Stimulating ethical thought

1. Learning Lunchbox
24 November 2014
Thinking through your ethical response
Adrian Evans
Faculty of Law

2. Context
• It’s hard to get students to identify a need for ethical
consciousness, unless they can personalise an issue
• They also have to be encouraged to see that there are
several ways to decide something ethically
• and to see that that decision is based first on the thought
process, and then takes into account their emotional
response - but not the other way around
• In the Law School, I address this first with some theory,
then a practical scenario, then a ‘forced’, small group
discussion.
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3. The theory: Table of Ethical Methods* or Approaches
Method Basic Description
of Approach
Differences from
Other Approaches
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Kantian
or
‘Deontological’
‘Right’ actions or policies are those that primarily
enhance and respect individual autonomy by
treating persons as ‘ends’ rather than ‘means’.
The deontological approach emphasises the
rightness of ‘process’, rather than the ultimate
consequences.
Kantian methods are concerned to refute the notion that ‘the end
justifies the means’ – arguing that the means, since they often involve
what happens to individuals, are at least as important as outcomes.
Kantian ethics are therefore usually wary of utilitarian approaches.
Kantian ethics suggests that individuals’ human rights cannot be
sacrificed to larger national policies or ‘the greater good’.
Consequential
(Utilitarian
or
‘Teleological’)
‘Right’ or morally good actions or policies are
those that bring about better consequences than
any of the other realistic alternatives.
‘Necessity’
Otherwise known as ‘maximising the public good’, utilitarian
methods suggest that the ‘utility’ of an action or policy, even if it
might subordinate individual autonomy, is justified because it
produces the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’.
To take an extreme case, a utilitarian approach might justify, for
example, the death of a few people from induced bird flu, in order to
save many by helping to develop a vaccine against the virus.
Virtue Ethics
The categorisation of an act as ethical or unethical
is not determined by its impact as such, but by the
quality or character of its actor.
Virtue ethics is enjoying a radical return to favour
among many moral philosophers because of the
emphasis on nobility of motive.
Virtue ethics approaches derive from Aristotle’s classical emphasis
on right character as a personal virtue. This approach transcends
both Kantian and Utilitarian approaches because it is simply
unconcerned with ‘what may happen to…’ – because that can never
be accurately predicted – and looks at how an individual is motivated
at a profoundly personal level. Thus, if the actor is ‘good’, so also will
be ‘the act’.
Notions of ‘good and bad’, noble and ignoble, deplorable and
admirable populate virtue ethics, rather than whether someone is
‘for or against’ a rule, or considers an action or policy ‘permissible
or obligatory’, etc.
‘Fairness’
‘Character’
* Derived from Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit and Michael Slote, Three Methods of Ethics – A Debate: For and Against Consequences,
Maxims and Virtues, Blackwells, Oxford, (1997).

4. and the Practice:
…..………..to speak, or not?
• You are the lawyer for the husband in a family law matter
• Your client has told you that he will kill the solicitor acting for his
wife if she receives what your client thinks is an excessive share
of the matrimonial property
• If the wife’s solicitor knew of this threat, it could be used against
your client in a forthcoming family law court case, seeking
residence (custody) of the children of the marriage.
• It’s possible your client is serious.
• Would you warn the wife’s solicitor of the threat?
• What is your preferred ethical analysis?
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5. A Rotunda
Theatre
Lectern
Group 1:
The
‘consequential’
argument
…
the other
lawyer may be
murdered,
if you
stay silent
Group 2:
The
‘Kantian’
argument
…
your
client has
a right to
your
silence
Group 3:
The ‘virtue’
position
…
what does
your sense of
compassion
tell you?
Thought
first,
…then
emotion.
… ‘rove the room’, with microphone
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