I received an email asking me about Kant and Environmental Ethics, this was my response feel free to read it :)
Using Kant's universalisability principle we can come to the conclusion that we should not be driving everywhere (unsustainable pollution) we should not be chopping forests or eating animals. Can you see where I am going with this? Literally you can't do anything because if it were to be universalised then it would be unsustainable. This is a disadvantage too of Kant because it makes this theory very rigid and demanding.
The second principle means to an end - well you could say use animals because they are not rational beings but it would have to be a maxim like only kill animals under extreme circumstances because of the first universalisability maxim. Another disadvantage is that is it really fair to say animals and the environment can be treated as a means to an end on the basis that they are not ration beings.
Strengths would include it gives humans priority and could theoretically prevent huge crises like climate change.
From Locke’s work it isn’t clear whether he is a compatibilists or incompatibilist. However, his work can be used to illustrate both views.
Locke provides a metaphor for hard determinism to show how our ‘free-will’ as it were is an illusion. He says imagine a man in a locked in a dark room, he is not aware of the fact that he is locked and makes a choice that he wants to stay in the room. Actually the man has no choice and he has an illusion of free-will.
Locke goes on to say that in order to have free-will you need to have two things:
Choice - so the man in the room doesn’t have a choice but to have free-will is to have a choice between being in the room and outside it.
Ability: You need to be able to exercise your choice for example if you are lying on a hospital bed tied up to several drips etc although you have a choice to walk out you do not have the ability to make that choice.
So, essentially what Locke is trying to say is in certain situation we have no choice and ability therefore our actions are determined however the times when we do have this we have free-will. So we can see Locke’s views as soft determinism.
Aristotle differentiated between ‘oecinoicus’ small scale trading just above the subsistence level and ‘chrematiske’ which is trading for profit. He did not agree with the latter and viewed people engaging in it as selfish parasites. Therefore, firms should not be charging sky high prices and making supernormal profits. - Not realistic and why would someone take the risk and become and entrepreneur then?
Virtue theory is about developing virtues within community so eudaimonia which is a high societal stage of human flourishing can be achieved. Virtue theory follows the stakeholder view of business ethics which is endorsed by Harvard Business School.
Employees and Employers
Employees have to create a good environment for employees to work in, by this we mean one where they can cultivate the virtues.
Justice is one the moral virtues and one of the means by which this can be achieved is whistle-blowing hence why whistle-blowing is seen as a moral action on virtue ethics.
Work is a school of character formation because it is where we learn to acquire certain virtues like scientific knowledge.
Weaknesses
Corporations in reality are uncomfortable with thinking about justice, honesty etc.
Is it really practical to have virtues as opposed to rules and regulations? How could we develop a code that was dedicated to embodying virtuous behavior, the development of virtue in stakeholders and the ultimate aim of well-being for all concerned?
Why would someone want to become and entrepreneur and take a large risk where the reward is simply the chance of eudaimonia? Also, as Aristotle himself points out not everyone will develop their virtues and fulfill their potential which means it makes it very hard for a business to survival on the basis of corporate social responsibility.
Strengths
Virtue Ethics insists on care and respect for the worth of the individual rather than assignment to an abstract mass market.
Virtues such as justice, honesty. prudence, courage, hope, endurance are among the more critical building blocks to which construct a stable economy.
Aquinas stresses that the virtues are “habits productive of good action, directed at work well done.”
Some may class as using this theory as “too difficult” but this would be to forget Thomas More’s Utopia ‘“You must not abandon the ship just because you cannot control the winds.”
The father of economics, Adam Smith, was influenced by virtue theory. He theory of specialisation and division of labour can be seen to have close link with this theory.
Issues surrounding sexual ethics and Ancient views surrounding sexual ethics
When sexual ethics is explored at A2 there are four specific topics which are: contraception, premarital sex, extramarital sex and homosexuality.
Contraception
This area focuses on exploring the purposes of sex and hence whether contraception is something which is morally acceptable. By far this area has the most conflicting views. Contraception is also an important topic because it has some serious implication for example, the world population and amount of unwanted babies that are born.
Premarital Sex
This not only focuses on what the purpose of sex is but in what context it can be performed. This is am important issues because it poses deeper questions like do children need to born into a married couple? Does the relation of the two individuals involved matter or whether it is done after marriage? Personally, I find this the most interesting point because over the years changes in attitudes towards this has changed the most.
Extramarital Sex
This area is concerned with sex being performed outside of marriage. Up till today there are still very negative views towards this because it seems to dismiss the purpose of marriage. It is also something which is not associated with positive outcomes which is what usually spurs these negative feelings.
