Midterm Flashcards
1
Q
Consequentialist theories
A
based on examining the consequence of actions, beliefs, or theories, and judge the rightness or wrongness on the basis of those consequences or results.
2
Q
Nonconsequentialist theories
A
based not on consequences, but on whether the actions or beliefs or theories conform to some rule or principle
3
Q
Utilitarianism
A
holds that what is good is what produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
4
Q
Kantian Ethics
A
ethics is based on or primarily concerned with ethical rules or principles, which are derived from logic, from reasoning, or from human nature.
5
Q
Kant’s Categorical Imperative
A
Always act so that you can consistently will that the maxim of your action become a universal law.
6
Q
Virtue Ethics
A
Virtue ethics focuses not on ethical rules or consequences, but on the moral status of the person or agent. The purpose of ethics is to develop the individual’s moral/ethical character, or virtues.
7
Q
Moral Sense Theory
A
Holds that human have a moral sense (analogous to the physical senses) or intuition by which we can and do distinguish between right and wrong.
8
Q
Ethics based on Human Rights
A
A huge problem here is that there are widely differing views of human rights, such as (for perhaps the most salient example) in today’s conflict between Western liberal and Muslim views of human rights, and between (for example) Singaporean and American notions of democracy and democratic rights. Thus there is no universally agreed-upon full content to a theory of human rights, although there is partial agreement. Also, there can be conflict between negative vs. positive rights.
9
Q
Natural Law
A
Holds that humans are beings of nature and have a nature, that this nature can be know, and that ethics can be derived from laws or principles found in that nature.
10
Q
Contractarian Ethics
A
Ethics is based on a hypothetical contract among members of society.
11
Q
Collectivist Ethics
A
Claims that values and what is good or bad (as well as other things) are socially derived and determined.
12
Q
Libertarian
A
Harm principle
13
Q
Pragmatic ethics
A
Pragmatism rejects unchanging or transcendent principles and norms, holding instead that principles and views and norms both are and need to be changed in light of actual events or discoveries or situations.
14
Q
Divine Command Theory
A
right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust are determined not by human wish, desire, or reason, or by human institutions, but by the will of a transcendent deity or deities
15
Q
Ethical Egoism
A
identifies what is ethically right with the agent’s self-interest. Claims that something is ethically right iff it promotes the agent’s long-term self-interest.
16
Q
Distinguish between Ethics and Law
A
While ethics and law can be interrelated (insofar as law reflects ethics or the legality or illegality of something has ethical implications), ethics ultimately transcends law (insofar as one can always ask of a law… is it good, just, ethical).
17
Q
Descriptive Accounts
A
describes what a thing is or what people think it is without saying whether it is actually right or wrong, good or bad
18
Q
Normative Accounts
A
attempts to say–usually on the basis of some normative ethical theory— whether something is actually good or bad, right or wrong
19
Q
Descriptive Relativism
A
describes the fact that different people, groups, societies, cultures do have different ethical views relative to other people, groups, socieities, cultures.
20
Q
Normative relativism
A
is the theory that people ought to accept the ethical views or norms that their culture actually hold and that no universal ethical standards or norms can or do exist beyond the ethical standards or norms that people actually hold.
21
Q
Five Criteria for a good or adequate normative ethical theory
A
- Universality
- Consistency
- Culpability
- Importance
- Fairness
22
Q
Universality
A
Ethical judgments and principles should apply to everyone everywhere.
23
Q
Consistency
A
Ethical judgments should not conflict with one another.
24
Q
Culpability
A
ethical judgments usually imply some form of punishment or sanction is justified for offesnse and offenders.
25
Importance
Ethical judgments usually have priority over other kinds of considerations
26
Fairness
ethical judgments should be fair, proportional, just.
27
Three Parts of an Ethical Argument
1. Factual premise
2. Premise stating an ethical principle or theory
3. A conclusion that brings these two together
28
Four ways to Address an ethical argument you don't agree with
1. Attack the factual premise
2. Attack the ethical principle
3. say that the ethical principle is good, but does not apply to this case
4. argue that there is a either a formal or inform fallacy in the logic of the argument
29
Criteria or Accounts of What Justice has been held to be
1. fairness
2. equality
3. rights... having moral/ethical rights
4. deserts... getting what one deserves
30
6 Possible Distribution Schemes and Examples
1. To each an equal share - Cake, Super Bowl Rings
2. To each according to individual need - Food stamps
3. To each according to personal effort - Paralympics
4. To each according to social contribution - Nobel prize
5. To each according to merit - grades, promotion, gov. Jobs, hiring
6. Winner take all - elections
31
Rawls's Two Principles
Maximizing the minimum
1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest expected benefit of the least-advantaged members of society.
