REMEMBER

Ethics isn't just about the way the world is. Sure, you have to know a lot about how the world works to answer ethical questions, but ethics is about something a little more ambitious than science. It's about the way the world ought to be or should be. Focusing on how the world should be gives ethical questions a different nature altogether. Ethical questions look more like this:

WARNING!

Lots of people miss the point about ethical discussions because they assume "ought" questions are really "is" questions. How many times have you heard someone defend his unjust actions by saying "Yeah, well, life isn't fair?" That person may be right about how the world works, but that doesn't mean it should continue to work that way. And in all likelihood, he's contributing to keeping the world in a way that it ought not to be. The world may not be fair, but it should be.

You probably have a big question dawning on you right about now: How do I find out what I ought to do? It's a great question; it's the subject of the rest of this book.

Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality

Although the terms ethics and morality have two different definitions in the dictionary, throughout this book we use them interchangeably and don't make any effort to distinguish between the ideas. The truth is that you can argue all day about whether something is immoral or just unethical, whether someone has ethics but no morals, or whether ethics is about society but morality is about you.

REMEMBER

The reason these arguments don't go anywhere is that in the end, both ethics and morality are actually about the same: What you ought to be doing with your life. If it's true that an act is immoral, then you ought not to do it. The situation doesn't change if the act is unethical instead. It's still something you ought not to do.

WARNING!

"But wait!" you may say. "Ethics and morality can't be the same thing. Something can be unethical but still moral." Some people think, for instance, that Robin Hood's stealing to feed the poor was unethical but still moral. That thought may be true - we're not saying that words don't get used in that way. But in the end, what do you really want to know about Robin Hood? You want to know whether he ought to have been doing what he did. Ditto with something that seems immoral but may still be ethical, like selling goods at hugely inflated prices. If ethics and morality say different things, you need to find out what the relationship between you and your customers should be and how you should act, feel, and think toward them based on that relationship.

So, seriously, don't worry about the difference between ethics and morality. Your ethical conversations will make a lot more progress if you just concentrate on the "oughtiness" of things. Professional philosophers don't bother distinguishing between the two lots of the time, so you shouldn't either.

Putting law in its proper place

Even though you don't need to differentiate ethics and morality, you should distinguish between the concepts of ethics (or morality) and legality. If you don't, you may end up confusing the ethical thing to do with the legal thing to do. There's some overlap between ethics and the law, but they aren't always in line with one another. For example, consider speeding. Speeding is illegal, but that doesn't mean it's always unethical. It seems ethically acceptable to speed in order to get someone to the hospital for an emergency, for instance. You may still be punished according to the law, but that doesn't automatically make your act unethical.

The law also sometimes permits people to do unethical things. Cheating on your partner is usually ethically wrong, for instance. But breaking romantic commitments isn't typically illegal (and even where it is, laws against adultery aren't usually enforced).

REMEMBER

Should all unethical things be illegal? Probably not, but it's worth noting that unless ethics and legality are separate concepts, it's not even possible to ask that question. The law may be inspired by ethical standards, but in many cases it's better not to make laws about unethical behaviors. People usually sort out these kinds of things on their own. Besides, it could simply be too expensive to enforce some laws. (Lying is usually unethical, but how full would prisons be if they had to hold all the liars in addition to the thieves, tax-cheats, murderers, and rapists?)

PONDER THIS

If ethics and legality were the same thing, all laws would be ethical, and all ethical acts would be permitted under the law. In other words, an unjust law couldn't exist. But this thinking seems to be false. If, for example, Congress passed a law that all brown-haired people had to wear polka-dotted pants on Thursdays or go to prison, this law would be terribly unjust. But it could only be labeled unjust if an independent ethical standard existed against which laws can be evaluated. Because ethical standards can actually be used to judge laws, ethics and legality must be separate concepts.

Perhaps the best historical example of an unjust law would be the slavery of blacks in the South before the Civil War. Whether or not people knew it then (and it's a fair bet they had some idea), by today's standards this law is seen as deeply flawed and immoral. But without the separation between ethics/ morality and legality, such justification wouldn't be possible.

Requiring, forbidding, permitting: The most useful ethical vocabulary

Even when you know what ethics is, you still need a way of explaining your position on issues. Sure you can use words like "right," "wrong," "evil," "bad," "good," and so on, but they're not very precise. It's best to be as precise as you can in ethical matters, because they're hard enough to solve without confusing words.