Homosexuality
This like premarital sex has seen a huge shift in attitudes. Civil partnerships are now legal and a homosexual couple is not seen as something evil (in most people’s eyes). It is important because it questions our human rights, if we are of a different sexuality then do we not have the same rights as anyone else to express it?
Ancient Views
Pythagoreans and Stoics
Disapproved of sexual activity as it is not holy. Pythagoreans believed prevent the progress of the soul because it is bodily.
Plato
Feminist and believed in equality between women and men.
Sex is solely there to procreate and distracts us of our paths.
It should be conducted between two people who have no relationship so no one person is put down (quite literally!)
He suggested breeding parties be held were only the elite of society were allowed to have sex and breed.
Once the baby was born women should go back to working the way they did and the baby should be looked after by nurses in nurseries.
Rather strange idea in my opinion.
Cyrenaics
The celebrated pleasure and sensual enjoyment.
The encouraged sexual activity and all forms of it.
They saw sex as a supreme good and believed variety was a spice of life.
Epicureans
They had the right balance saying the pleasures of the mind need to be balanced with activities such as sex.
Bible
Old Testament had an all in all positive attitude to sex.
The Song of Songs in this is a whole book on love making
However, it still demonstrated a rather society.
New Testament seems to be focused around sex being used as a mechanism to have children. This was encouraged by the Thomastic approach which used cause as a way of determining morality.
In this video I explore how Kantian ethics can be applied to business and consumers; employees and employers; business and globalisation; and business and the environment.
Application of Kantian ethics to Business ethics
Employees + Employers
Kantian Ethics has one fundamental belief which protects both employees and consumers and that is that profit is not an end in itself. Implying that firms cannot exploit consumers and employees for profit and profit should be used to satisfy all stakeholders. Kantian ethics follows the Stakeholder theory which is supported by Havard Business School. Kant saw business enterprises as moral communities which is further support to the view that employees and consumers should be treated with care and respected.
Employees are also expected to work in a democratic manner i.e. contributing to business decisions and the third formulation, Kingdom of Ends principle, implies that employees have a right to whistle blow in fact it is their duty to do so. Employees should also not give or accept bribes or engage in any similar activity e.g. sleeping with your boss to get a promotion as this cannot be universalized.
There are two crucial practical application of Kantian Ethics in respect to the relationship between employees and employers. The first is that contracts cannot be broken and must be fulfilled. This is because if contracts were allowed to be dismantled on a universal scale havoc would be caused.This protects employees as in theory redundancies should not be allowed (but now they are written in contracts!). The second is that a scheme called Open Book Management and it has been popular among firms. This supports views held by Kantian ethics as it every so often is a way of informing employees on a one-to-one basis on their progress, career opportunities etc.
Business + Consumers
Clearly, if the ends and means principle was taken literally then business and commerce could not exist because ‘price’ would not exist. However, Kant a canny business man himself made no delay when chasing students for lecturer’s fees. This shows that Kant himself had no problem with fees. What he had a problem is firm’s overcharging and using consumers purely as a means of making profit.
Kant explains this more clearly with his greengrocer example. In this example he says two shopkeepers selling homogenous goods for £3. However, grocer A utilizes this price because this is the market price but grocer B charges this price so the consumer does not go to grocer A. The later grocer would be doing an immoral thing because he is using the consumers as a means to an end.
Business + the Environment
When we looked at environmental ethics an interesting point is that Kant would give the environment legal rights not moral rights (Paul Taylor’s point of view). This makes sense when we explore the relationship between business and the environment. Businesses should follow environmental law as this is something that can be universalised. So basically businesses need to use the environment in moderation due to the universalisability principle.
Business + Globalisation
In this area of business ethics I will focus on the use of cheap labour abroad. Kant would disagree with businesses using cheap labour abroad in countries like India and China. The first reason is that the point of using cheap labour is to cut costs and maximise profits and Kant said you cannot use these workers as a means to an end. Furthermore, they should be treated equally to workers in the UK. Four conditions should be met in order for using labour from overseas to be correct and those are (i) workers must freely chose work (ii) the work should be ‘meaningful’ and provide opportunities (iii) workers should be allowed to develop morally and (iv) the salary must be fair and leisure activities of some sort should be offered. It can be conceived, that duty and goodwill gets rid of problems of globalisation!
Strengths
The stakeholder approach is supported by Havard Business School which demonstrates the practicality.
The idea that there is nothing wrong with fees and that Kantian ethics can be applied through schemes like Open Book management make the theory practical.