32
Nozick's 3 Principles
1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of just in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding
3. No one is entitled to a holding except by repeated applications of 1 and 2.
33
Rawls Theory of Justice
- rejects Utilitarianism... each person possesses an involability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot
- social contract
- justice as fairness, which requires that we hypothetically abandon our original position and instead approach things from behind the veil of ignorance
- contra-Nozick, the primary subject of justice is not transactions between individuals but the basic structure of society.
34
Libertarian Theory
- justice = liberty, which is rooted in the negative and natural rights of individual people
- these rights impose near-absolute restricitions on how we may act... cannot be violated for some supposed greater good
- property is a moral right
35
Definition of Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system in which the major portion of production and distribution is in private hands, operating under a profit or market system
36
Four Key Features of Capitalism
1. Companies
2. Profit motive
3. Competition
4. Private Property
37
Ethical Justifications of Capitalism
1. Natural right to property (libertarian)
2. Religious justifications of private property (e.g. "Thou shalt not steal")
3. Adam Smith's concept of the invisible hand (while individual economic decisions in a capitalist society are motivated by self-interest, the result of these decisions is ultimately in the common interest)
4. In practice, capitalism mostly works, but socialism mostly does not.
38
Ethical Arguments against Capitalism
1. Capitalism leads to inequality
2. Capitalism exploits and alienates workers.
3. Capitalism assumes human beings are materialist/consumerist and leads to moral decay.
4. Today's capitalist system is, due to technology and other developments, essentially different from that presented by Smith.
39
Nozick's Chamberlain Example
1. Suppose things are distributed according to your favorite non-entitlement theory (D1)
2. Chamberlain signs a contract that guarantees him $10 from each attendee to every game in which he plays. When people attend a game in which he plays they each, willingly and without coercion, give him $10.
3. Lots of people attend Chamberlain's games and he ends up with far more than the average income. The result is (D2), which upends the initial distribution.
4. To preserve the original distribution, society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.
40
Definition of Corporation
A corporation is a thing that:
1. can endure beyond the natural lives of its members
2. has incorporators who may sue and be sued as a unit
3. who are able to consign part of their property to the corporation for ventures of limited liability
41
Arguments for the Moral Agency of Corporations
The Corporate Internal Decision structure operates like an individual person in gathering information and making decisions. Thus, corporate decisions are analogous to an individual's ethical decision and ethical responsibility.
42
Arguments against the Moral Agency of Corporations
A corporations CID structure causes it to be like a machine e.g. like a car.
43
Narrow View of Corporate Responsibility
- The sole social responsibility of a corporation and corporate managers and officials is to make as much money for their stockholders as possible so long as the corporation stays within the rules of the game.
44
Broad view
-because of its social power, role, and "footprint," in addition to making a profit for its shareholders, a corporation has a larger social responsibility
45
Arguments for the Narrow View of Corporate Responsibility
- invisible hand argument (response: externalities)
- let-government-do-it argument... (response: government can only do so much and, often, what it can do is subject to corporate cooperation and support)
- business can't handle social responsibility because they lack the expertise or training (response: they, increasingly, can)
- if corporations are entrusted with a social role than they will change and mold society to conform with interests of business
46
Caveat emptor
buyer beware... the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made.
47
Caveat venditor
seller beware... the principle that the seller alone is responsible for the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made
48
Strict Product Liability
strict product liability is a legal rule that says a seller, distributor or manufacturer of a defective product is liable to a person injured by that product regardless of whether the defendant did everything possible to make sure the defect never happened.
49
Why has there been a movement from caveat emptor to strict product liability?
- While there has always been a gap between the knowledge that a seller or manufacturer of a product has about a product and the knowledge that a potential buyer has of product, this gap has increased as a result of increasing technological and economic sophistication.
- In this regard, it is no longer reasonable to expect a buyer to beware.
50
Informed consent
1. The person asked to consent must be given sufficient information
2. There must be no coercion of the person into consenting.
3. The person giving consent must be competent to give consent.
51
Cons of Regulation
1. Whatever you regulate will cost more and you will get less of it.
2. Regulations violate or, at the very least, constrain liberty and autonomy.
3. Regulations are often used as tools for crony capitalism (i.e. they help those with the economic and political power to write the regulations).
52
Legal Paternalism
The principle of legal paternalism justifies state coercion to protect people from self-inflicted harm and/or to guide them, whether they like it or not, toward their own good.