REMEMBER

The best vocabulary for classifying any position, action, or character trait is to put it one of three classes: "ethically required," "ethically permitted," and "ethically forbidden." These three classifications fill the gaps left by simple distinctions between good/bad, right/wrong, and so on. (Keep in mind that because ethics and morality are one and the same, we could have just as easily used "morally" required, permitted, and forbidden. See the earlier section "Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality" for more information.)

PONDER THIS

Consider the ethical issue of capital punishment for murderers. People's positions vary, but usually they think it's either right or wrong. Those who think it's wrong don't have a difficult time making their point. They think people ought to be forbidden from performing capital punishment. But the crowd that thinks capital punishment is right has some explaining to do. "Right" could mean two different things that you have to disentangle.

Just using the term "right" can cause one to overlook the differences between these two conflicting positions.

Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical

During your studies of ethics, you probably have wondered about the most basic question of all: Why be ethical? Without an answer to this question, you don't have a lot of reason to continue reading this book! So this section looks at the two basic responses to help you get ethically motivated.

Why be ethical 101: It pays off!

People often ask, "Why should I be ethical?" And there's at least one answer that never seems to go out of style: Ethics can be in your self-interest. In other words, ethics pays off. In the real world, people tend to get annoyed when you steal their stuff, murder their friends, and cheat on them. As a consequence, they tend to do things like call the cops, try to murder you in return, or take your kids and move to Idaho. Things don't look so rosy when you fail to be ethical at least on a basic level.

Although some ethical rules and practices may put a serious damper on a good party, by and large people who follow those rules tend to live in harmony with those around them. Doing so creates a certain amount of happiness. So if, for example, you demonstrate that you can be trusted with wealth, you benefit materially.

The ethical life also can pay off in other ways. Barring some bad luck along the way, ethical people often have less stress in their lives than unethical people. They don't have to worry about the stress of hiding lies (or bodies!). Ethical people also seem capable of living happier, more fulfilled social lives. They even can develop much richer relationships with those around them because those people trust the ethical person to do what's right - and not to throw them under a bus whenever it may be more profitable.

WORDS OF WISDOM

If you don't believe us, consider the words that famous English philosopher Thomas Hobbes used to describe life where people hadn't come together to cooperate in an ethical manner: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes believed that choosing a sovereign to judge right from wrong allowed human beings to come out of that nasty and unwelcoming state in order to live together and create things. This arrangement would be much more in your self-interest than would living in the brutish state of nature. Refer to Chapter 9 for more on Hobbes.

Hobbes's point also leads to an additional reason to be ethical: Even if your own life doesn't fare particularly well by following ethical rules, some level of ethical behavior is necessary for having a cohesive society. By being ethical you contribute to that cohesiveness. And as Hobbes would be glad to point out, living in a cohesive society turns out to be much more beneficial to an individual than living in a culture of backstabbers and thieves.

PONDER THIS

So far in this section you've seen how ethics may be a benefit to you in this life. But some religions, particularly the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam promise benefits after death to those who follow the right ethical path. If that promise doesn't get a religious person to be ethical (especially with the threat of hell hanging over her head when she isn't), it's difficult to see what would motivate such a person to be ethical at all.

Why be ethical 201: You'll live a life of integrity

When answering the question of why being ethical is important, consider the possibility that some compelling reasons for being ethical have nothing to do with payoff. Living with integrity is the most important of those reasons. Ethics is required if you want to live a life of integrity, and it simply allows you to do what's right. Lacking integrity, on the other hand, suggests a kind of cowardliness or weakness in one's life. In our discussion, two features of integrity stand out:

Being able to compare your life to how you think you ought to live is a distinctively human activity. Dogs don't sit around asking themselves what type of life they ought to live and then bemoaning their lack of integrity when they fail to measure up. But you're not a dog, and without integrity your life would look, well, animal-like. The importance of living in this kind of way outstrips concerns about ethics "paying off."

In fact, this need for external integrity highlights a central component of being motivated to be ethical: It's just right. Can't that be compelling on its own? It may be nice if morality and ethics pay off (and they often do). However, getting away from the fact that ethics can be compelling in and of itself is difficult. If murdering small children is wrong, it shouldn't matter whether it would pay to do otherwise.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Ethics For Dummiesby Christopher Panza Adam Potthast Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.