Thinking Ethically: A Handbook for Making Moral Choices - Softcover

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Scott Gelfand, PhD, JD, is a certified philosophical counselor and professor in the Department of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University, where he has taught a variety of undergraduate courses, including Ethical Theory, Philosophy and Culture, and Introduction to Philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Maryland and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. His academic publications focus on a variety of issues in ethics, including theoretical ethics, biomedical ethics, and research ethics. He’s devoted the last decade of his career to trying to better understand moral and political division in the United States as well as ways to heal or alleviate this division, leading to his first book for a general audience, Thinking Ethically: A Handbook for Making Moral Choices. He lives in Chicago.

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Is it wrong to break a promise?

How do we make moral decisions?

As a member of a hospital ethics committee, I wrestled with moral questions that don’t admit of easy answers, questions that lingered for days or even weeks. The committee’s charge was to help physicians, nurses, social workers, patients, and their families navigate morally challenging situations.

The most difficult cases involved helping family members decide whether to discontinue life support for a loved one or stop treating a loved one’s underlying illness, thereby hastening their death.

I recall a particular case involving Mary, who told us she had promised her husband she’d do everything possible to keep him alive. The medical team’s prognosis was clear: There was no chance of recovery. Continuing treatment would prolong his life for a few days, maybe a week, and during this time, he’d suffer significant pain. The other option was to withdraw life-support, which would hasten Mary’s husband’s death, thereby reducing the amount of suffering he’d experience.

Mary understood all of this. She believed stopping treatment would be the best thing for her husband. But she kept reminding the committee (and, I suppose, herself) that she had promised her husband she’d do everything she could to keep him alive.

If Mary asked you for advice, what would you tell her? Should she agree to terminating life support and aggressive treatment, even if it meant breaking her final promise to her husband? Or should she refuse to terminate treatment, even if that meant her husband would suffer unnecessarily? What would you tell her to justify your advice?

While our committee discussed this case, I found myself reflecting on Immanuel Kant, one of the great Western philosophers (discussed in Chapter 5), who argued that breaking a promise was always wrong. There are no exceptions. Then I thought of Alexander Hamilton, who similarly stated: “A promise should never be broken.”

Who was I to argue with them?

I didn’t have to -- others already had. John Stuart Mill, also one of the greats, argued that if breaking a promise leads to better consequences, then breaking it is the right thing to do. On a lighter note, self-help author Soul Dancer, in a book entitled Pay Me What I’m Worth: Say it. Mean it. Get it., said: “Promises, like gardens, need weeding from time to time to produce healthy results.”

But perhaps one of my student’s said it best: “Surely, if in a fit of anger, I promise to break someone’s legs or take their life, I shouldn’t keep my promise.”

I wondered if should share these insights with Mary. Would telling her about Kant, Mill, Soul Dancer, or my student help? Or would this just make her decision even more complicated?

How Do We Make Ethical Decisions or Judgments?

As I briefly explained in the Introduction, when making moral decisions or judgments, we typically start by looking for a “rule of thumb” that seems to fit the case. I’m confident that most of you, when thinking about the ethics committee case discussed above, recognized that you embraced the rule of thumb “It’s morally wrong to break promises.” Perhaps this initially led you to conclude Mary shouldn’t break her promise and should try to do everything possible to save her husband’s life.

However, we also know there are exceptions to these rules of thumb. When confronting a complex or confusing choice, we may initially acknowledge a rule of thumb applies to the situation, but after thinking about it for a little while or learning more details, we may discover or have a hunch that the situation we’re confronting might, in fact, be an exception to the rule.

Sometimes, these exceptions arise when more than one rule of thumb applies to the situation we’re in, and these rules of thumb conflict with each other. One of the applicable rules of thumb tells us we should do X, while a different rule of thumb tells us we should do something other than X.

Imagine I promised I’d take you to dinner at a nice restaurant, but I don’t have enough money to do this. The only way I can think of to get the money is to ask my brother if I could borrow it, but I know the only way he’d lend it to me is if I lied and told him I needed money to pay my electric bill. Two rules of thumb are conflicting with each other: 1) It’s wrong to break a promise; and 2) It’s wrong to lie. In this situation I must violate one of the rules of thumb. I don’t have a choice. I can either lie to get the money and then keep my promise to take you to dinner. Or I can follow the rule “It’s wrong to lie,” which will result in me breaking my promise to take you to dinner.

There are a variety of other reasons or factors that might lead us to conclude or at least question whether we should break a rule of thumb. These include situational, circumstantial, and historical factors.

Kristen’s Promise

I once read a short novel, Kristen’s Promise, to my daughter and son. This novel illustrates the idea that details matter and sometimes there are exceptions to rules of thumb like “It’s wrong to break a promise.”

In this historical novel for young teens, Kristen is walking to school with her dog, Caro. Caro hears something and runs down a tree-covered hill. Kristen then hears another dog growl and runs down the hill fearing this dog will attack Caro. At the bottom, the first thing she sees a boy with a rifle aimed at her dog. Then she sees a big, black, growling dog sitting on a pile of stones and a covered wagon on its side.

After restraining Caro, Kristen asks the boy what happened. At first, he tells her to leave him alone, but after some coaxing, he tells her his name is Ezra and explains that he and his mother were traveling to California to meet his father, and then they had an accident.

Kristen offers to help the boy and says her father can fix the wagon. Ezra insists she leave him alone and asks her to promise she won’t tell anyone about him. She makes the promise.

The next morning, Kristen leaves for school without Caro. She goes to the clearing where she met Ezra and is met by barks from the big, black dog that’s still standing on the pile of rocks. Then she sees Ezra. He seems thin and weak, and she offers him and his dog some food. She notices traces of tears on Ezra’s cheeks and again invites him to her house. She explains he can stay with her family until his mother returns. She even offers to start a search party for his mother, who might be lost or hurt.

Ezra finally admits his mother was killed when a tree fell on her after the accident, and he buried his mother under the pile of rocks that the big dog wouldn’t leave. He explains he promised his mother before she died that he’d stay with the wagon and reminds Kristen she promised not to tell anyone about him.

Kristen returns to the road she took to school but quickly turns around and goes back home. She breaks her promise and tells her father everything. She and her father return to the clearing, and her father tells Ezra how much courage he has. He says that even though Ezra promised to stay with the wagon, his mother would have wanted him to leave if staying wouldn’t make anything better.

The novel ends with Kristen’s father telling her she did the right thing when she told him about Ezra. She made a great choice, and this was true even if though she promised Ezra she wouldn’t tell anyone about him.

When I read this novel to my...