Chapter 5
 What Can Ethics Teach Us?


We have looked at a number of issues in ethics, as well as some of the different positions people have adopted on these issues, and applied several of the ethical theories that have been developed in order to strengthen the arguments involved.

It may seem that we have dealt with a large number of ethical issues—we have!—but there are, of course, many more that we haven't explored. After considering this material, however, you should be much better equipped to give each ethical question that arises at work, at home, and in everyday life the critical examination and informed scrutiny needed to make a right decision.

In the following sections, we will briefly examine some further topics that are relevant for the study of ethics. Some of these topics emerge from a more general consideration of moral questions; others reinforce some of the results we have already seen. One thing we will continue to see is that the relationship between individual rights and society will be important in determining the scope and limits of those rights.
5.1
 Victimless Crimes


Smoking marijuana is often considered a victimless crime. Name some other examples of victimless crimes outside of the ones presented in this text.

The term "victimless crime" has been used to characterize a number of activities that some people find morally objectionable but that generally are thought to be the kinds of things people engage in voluntarily. If I choose to do something that may harm me, but no one else, should I be prevented from doing so? Or, if two people voluntarily engage in behavior that doesn't seem to harm any others, is there any compelling reason not to allow them to do so? The claim is then made that if there really isn't a victim, then there really isn't a crime. It is worth considering this a bit more closely, to determine if there are such things as victimless crimes, and, in turn, what the issues here reveal about the relationship among individuals, their rights, and society.

Standard examples of crimes said to be victimless are such things as use of marijuana and other illicit drugs, prostitution, public intoxication, ticket scalping, and public nudity. Motorcycle helmet laws and seat belt laws are often pointed to as involving such restrictions on the rights of citizens. After all, if someone chooses not to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, that person seems willing to risk whatever harm may result. Does this person have a right not to wear a helmet? If forced to do so, is that an illegitimate restriction of his or her right? In general, then, do people have the right to engage in activities, as individuals or with others, that may be either offensive to some, or even harmful to those who take part, as long as these activities are voluntary and consensual?
A Matter of Rights

You might be offended by your neighbor's choice of house color, but it might not necessarily be considered a crime or a violation of your rights. Can you think of a situation where you were offended but it wasn't a crime?

Clearly enough, it seems wrong to violate another person's rights. If a thief hits Joe over the head and takes his wallet, Joe's rights—not to be hit over the head and to keep his property—have been violated. This is an example of the harm principle, where a person suffers some sort of harm. In contrast is the offense principle; if a house across the street from mine is painted a hideous color of neon orange, it may offend me. The question is whether it offends me, and my neighbors, enough to be regarded as a crime, or a violation of the rights of those who live in the neighborhood. This contrast isn't always easy to draw. If the same person who has chosen to paint her house neon orange insists on playing heavy metal music throughout the night at a very high volume, I may be able to point to an actual harm: namely, my inability to sleep and the problems that causes for me at work, for instance. But what if she insists on decorating her house with signs, flags, and pictures that question, in an obscene and blasphemous way, my religion, and the religion of most of my neighbors: Does an actual harm need to be shown, or can the offensiveness here be sufficient for me to prevent her from so decorating her house?

The question of voluntariness is an important factor here. I may find pornography offensive, but I also recognize that those who choose to view it do so voluntarily. I have little choice in seeing my neighbor's house; the offense in question is imposed upon me, against my will. Nor can I prevent my children from being exposed to this offensive display on a daily basis.
Can a Crime Really Be Victimless?

Not all victimless crimes are as victimless as initially assumed. A prostitute, for example, may have no other means to feed her family. Can you think of other examples?

