Ethics Reading Reflection

The following is a reflection on the CPM course's assigned reading of an excerpt from How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, 2nd edition (HarperCollins, 2009, pages 1-18), by Rushworth M. Kidder.  Specifically Chapter 1, Overview: The Ethics of Right vs Right.


I thought the title of Right vs Right a bit more catchy than relevant.  How many choices do we really face that involve to equally right choices.  I expect that number to be a relatively small.  When we are factoring out the "right" choices done with poor motivations, or those that are done in lieu of something that clearly should have been done, we probably have a relatively miniscule sampling to work from.

So of those entirely Right vs entirely Right options, who really cares?  If you end up choosing between curing brain cancer or breast cancer, pick the one that interests you or intrigues you and move on.  The rest of us have more complex problems we need to work on and I suspect you have plenty other issues to consider as well.

Now choosing between bad and bad options, is frequent enough to warrant some contemplation.  Perhaps the concept doesn't have the appeal or pizzaz of "Right vs Right", but it seems more prevalent.

As an aside, one aspect of choosing between bad decisions that didn't seem to be brought up in the article was how bad alternatives are often the byproduct of previously made poor decisions.  Like the tangled up ball of yarn, there are some situations that the only way out of them is to never get into them in the first place.

So yes, having some principles to guide one's action in choosing between bad choices is something worth thinking hard about.

Of the three principles presented in the article, the Ends-based Thinking option, doing whatever produces the greatest good for the greatest number, seemed wanting.

Using ends to justify the means rarely, if ever, ends well.  Especially when the ends cannot be known ahead of time.  History exhibits plenty of examples of this playing out poorly.

Interestingly, the next two principles presented, Rule-based thinking and Care-based thinking, could loosely be correlated to the summary of the Jewish Ten Commandments as recounted by Jesus in Matthew 22:36-40.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”" 


What is loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, but acting according to a pattern of living that God has set.  Essentially a Rule-based approach to ethical living.

One difference might be that the Judeao-Christian version has an authoritative set of rules to work from, whereas Kant was left to figure out a general principle by which everyone could decide there own rules.  I suppose both approaches have advantages and drawbacks.

The third principle of Care-based thinking, summarized in the article as "Doing to others what you would like them to do to you", could just as easily be restated as "Love your neighbor as yourself."  These two statements are nearly identical and interchangeable.  See Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.

Unfortunately, figuring out what to do, doesn't even seem like the greatest problem.  The much greater problem is how do I actually carry out these ethical principles.

By whatever hierarchy of principles one chooses, how well do any of us claim to truly carry them out.

And then if you extend the criteria beyond actions to one's thoughts and motivations, how much more are our shortcomings exasperated?  As a friend of mine, Jim Price noted "I could bite my tongue and edit my emails, but that didn't make me good, it just made me polite!" (Taken from a published copy of the notes from Jim Price's Testimony offered 3/27/05.)

Bringing this back to class material, within Dr. Faser's dissertation, she researched 28 cases of broken trust.  I wonder how hard these were to find.  Not that I care to recount them here, but I could probably recollect 28 scenarios where I have not done as well as I would have hoped.  Mercifully not many of my past failures rose to the level of being studied in someone's doctoral dissertation, but that does not make them right.


Is was also interesting, that none of Dr. Fraser's trust violations were primarily about the interviewees own past failures?  The interviews were able to draw out some instances were the interviewee may have contributed in some way to the trust violation but the primary issue seemed to be what someone else had done.  Does it surprise us that we would be much more eager to see faults in others all the while minimizing our own.


So in order of importance, starting with how one decides between Good vs Good alternatives is perhaps the wrong end to start from.

If we were to order the discussion based on frequency, importance, and relevance, it would probably be the following: 1) What to do about our own past ethical violations and those of others; (Repairing Trust)   2) How do we better adhere to whatever standard of ethical principles we choose;  3)  What are those ethical principles and what is their basis;  4)  How do we address situations when our available choices seem to set our ethical principles against each other;  and 5) Within those situations that set our principles against each other, we could discuss the small subset of situations in which there is all available choices seem equally Right.

Practically speaking, in parenting my three sons ages 3 to 8, every once in a while we have a discussion about good vs good choices.  "Do you want to watch Up or Cars tonight."

We have more discussions about thinking through various competing ethical issues.  "I am glad you are eager to get started on your homework, but your mother asked you to hang up your clothes first."

We have even more discussions about just doing what we know is right.  "Do not hit your brother because he is bothering you."

And we have lots of discussions about resolving ethical violations.  "You need to tell your brother you are sorry.  And you need to forgive your brother."