53
S+B's points on what business should do ethically to ensure consumer safety
1. Give safety the priority warranted by the product.
2. Abandon the minsconception that accidents occur exclusively as a result of product misuse.
3. Monitor the manufacturing process.
4. Review market strategy and advertising for potential safety problems.
5. Make available to consumers written information about the product's perfomrance.
6. Investigate consumer complaints and do so quickly.
54
Ethical issues in pricing and labeling
1. Manipulative pricing
2. Price fixing
3. Price gouging
4. Misleading labeling and packaging
55
Ethical Issues in Advertising
- Should advertising receive First Amendment freedom of speech protections?
- Ambiguous, fact-concealing, exaggerated, or manipulative advertising
- Should the reasonable consumer standard or ignorant consumer standard be used?
56
Ethical Issues in Advertising
- Should advertising receive First Amendment freedom of speech protections?
- Ambiguous, fact-concealing, exaggerated, or manipulative advertising
- Should the reasonable consumer standard or ignorant consumer standard be used?
- Advertising directed at children
57
Tragedy of the Commons
Behavior that is individually rational and most harmless becomes collectively quite harmful and thus irrational when lots of people do it.
Many, if not all, environmental issues are tragedies of the commons in which economic behaviors that are rational/harmless when done individually become collectively quite harmful and economically irrational when lots of people do it (e.g. fishing in a lake, dumping stuff into a river)
58
Do we have ethical responsibilities to future generations?
- Yes, it seems reasonable to say that past generations had ethical responsibilities toward our generation and that we, therefore, have some kind of responsibility to future generations.
- No, there is generally no way to know the relationship between present actions and future consequences.
59
Do we have ethical responsibilities to future generations? Implications on Environmental Ethics.
- Yes, it seems reasonable to say that past generations had ethical responsibilities toward our generation and that we, therefore, have some kind of responsibility to future generations.
- No, there is generally no way to know the relationship between present actions and future consequences.
60
Wise use
- Recognizes that both human life and business require use of the environment in order to survive, but that overuse is wrong for both ethical and practical reasons.
- humans and businesses need to use the environment, but this use must be an informed one... cost/benefit analysis
61
Sustainability
- More restrictive than wise use
- Sustainable interactions are those that do not deplete or curtail the ability of the environment to support those interactiions into the indefinite future.
- use of non-renewable resources is discouraged as much as possible and should only be used insofar as their use does not destroy the availability of their use by future generations
62
Stewardship
- human beings are steward of the earth. that is to say, we exercise authority over and care for the propoerty that belongs to another.
- means that we both have rights and responsibilities
- we should leave things on earth in at least as good a condition as we found them.
63
Steps in the Hiring Process
1. Create a job description
2. Advertise job opening
3. Collect applications
4. Screen applicants
5. Test those applicants in whom you are interested and possibly those who you may be interested in if none of those whom your are interested in pan out
6. Interview the finalists
64
Validity (of a test)
accuracy of test... it accurately measures what you want it to measure
65
Reliability (of a test)
consistency of test...
66
Nepotism. Definition. Pros and Cons.
the hiring or promotion of relatives or friends for primary, though not necessarily exclusive, reason that they are relatives or friends
67
Reasons for Labor Unions
- Generally speaking, companies have more power and leverage than individual workers.
- Labor unions are formed in the attempt to (using collective bargaining and the threat of a strike) mend the gap between the power of the employer and the power of the employee.
68
Libertarian Criticisms of Unions
- Labor unions significantly abridge the autonomy and liberty of workers.
- Labor unions hurt the economy
- By and large, labor unions depend upon government coercion and intervention for their tactics to work.
69
Libertarian Criticisms of Unions
- Labor unions significantly abridge the autonomy and liberty of workers.
- Labor unions hurt the economy
- By and large, labor unions depend upon government coercion and intervention for their tactics to work.
- They hurt the economy and, thereby, society.
70
What is required for informed consent?
1. information
2. no coercion
3. competence to give consent
71
Employment at will
Employment is, essentially, a free market transaction in which either party (i.e. either the employer or the employee) is free to walk away from the transaction at any time and for any or no reason.
72
BFOQs
Bona Fides Occupational Qualifications. Right reasons for discrimination. ex: the extraordinary physical requirement of a firefighter in Manhattan is a BFOQ that rightly creates a sort of de facto discrimination against women, who cannot meet the physical requirements necessary to be a firefighter in Manhattan.
73
Conflicts of Interest. Examples.
Conflicts of interest arise when the private interest of the employee conflicts with the interest of the company. Ex: Insider trading, nepotism, some executive salaries. Foster Winans case.
74
Why does anyone hire you – what expectation do they have?
They expect that you will, one way or another, benefit them and their interests.
75
How much loyalty does an employee owe to the company?
An employee ought to be loyal to the company
76
Conflicts of Interest. Examples.