Some have argued that, on closer inspection, there are really few, if any, victimless crimes. Even though prostitution is a standard example of an agreement entered into by consenting adults, commentators insist that it is naïve to see this as a genuinely voluntary agreement. Many, if not most, prostitutes engage in this activity due to economic necessity, or by being forced to by others, and many, if not most, prostitutes have reported being physically harmed by their customers. These customers also may create victims in that they cheat on their spouses, and society as a whole may regard prostitution as itself offensive. As we can see, the notion of victimless crime may depend on how we choose to identify the potential victims involved. Similarly, a person may choose not to wear a seat belt, but if he or she is injured because of that choice, costs are potentially incurred by those who pay for the ambulance and emergency care that can result. In these cases, others have various kinds of harms imposed involuntarily upon them; in that sense, they are indirectly victims of such crimes. If the consequences of such activities always have the potential for creating such victims, then it becomes less clear that there are victimless crimes, or at least as many as we may have originally thought.

Here again, we see that an individual's rights and freedoms may have to be understood within a social context. It may not always be easy to draw the line between where my rights stop and yours begin. But if the exercise of my freedoms, in pursuing my goals, interferes with the exercise of your freedoms, in pursuing your goals, it seems that we must at least attempt to draw that line. As we will now see, philosophers have argued for some time about how to understand this connection between individuals, and the effect these connections have on the society in which we live.


5.2
 The Relationship Between Individual and Society


Even though the relationship between an individual—virtually all of whom live in communities with other individuals—and society as a whole is very complex, we can at least outline here a couple of different ways of looking at this relationship. These different approaches will then give us distinct perspectives on how to look at the moral rights people possess, helping us, in turn, make clear what is at stake in understanding moral problems.
Aristotle and the Polis

The first model of the relationship between individual and society may not be familiar, but it is quite ancient. Aristotle provides a clear statement of it in his Politics. He claims that "all humans are, by nature, political animals." As always with Aristotle, his language needs to be examined very closely. Here "by nature" indicates what might be called an "essential property," or a characteristic something must have in order to be that thing. For instance, a triangle has, by nature, three sides and three angles; without this essential property, a triangle wouldn't be a triangle. In the same way, Aristotle indicates that human beings by nature are "political animals"; in other words, if someone isn't a "political animal," he or she isn't really functioning as a human being. But what does "political animal" mean? ( Aristotle, Politics, vol. I.1253a2)

Some thinkers have described our society as an interconnected community in which we are dependent on one another. How do your actions affect someone in your neighborhood? In a different country?

The term "political animal," in contemporary terms, may suggest someone seriously involved in political activity: deal–making, campaigning, fundraising, and so on. This is not at all what Aristotle means. Rather, by "political" he means someone who lives in a polis, the term for Greek city–states, such as Athens, that structured the society of Aristotle's day. More generally, one is "political" in this sense if one lives with others in a community and, as a result, comes to depend on others and is depended upon by others. (The term translated as "animal" is zoon, from which English gets such words as "zoology"; thus, "animal" here is to be taken quite literally.) This aspect of dependence is crucial for this conception of society. Just as I depend on others to provide food, transportation, shelter, and many other things, others may depend upon me, for instance, to teach philosophy to their children, to buy that food, transportation, and shelter, and to pay my taxes. My activities, then, are deeply involved with the activities of the others in my community. Indeed, we may in some cases consider the planet as a whole to be our community: when I use electricity or gasoline, I am involved with those who produce coal or petroleum, and I may be affecting the climate of many of those around me. Multiplied by the number of people in the community, whether my immediate neighbors or all those living on the planet, these effects are pervasive and substantial.

As the poet John Donne put it, some eighteen centuries after Aristotle, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." For both Donne and Aristotle, the individual must be understood in social terms; the very notion of what a human being is will be informed by all the interpersonal relationships by which we identify ourselves. This isn't, perhaps, very surprising: consider how you identify yourself, and you will probably immediately think in terms of being a parent and/or a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a spouse, as well as in terms of the other relationships that provide your sense of self, be it religion, ethnicity, citizenship of a specific country, or all the other things human beings take to be important. On Aristotle's conception of society, we cannot eliminate these kinds of characteristics, for, to a large extent, they determine who we are.
Collection of Individuals

In contrast, a conception of society is provided by other thinkers who regard society as just a collection of individuals. Rather than beginning with society or the political community as a whole, this conception begins with the individual, and the sum–total of those individuals is what creates society. This model, naturally, emphasizes individual rights and responsibilities, and regards the rules and conventions of society as the result of agreements made among those individuals.

