Wade L. Robison - Practical and Professional Ethics

Practical and Professional Ethics

This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

Practical and Professional Ethics

Key Concepts

Wade L. Robison

This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright Wade L. Robison, 2021

Wade L. Robison has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design by Louise Dugdale

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robison, Wade L., author.

Title: Practical and professional ethics : key concepts / Wade L. Robison.

Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021000341 (print) | LCCN 2021000342 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781350226081 (pb) | ISBN 9781350226074 (hb) |

ISBN 9781350226098 (epdf) | ISBN 9781350226104 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Professional ethics.

Classification: LCC BJ1725 .R63 2021 (print) |

LCC BJ1725 (ebook) | DDC 174dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000341

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000342

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-2607-4

PB: 978-1-3502-2608-1

ePDF: 978-1-3502-2609-8

eBook: 978-1-3502-2610-4

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This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

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This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

Contents

This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

This ebook belongs to Amy Blake (aeb1624@rit.edu), purchased on 13/09/2021

I began this book without realizing it. Students in my ethics classes are required to write a significant paper on some ethical issue, preferably within their major, but I soon discovered I needed to do more than I had been doing to give them the conceptual background to recognize and assess ethical problems. I found the standard ways of thinking about ethical problems too spare and appealing to ethical theories unnecessary for students to make reasoned ethical judgments. They came to such judgments using fairly commonsensical principles we would be hard-pressed to deny.

I also found it helpful to introduce ethical problems by appealing to cases that arise for professionals. These are real cases culled from the news, my students, colleagues, and my own experience. They are topical, but typical of recurring problems. They can be rich in detail and difficulties, occasioning significant research and commentary as to what went wrong and so providing a great deal of background information to allow anyone not conversant with the professions involved to get a good grip on the ethical issues involved. Think of the Challenger or the Boeing 737 MAX. Some cases can also be bizarrely intriguingas with the lawyer who slept through a good part of his clients trial, or the surgeon who amputated the wrong leg. It is easy, that is, to find cases where we must ask, How on earth did that happen?leading us to try to figure that out.

The aim of this book is to present a method for identifying and assessing ethical problems, laying out what is needed for an understanding of the kinds of ethical problems we face every day and the method we are to pursue to resolve them when that is possible. That is why it is a book on practical and professional ethics, but there is no checklist to use. Instead we must get inside an ethical problem, as it were, to understand why there is a problem and so see how to resolve it if we can. This understanding of what we are required to do to identify and assess ethical problems is why we do not approach these cases with ethical tools already in hand. The point of using cases is to let them tell us what we need to understand and assess them. We will discover that we cannot understand some cases if we think all ethical problems are dilemmas, for example, or if we fail to take into account the points of view of all those involved.

What we gain from considering such cases is that the ethical problems professionals face are no different in kind from those we face in our ordinary lives and that the method we are to use to understand and assess them is exactly what we generally do as we go about our daily lives. Professionals do not face exotic kinds of ethical problems, and we have no need for special ethical theories to understand the ethical problems they face. In coming to understand and assess those problems, we gain the understanding we need to recognize and assess the ethical problems we face in our everyday lives.

I have come to see two common misunderstandings about ethics. One is that a persons intentions are all that matter. But the engineer didnt intend to cause harm does not get the engineer off the ethical hook. The engineer may have been negligent, for instance, or careless in calculating stresses. Even though the engineer had no intent to cause harm, we would still properly hold the engineer ethically at fault. The other common misunderstanding is that a persons moral beliefs have ethical weight, that we are to determine what we ought to do by consulting what we happen to believe is morally right rather than determining what is ethical. This particular contrast between the moral and the ethical has its place when we are examining whether the mores of a society are ethical, for instance, but it is a mistake to suppose that what we happen to believe is moral needs to be taken into account when deciding what is ethical. Otherwise we risk tainting our ethical judgments with false beliefs.

The book proceeds step-by-step, with each chapter introducing, in sequence, what we are to do, and not do, to recognize and resolve ethical problems. Some chapters may be read independently of what precedes them, but their point in helping the overall aim will be missed. The aim is to show how we are to recognize and, when we can, resolve ethical problems, and so the most useful exercise for readers is to find cases on their own and analyze and assess them. The method is straightforward: we begin by constructing arguments we can plausibly attribute to each of those involved in the case, and we then examine the premises for their plausibility and for their truth or falsity. We then back off and make the kind of judgment a judge makes after hearing the prosecution and the defense present their positions on an issue. The method is straightforward, but not necessarily easy, especially when we are a party to a case.