Conflicts of interest arise when the private interest of the employee conflicts with the interest of the company. Ex: Insider trading, nepotism, misuse of expense accounts, hiring and promoting for innapropriate reasons. Foster Winans case.
77
Proprietary Information
Information that, because it belongs to the employer, an employee cannot take from one employer to another
78
Whistle-blowing
Whistle-blowing occurs when an individual from within an organization exposes any kind of information that is deemed as illegal and/or unethical.
79
Steps a Whistle Blower Must Take
1. Proper motive
2. All internal channels
3. Compelling evidence of wrongdoing
4. Careful analysis of danger
5. SOme chance of success
6. Realization of consequences to self and others.
7. Get legal help before going public
80
Negative affirmative action
people have the legal right not to be unjustly discriminated against
81
Positive affirmative action
some people, who belong to a group that has been historically discriminated against, have the right to be discriminated in favor of because of their group status
82
Bakke Conclusion
SC rejected racial quotas, but ruled that race can be used as a factor in admissions
83
Adarand v. Pena
SC sided with Adarand and ruled that racial classifications imposed by the federal gov. must be narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interest
84
JPS's opinon on Adarand Case
- No moral or constitutional equivalence between race-based policy that is designed to perpetuate caste system and one designed to undermine cast system
- Decision by majority to discriminate against members of minority race is fundamentally different from decision to impose incidental costs on majority in order to provide a benefit to disadvantaged minority... the former is never justified and the latter may be
85
Thomas's Opinon on Adarand Case
- there is moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to fost some current notion of equality
- gov. sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice
86
Grutter v. Bollinger
- upheld race-based affirmative action admissions program at U of Michigan
- race-based AA programs must be limited in time
87
Gratz v. Bollinger
rejected a race based aa program at U of Michigan law shcool
88
Arguments fo Positive Race-based AA
1. Compensatory justice demands aa programs
2. AA is necessary to permit fairer competition
3. AA is necessary to break the cycle of poverty that racial minorities are locked into
89
Arguments against Postive Race-based AA
1. Injures white people (and other non-favored groups) and violates their rights.
2. Violates the principle of equality
3. Nondiscrimination will achieve our social goals so postivie aa is unnecessary. Race-based positive aa exacerbates racial and social animosities.
90
Parents United v. Seattle
the best way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race
91
Ethical Issues that Arose When Women entered the workplace in large numbers
- Sexual harassment
- Workplace dating
- Childcare
- Unjust Discrimination in hiring or promotion or pay
92
Career-primary track
- put their careers first
- elect to remain childless or have someone else raise children
- put job ahead of personal lives
- advance farther on career path
93
Career-and-family trace
- choose personal lives over their jobs
- do not advance as far as career primary on career path and are not given same opportunities to advance on career path as career-primary
94
Comparable Worth or Pay Equity
employees who are doing jobs of comparable or equal value to the employer should receive the same pay
95
Glass Ceiling
women and members of racial minorities claim that a "glass ceiling" exists, which means that they are allowed to rise to a certain level within the organization, but then are prevent from rising higher. They see that higher levels exist, but can't go through the ceiling into them.
96
Sexual harassment and what can business do to prevent it
- involves unwanted sexual attention after the recipient has so stated, abuse of power to obtain sexual favors, or public display of sexual materials
- develop a top-down culture that is opposed to sexual harassment and which holds everyone (regardless of position) accountable for sexual harassment
97
Reasons for Multinational Busineses
1. Principle of Comparitive advantage
2. Specialization of production
3. Explosive growth of world trade
4. Benefit consumers, capitalists, and workers in developing world
98
Ethical Problems of MNBs
- differences in portability of capital, products, workers
- circumvent gov regulations
- differences between developed and undeveloped worlds
- differences in value systems
99
Nestle Formula Case
- Illustrative of the ethical problems that arise because of the difference between developed and undeveloped world when it comes to consumer sophistication, regulation, governmental experience and power.
100
Technological Dystopians
- technology is leading us or will lead us to hell... Ellul
101
Technological Cornucopians
- technology is leading us or will lead us to heaven... Simon
102
Three Technological Revolutions
1. Steam engines and railroads
2. Electric power, internal combustion engine, indoor plumbing.
3. Computers and the internet
103
Potential Problems created by technology
- inequality
- mass unemployment... displacement of workers
- decreased power of workers
- alienation of workers
- technological elite and barriers
104
Technological Determinism
Should we do everything we can
Do we control technology or does technology, in a sense, control us.
Military and medical technology.
105
Ethical Issues in Cybertech
- privacy
- espionage
- cybercrime
- porn
- pirating
- who should control the Internet?
- speech
- plagiarism
- targeting of children