This model of society is perhaps more familiar than the previous one; it has had a great deal of importance in American ethical and political theory due to such important thinkers as John Locke, who in turn was an important influence on Thomas Jefferson and many of the Founding Fathers. The economist Adam Smith is perhaps the best representative of this view; for Smith, society is constituted by individuals pursuing their own interests. If I need a good or service, another person will find it in his or her self–interest to provide that good or service. We negotiate with each other, and, ideally, I will get what I want, as will the other person. Society is constructed out of countless such exchanges, and these exchanges are predicated upon the idea that we all act in our own self–interest. As Smith famously observed, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." In a certain sense, as we have seen, this kind of perspective is selfish, in that we are seeking our self–interest. Indeed, some writers have insisted that such selfishness is a "virtue," and generates the most efficient way resources can be utilized in order to create a prosperous society. In this context, "selfishness" is not necessarily the kind of greed that appears on canonical lists of the seven deadly sins; it is, rather, precisely the way rational human beings should act, and the way we should expect others to act toward us, at least within an economic context.
Seeking Balance

Some see society as a collection of individuals rather than a cohesive whole. What view do you lean more toward?

Of course, these two models are rarely seen in a pure form. No individual makes all of his or her decisions by determining the effect on the entire potential community affected; thus, it would seem a bit strange if, before going to the movies, I tried to calculate all the ramifications that my plans for the evening would have on those involved (from the person making the popcorn to the actors in the film)! At the same time, society probably doesn't, and probably could not, function if everyone solely sought his or her own self–interest; should I really ask myself, when holding the door for someone following me into a building, "What's in it for me?"

These two perspectives do provide some insight into the relationship between individuals and society. On the one hand, the social context provides a great deal of information, often neglected, about individual activities and the potential harms they may cause, particularly when "community" is interpreted broadly. On the other hand, individuals, when taken as fundamental, and thus when society is treated as the aggregation of all those individuals and their competing interests, may regard some restrictions on their rights as unfair and oppressive. When looking at ethics, and the rights and responsibilities involved, it may be a good idea to look at the specific question from both perspectives to gain a fuller understanding of what is at issue. Clearly, balancing the rights of the individual and of society will continue to be a source of argument and controversy.
5.3
 Implications of a Global Society


As noted in the previous section, some activities we take part in can affect large groups of people—not just those in our town, state, or country, or even those in other countries or across the world. When we consider the cumulative effects of human activities, we may discover that what we do has significant implications for many others.
Economy

Increasingly, due to technological developments in communication, transportation, and other aspects of society that contribute to interdependence, areas of the world that once had very little interaction are now often quite interdependent. A car may be built in Tennessee, but the parts may come from Mexico, the engineering may have been done in India, some of the financing of the plant may have been provided by China. The cars themselves may be sold in Europe and run on gasoline from Venezuela. This interdependence can have both positive and negative consequences, depending on whose perspective one adopts. For instance, a person getting a job in Indonesia may welcome the opportunity to make a relatively decent wage, while the person losing that job because it is being outsourced to Indonesia may look at the situation in an entirely different way.
Environment

Have you ever looked to see where your clothes are made? Clothing is one of many products that show how various countries depend on one another.

More than just economic relationships are involved in this global interdependence. Burning coal in the northern United States has been implicated in an increase of acid rain in Canada; the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union had implications for agricultural production and consumption in Finland, Sweden, and even the United Kingdom. There seems to be increasing evidence that carbon emissions, from factories and automobiles, is having an effect on the planet's climate and that such effects will become more pronounced with increased carbon emissions that will occur with the industrial development of India and China. The destruction of large parts of the Brazilian rainforest, it has also been suggested, has had implications for people living in communities far from Brazil; in addition to its effects on global climate, losing some of its rich ecological diversity may threaten certain options for the development of new plants and new pharmaceuticals.

