (age 8-13): moral reasoning, based on external ethics like law and order.
3. Post-conventional (adulthood): moral reasoning, based on personal ethics.
Virtue ethics (Aristotle):
1 Introduction
Ethics:
The discipline of questioning whether we still agree with what is commonly accepted as right
and wrong in society. It is aporetic: which means that it does not provide answers
undecidability. Ethics criticizes morality; the whole of the current norms and values, i.e.
ideas about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in society.
The is-ought fallacy:
From the observation that something is the case, we think something ought to be the case.
For example: We say that there is injustice in society, but that does not mean there ought to be
injustice in society.
Ethics has to engage with these 3 concepts refer to society’s beliefs of right and wrong
Values: enduring beliefs about what makes a preferable existence
Norms: beliefs about what we find valuable and that tells us how we should act day-to-day
Principles: moral laws that we adhere to because they have a rational appeal
Relativism:
The application of different moral standards to different ethical problems
Rejected by most ethicists:
- It assumes that there are no basic goods that need to be protected in society.
- It uses a logic that is not able to offer compelling arguments against abuses.
,Ethical subjectivism:
The belief that individuals don’t need to justify their actions to others.
Ethical absolutism:
The belief that there is one conception of right and wrong that should hold for people at all
times.
Ethical imperialism:
Refers to a position that allows the proponents of one ethical position the right to criticize
others and to convince or coerce them to adopt their specific point of view.
Business ethics:
Studies good and bad in organizations. The central question has been how ethics could make
business more profitable.
2 Stakeholder Theory
Ed Freeman: “A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the
achievement of a corporation’s purpose. Stakeholders include employees, customers,
suppliers, stockholders, banks, environmentalists, governments and other groups who can
help or hurt the organization.”
Contrary views on stakeholder theory: Milton Friedman vs Ed Freeman
Milton Friedman:
- The only responsibility for a corporation is to increase its profits as much as possible.
Thus, the only stakeholders are the stockholders.
- Stakeholder theory is dangerous because it undermines democracy (the distribution of
wealth). This is because society has 2 tasks.
1. To create wealth.
2. To distribute wealth; normally done by politicians you can vote in or out, you cant
do that with entrepreneurs so it undermines democracy.
- Stakeholder theory is a form of socialism, because it does not take democracy
seriously. Friedman’s point can be seen as shareholder capitalism.
- Friedman thus argues that politicians and business people have different tasks, and it’s
best that they don’t interfere. Business create wealth and politicians distribute wealth.
Ed Freeman:
- Reasonable pluralism: we need a plural perspective on the relation between business
and society.
- Separation fallacy: the economy cannot be separated from all other domains of
society, it is influenced by and part of culture, ethics, and society etc. Therefore,
thinking that economy does not belong to the social is systematically wrong-headed.
- Friedman argues the opposite; the economy can be separated from other domains.
, - Freeman wants to link businesses and society, while Friedman wants to let businesses
do their own thing and not interfere with anything.
Philantro-capitalism
Hyper agents: big moneymakers like Bill Gates, who have the power to influence the world
because they have so much money.
Critique:
You cannot vote away these hyper agents, thus this philanthro-capitalist project is
undemocratic.
Mental models:
Show the ways companies and managers think about themselves, their products and
processes, their responsibility to stakeholders, and how they are perceived by outsiders in
different contexts.
Criticism stakeholder theory:
- Theoretical flaws
- Too much emphasis on powerful stakeholders
- Thinking is not acting
- Refusal to really think about ethical implications to others
Ontology:
What it means to be.
Emanuel Levinas:
Sensemaking in Western philosophy is simply the reduction of sense data to an individual’s
personal experience. So based on ontology, our understanding is a selfish totalization of our
own experience. Levinas makes a distinction between the “Other”, that which is not me or the
same as me, and the “Same”, that which is the same as me.
- According to Levinas it seems that stakeholder theory is only concerned with firms
instead of individuals.
Zygmunt Bauman:
Has the same ideas as Levinas about the Other and the responsibility that comes forth from
encounters with the Other. Dividing responsibility among many in institutional and
organizational projects remove the face-to-face encounter with the Other bureaucracies
therefore can’t respond to stakeholder needs.
Analysis of Levinas & Bauman reminds us that any confrontation with the Other explains the
infinite responsibilities we have toward each other and we can never escape this
accountability.
, 3 Moral decision making
Moral decision-making:
Is about questions like, are you allowed to lie to somebody to protect him or her from the truth
which might be too hard for him or her to consider?
- Consequentialism: means that people will make the decision that has the most
beneficial consequences for them. Also known as rational choice theory. One of the
most important types of consequentialism is utilitarianism(Jeremy Bentham):
decisions are considered good if they are useful. In other words, when the outcome of
an action is good, then the action itself is also good.
Jeremy Bentham:
He wanted to provide ethics and morality with a scientific basis. According to Bentham,
conflicts within a society were all about morality, so if we act more rational, there would be
no conflicts.
- 2 things that lead our decisions: pain and pleasure.
- Not about individual pain and pleasure, but as many people as possible; utility.
- Hedonistic calculus: is used to represent the virtuousness of a certain action in terms
of numbers. In other words, you give something a score to evaluate it (1 to 5)
- Bentham proposes a moral arithmetics: a scientific approach of morality moral
judgment should never be based on feeling of disgust.
John Stuart Mill:
Makes a distinction between quantity and quality pleasures. Bentham however did not allow
for this as then the hedonistic calculus wouldn’t work (because the items that you count
should be the same). There are some problems with Mill:
- Goods are ‘onvergelijkbaar’, there is no common measure for it.
- Better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
- He does state the goal is maximizing pleasurable outcomes for the greatest number of
people in a society.
Immanuel Kant:
Came up with the categorical imperative: for every action it is already decided if it’s good or
bad. If an action is good or bad depends on your intentions. 2 formulations categorical
imperative:
1. Never treat anyone as a means to an end
2 For something to be a moral law it must hold for all people at all times
Moral development theory (Lawrence Kohlberg):
There are 3 different stages in life that contribute to how you make moral decisions:
1. Pre-conventional (age 3-7): moral reasoning, based on reward and punishment.
2. Conventional (age 8-13): moral reasoning, based on external ethics like law and order.
3. Post-conventional (adulthood): moral reasoning, based on personal ethics.
Virtue ethics (Aristotle):
