Justice & Global Issues Flashcards
Utility
Maximizing welfare for all
Non-maleficence: don’t cause unnecessary harm
Beneficence: benefit others (maximize the quantity of the benefit)
5 Major Ethical Principles
Utility Rational Self-Interest Autonomy Justice Virtue
Rational Self-Interest
Maximize own welfare
Autonomy
Respect and promote self-rule
Negative: don’t interfere with others’ self-interest
Positive: Inform others about their autonomy
Justice
Treat persons equally and fairly and respect their moral rights
Virtue
Have good character, act from it, and promote it in others.
5 Steps of the AJ Method
Step 1: Info Gathering Step 2: Creative Problem Solving Step 3: Listing the Pros and Cons Step 4: Evaluation Step 5: Justification
AJ Method Step 1
Info Gathering
Identify informational questions relevant to resolving the ethical issue, and do some research to answer those questions
AJ Method Step 2
Creative Problem Solving
Avoid the issue by figuring out a creative plan of action that would not be ethically controversial, if it worked
AJ Method Step 3
List the Pros and Cons (chart)
Assume the creative solution fails, and list the pros and cons for each of the controversial options for dealing with the ethical issue.
AJ Method Step 4
Evaluation
Evaluate the strength of the pros and cons, pick the strongest 3-5, and indicate probabilities (0-100%) and weight (1-100) in parentheses.
AJ Method Step 5
Justification
Identify what you think is the ethically superior option from the chart and justify your choice in a structured essay. I. Intro II. Support III. Defense IV. Summary
How has the view of truth telling in medicine changed in the West?
Western people used to allow physicians to deceive their patients in order to cure them under certain circumstances –> discredited because people believed that physician paternalism was unacceptable (undermines the autonomous choice that is now held to be the core to individual dignity.
Truth Telling In Medicine:
What is the parallel shift in Western politics?
Ancient Greece and Middle Ages: paternalistic rule by the wise, the superior, etc.
Enlightenment (17th century to now): Western emphasis on individualism (liberty, equality, dignity, rights).
Truth Telling in Medicine:
What is the view of truth telling in the Confucian Chinese approach?
- It is up to the family, based on the information offered by the physician, to judge whether the truth will be beneficial to the patient.
- The family has the final authority to decide whether to tell the patient the truth.
Truth Telling in Medicine:
How is the Confucian Chinese view grounded in the Confucian way of life?
The Confucian Chinese are more family oriented than Westerners.
The good of the patient is interpreted by the family under the guidance of a physician.
The justification for deception is the patient’s best interest.
Confucianism takes medicine as “the art of ren (virtue).” A Confucian is ideally a kind-parent-like master practicing the virtue of ren with special medical skills for pursuing the confucian moral ideals. The physician is exempt from having to tell the truth. Ren aids one to achieve the moral vision needed to appreciate that the family constitutes the normal way of human life - a social reality necessary for the full development of cardinal human virtues and full human flourishing. Individuals are unable to flourish and be virtuous.
Truth Telling in Medicine:
Why do the authors think the Confucian way is superior to the contemporary Western approach?
It is not simply that the family allows individuals to achieve virtue and realize their flourishing, but one encounters virtues and human flourishing understandable only within the reality of the family. The virtues and flourishing realized in and by a family cannot be reduced without loss of meaning to the virtues and flourishing realized in and by the individual members of a family.
What are the 3 main aspects of globalization?
Economic
Cultural
Political
What are the key economic changes behind globalization?
Cheap shipping
Fewer regulations (1980s)
Multinational corporations
Offshoring
World Trade Organization (WTO)
World Bank
IMF
Up until the 1980s, countries had high tariffs on products. After the 1980s, tariff prices have decreased dramatically.
To be a member of the WTO, countries had to decrease their tariffs.
IMF & World Bank give money to developing countries as a loan w/ conditions such as tending to their poor.
What international organizations have been involved in shaping the globalization process so far?
Multinationals WTO World Bank IMF Companies who offshore (outsourcing) UN EU
Which countries have been the clear winners and losers from globalization and why?
Winners: companies and newly industrialized counties (China, Brazil, India, Mexico).
Losers: least developed countries can’t compete and cheap goods flood markets (Haiti, Bangladesh, Sub Saharan Africa).
What is the international relations model, and how has it favored the more wealthy and powerful countries?
Justice mainly requires respecting treaties among sovereign states (agreements should prevail).
Economic: WTO, World Bank, IMF
Political: UN, EU
Powerful and wealthy countries never make agreements with poor and non-powerful counties because they are afraid of investing in a crappy deal. Poor and non-powerful countries are left out of international relations.
What is the global justice model, and what changes would it require in the international order?
Justice is not about international agreements. Justice requires shaping the global institutional order of treaties and rules to be fair to the world’s poor and vulnerable, and respect their interests and rights.
What is Pogge’s argument in favor of the global justice model?
Beneficial for 3rd world countries: The justice limit to a government’s partiality in favor of its own citizens forbids, then, partial conduct that undermines the minimal fairness of the global institutional order. An appeal to permissible partiality cannot justify the imposition, by the most powerful governments on the rest of the world, of an unjust global institutional order under which a majority of humankind is foreseeably and avoidably deprived of anything resembling a fair start in life.