Tracking the specific results of human behavior is hardly an exact science, but it is clear from these examples that economies and environments have components that are fundamentally interdependent between and among different countries. This interdependence, presumably, will increase with the growth of globalization, and thus is another factor that must be considered when evaluating moral behavior. If by my behavior I contribute to the pollution of a water system that affects others outside my immediate community, should I consider myself responsible, if only in my own small way, for having had a negative impact on those who depend on that water system?

Global interdependence can also include environmental actions. For example, deforestation and its effects on the water cycle in the Amazon rainforest can affect the climate as far away as North America.

As we have seen, different theories have been proposed to provide both rigor and systematicity to our investigations of moral problems. The deontologist requires that an act be done out of duty, or because it is right; the utilitarian will look at the consequences of a given act and, given the options available, will endorse the act that produces the greatest good for the greatest number. The increasing global dimension of our society doesn't alter the theory behind these responses any more than it fundamentally changes how we think of the role virtue plays in human flourishing. Nor does it necessarily alter the results we arrive at from such perspectives as ethical egoism, relativism, or emotivism. What it does require us to do is recognize that our perspective on who is involved in the human community may go well beyond our relatively narrow framework of ourselves or our family, town, or state. Rather, many of our decisions on what is right and wrong, particularly when multiplied by a large number of people making similar decisions, may have to factor in the much larger effects such decisions have on a planet that is becoming increasingly interdependent and interrelated.
5.4
 Learning from History


In earlier sections, we looked at various historical events, examining some of the moral, legal, and political issues involved. Thus, we explored the arguments that considered whether it was right for women to vote, right to inter Japanese Americans in camps against their will, and right to protect a person's right to property if that property was, in fact, a person (albeit a slave). The Spanish American philosopher George Santayana once famously observed, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Clearly enough, Santayana's remark is quite relevant for the kind of historical questions we have looked at. Even though we may have moved past an era where women cannot vote, citizens are rounded up solely on the basis of their ethnicity, and slavery is now regarded as morally abhorrent, similar questions will continue to arise. Seeing how ethical and legal arguments can be applied to historical questions can provide valuable insight into how our current debates can learn from earlier approaches (and mistakes) and can also continue to remind us not to forget this past and risk repeating it.

Returning briefly to the question of the Dred Scott decision, let us assume that even though the decision may have been technically justifiable in terms of property rights, it was immoral to allow one person to own another. Let us also assume that all members of our community generally share this view, and that the respect and dignity owed to all human beings prohibits chattel slavery. (These should be safe assumptions.) What can we learn from that history that is still relevant today?
What Makes Us Human?

Perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Dred Scott decision is the point already made: human beings deserve respect and deserve to be treated with dignity. But this immediately raises concerns about who is included in, and who is excluded from, the category of "human being." Slaves, at the time of the founding of the United States, were counted as "three–fifths" of a human being, a clear violation of this central claim of human dignity. We nevertheless continue to have debates about whether those at the extreme ends of the spectrum of human life "count" as human beings. For instance, does a person who has been declared to be in a persistent vegetative state, with no hope of recovery, retain rights? If so, what are those rights? Because this person cannot communicate, who serves as his or her representative? Do we have an obligation to keep this person alive, perpetually, or do we have an obligation to allow the person to die, presumably with dignity? Indeed, is a person whose brain shows no activity still a "person"? These are difficult questions, and the insight we can derive from such historical examples as we examined, as well as many other similar cases, can provide extremely useful information in trying to come to grips with these difficult moral questions.

While it is clear that people of different ethnic backgrounds can claim their basic rights as human beings, what about people in a vegetative state or on life support?

At the other end of life, debate has raged, and continues to rage, over the status and "personhood" of the fetus. Some argue that the fetus is a human being, with inherent dignity, at conception. Others argue that, especially in its earliest stages—whether a zygote or a blastocyst—the fetus is a clump of cells. It thus does not deserve the same degree of respect owed to other parties involved, specifically the mother carrying it. Still others insist that rights of the mother continue to outweigh those of a fetus in the third trimester, justifying late–term abortions if determined to be necessary or recommended by a physician. Yet others have attempted to identify different stages—such as quickening (being able to move on its own), sentience (being able to feel pain), or viability (being able to survive outside the womb)—wherein the fetus can be regarded as a human being. Clearly, this effort to characterize a fetus continues to be a profoundly controversial topic, but as we can see from history, much of this debate is informed by who is, and who isn't, regarded as "human," and what criteria we use to establish what is, and what isn't, human.
Beyond Humanity

Abortion and anti–abortion advocates argue viciously over when a fetus is considered a human and allowed its own rights.

Another lesson we can draw from history is that moral questions are not solely about human beings, but can also be about the environment in which humans live. It has been argued, for instance, that the devastation suffered by those who lived on Easter Island was due, in large part, to deforestation and other ways of treating the environment without regard to the consequences. It has also been argued that the catastrophic loss of life in the earthquake in Haiti was made considerably worse by the impact of extensive clear–cutting of forests, leading to extensive and dangerous landslides. From these, and many similar examples, we can see that how natural resources are used is highly relevant to our consideration of moral and ethical questions.

Learning from history can also be applied to environmentalism—learning from our mistakes so our children don't inherit bigger problems.

Finally, we should not forget that historical examples can serve as important reminders that we are historical figures, and that what we do may have an enormous impact on future generations. Many ethicists insist that those future generations should be taken into account in evaluating moral decisions insofar as we have an obligation to those generations to leave a planet that is at least inhabitable and, preferably, sustainable. Whether seen from a religious or secular standpoint, this perspective claims that we are stewards of the planet, and to violate our obligations to take care of it not only violates the duties of such stewardship but also burdens future generations with obligations to which they obviously did not consent.

In short, we can learn a lot from looking at how ethical decisions have been made in the past, both in understanding the interaction among humans as well as human interaction with their environment. Mistakes that have been made in the past can be extremely helpful reminders that we must do our best not just to avoid such mistakes in the future but also to understand the kind of reasoning that led to these mistakes, in hopes of improving our abilities to, if not avoid all such errors, to at least minimize those we are bound to make.


5.5
 Why Study Ethics?


As we saw earlier, Aristotle claimed that human beings, by nature, live in communities. He claimed, further, that a person separated from his or her community would be similar to a single, isolated checker piece. Just as a single checker piece isn't able to carry out its function (namely, participate with other pieces in a game of checkers), a single, isolated human being, not living in a community with others, is unable to live a genuine human life, which requires the interaction and interdependence a community, however small or large, provides. Whether we agree with Aristotle that living in a community is a necessary feature of human life, it does seem clear that the vast majority of us live in communities, and that we interact with others in wide range of ways. The question that relates politics and ethics, as well as relating the individual and society, is really this: What must human beings do in order to live together, and, especially, in order to flourish?

It is fundamental for us to be able to tell right from wrong to function properly in society.

Fundamentally, the basic question of ethics—what is right and wrong?—also informs our ability to live with each other in communities. Although the question seems simple enough, as we have seen, from gun ownership through employees' rights to immigration, the answers can be bewilderingly complex. But we shouldn't forget, at the same time, that we all possess some basic conception of right and wrong. Psychologists, such as Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, studied extensively the moral development of children and argued that children as young as four begin to develop a sense of morality (Kohlberg, 1984; Piaget, 1932). Others have even claimed that children are born with an innate sense of right and wrong. From the other direction, a traditional test of insanity is known in the law as the "M'Naghten rules," from an 1843 British court case. Simply put, the basic requirement, to determine if a person is sane, is whether that person can tell right from wrong. There are, naturally, ethical and legal issues involved in this determination, but the important philosophical implication should be clear: a fundamental indication of insanity is the inability to tell right from wrong. Indeed, we assume that those around us can draw this distinction, and we no doubt expect others to assume that about us. In general, whether from educational psychology, legal history, or plain common sense, our conception of the human being as rational is that human being's sense of morality.

Yet, as we have also seen, it is often not very easy to determine in a specific case the right thing to do. Whether trivial, such as deciding to lie to one's spouse about an upcoming surprise party, or tragic, such as determining what the appropriate treatment is for a person in a persistent vegetative state, we often confront ethical dilemmas, where no solution seems obviously correct.

Consider a very simple example. Steve is having supper with his family, and his son has recently gotten in trouble for lying to his mother. The phone rings, and Steve is confident that the person calling is the annoying neighbor who manages always to call at dinnertime and seems to talk forever. As his son goes to answer the phone, Steve considers whether he should have his son tell the neighbor that he isn't there. On the one hand, this would allow him to avoid talking to the neighbor and to continue enjoying his family dinner. But wouldn't it be a bit hypocritical, after having just lectured his son about why it was wrong to lie, to ask his son to lie?

Philosophers and others have worried about these questions of right and wrong for a very long time and have for an equally long time suggested various answers. Some, such as Aristotle, focused on the character of the person and recommended a harmonious balance of virtues, such as temperance and courage. Appropriately done, the virtuous person will know what the right thing to do is, and will do the right thing. Since Aristotle's day, two other approaches have become popular. The utilitarian looks at the various options one confronts, and argues that the choice that leaves the largest group better off than any other option will be the right thing to do. In contrast, the deontologist will not take into consideration the consequences of the act, but will focus on the rule involved, and the reason a given act is done. An act that is the right thing to do in this case would, then, be that which treats others with the respect and dignity due to them, and would be the sort of thing that anyone in the same situation should always do.

Some believe that children at a very early age develop a sense of morality. Can you think of a time when you were a child or you were with a child that you observed that?

Others, rather than trying to provide specific answers to ethical challenges, offer a different kind of approach. The ethical egoist insists that one should do what is in one's self–interest, whereas the ethical relativist argues that there is no "objective" sense of right or wrong and that different communities—and even different individuals—have their own sense of right and wrong. The emotivist takes an even more dismissive approach, claiming that when we call something "right" it just means we approve of it, and when we call something "wrong" it just means we don't.

As long as people live together in communities, questions will arise about doing the right thing and how we can identify what it is. We can see how important these questions are by considering how often, and how long, we spend talking to our children about them. The study of ethics offers the possibility of understanding the issues involved here with greater rigor and increased sophistication. Studying ethics allows us to dig a little deeper into the problem so that we can see what may be irrelevant to offering a solution to those problems. This, in turn, allows us to understand these questions and their solutions, with increased clarity, and to defend our answers with better reasons and better arguments. Through the study of ethics, we confront our moral challenges better equipped to understand them and to solve them. Thus, ethical questions will always confront us, and although we may not all agree on the solution, by studying ethics we are much better prepared to tackle the questions because we have developed the skills needed to understand them.
Ch 5
 Some Final Questions


   1. Some have argued that there really aren't such things as victimless crimes, pointing to the fact that innocent people may be harmed by those who participate in such activities as prostitution and drug use. Think of an activity that you would regard as not having such effects, and could truly be regarded as victimless. Is it possible that others might regard your example as still generating victims or cause others harm? Explain.
   2. The current pace of development in technology, and transportation, indicates that human beings will continue to become increasingly interdependent. If this is the case, then many decisions one society makes may have consequences for those in many other societies. Think of such a decision that might generate a significant dispute between societies. What approach should such societies, or countries, adopt in order to resolve, or at least minimize, such disputes?
   3. You are talking to a twelve–year–old girl one day, either your child or the daughter of a good friend. She discovers that you are taking a course in ethics, and asks, sincerely, "Why should one study ethics?" How would you answer her?

Weblinks

A discussion of prostitution as a victimless crime, with additional resources:
http://crime.about.com/od/prostitution/a/prostitution.htm

A large number of codes of ethics from around the world have been collected here:
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/WorldCodes/WorldCodes.html

A summary of the debate over immigration, with additional links:
http://immigration-usa.com/debate.html