It preserves the dignity of individuals and provides a critique to utilitarianism
Promotes democracy and fairer business atmosphere
Bowie believes this can help promote world peace
Supports businesses adhering to laws (a bit like Natural Law)
Weakness
It is impossible to 100% apply this theory to business ethics given the nature of Kantian ethics which makes it unrealistic
Also, can we really make firms not be driven by profit but rather by duty?
It talks about the grocers and their motivation but if you are a monopoly or a similar market structure how can you arrive at a fair price?
What are the responsibilities of employees, employers and on a wider level businesses? Production and distribution of goods? How profits be handled? Who should run markets? What is the fairest type of market?
Purpose of businesses
The purpose of a business determines what are the rights and wrongs of a business and how it acts. As everyone has various opinions on what is the purpose of a business, for A2 OCR RS, three important theories should be learnt. The first is Shareholder theory which is advocated by the famous economist Milton Friedman. He believed the sole purpose of business is to profit maximise , ‘There is one and only one social responsibility of business...to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game’. So just from this theory we can see how the purpose of a business determines how a business runs e.g. if we follow stakeholder then employees should be paid as less as possible in order to maximise profits. The second theory is Shareholder theory and is perhaps the most popular. It is supported by Havard Business School and Preference utilitarian Peter Singer. This theory suggests that the sole purpose of a business is to satisfy its stakeholders and hence contribute to the well-being of society. The last theory is perhaps arguably the most abstract, it is Contractarian theory. This theory is advocated by John Rawls, Dunfee and Donaldson and presents the idea that ‘business is a means fir distributing justice’. This means that businesses should work with two principles: liberty and social justice.
Welfare of employees, predominately in the West, is a major ethical issues. In the UK we have various laws which do this. In the UK, 1978, the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) was set up. Its purpose is to negotiate in disputes and arguable has been very successful, as there have been few major employee disputes. Ethics can guide to us to get a good balance between interests of employees and employers.
Information awareness
This is an important issue which we consider when looking at the relationship between businesses and consumers. Is it unethical for firms not to inform their consumers or manipulate the information? Should advertising exist?
Corporate social responsibility
This is a fairly new objective that firms pursue. It is mainly driven through demand from consumers for an environmentally aware firm. This is another branch of business ethics which is important for example, should a firm be ‘green’ as a response to consumer demand or for the environment itself.
There are many other areas such as use of cheap labor overseas, fair trade and other important case studies for example the Ford Pinto case which you will see in my other posts!
NL provides a stakeholder theory which can be applied to BE. This means that the purpose of a business is to satisfy all its stakeholders not just shareholders. In this post we will explore four branches within BE: the relationships between employees and employer; business and consumers; business and the environment; and business and globalisation. In addition, the strengths and weaknesses will be explored as well. When applying NL to BE there are two main sources of guidance we look to the 10 commandments (remember this is a Catholic teaching) and the formation of rules through primary precepts.
Employees and Employers
The Decalogue provides some good advice to how the relationship between employees and employers should be. Business must shut on Sunday as this is the day of Sabbath and the fourth commandment says ‘thou must remember Sabbath day, keep it holy’. Employers are expected not to behave rivalrous towards other firms in the industry as the tenth commandment suggest ‘Thou must not covet thy neighbor’. This implies that employers should treat employees with respect and value and not exploit them or their wages in order to compete with other firms. Employees, however, are also expected to behave in a certain way too for example they are expected not to steal (8th commandment). Furthermore, they are expected to whistle-blow if they see any practice which is moral and for this they should be rewarded. This belief stems from the commandment ‘thou must not bear false witness’ (9th commandment).
The primary precepts also provide some guidance as to how the relationship between employers and employees should be. The precept of life, education and most interestingly reproduction apply here. For example the precept of life determines that we should be kind and respectful to one another, the precept of education encourages employers to train and educate employees and the precept of reproduction implies that maternity and paternity leave should be given and employees should be respected for taking a leave not looked down upon.
Business and Consumer
Similarly, we can draw conclusions from Natural Law when exploring the relationship between business and consumers. Like employees consumers are expected not to steal or bear false witness. Businesses are also expected to charge a fair price for their goods and services because if the price is to high some people may interpret this as being stealing. Furthermore, consumers need to have all the information because this can also be seen as a form of deception.
Business and the Environment
Given that one of the primary precepts is worshipping God, we can induce that businesses should act as stewards and not exploit the environment as this is one way of worshipping God. Where possible green policies should be implanted e.g. use of solar panels.
Business and globalisation
This branch of BE looks at the utilization of cheap labour abroad in places like India and China. NL promotes the care and protection of the vulnerable hence workers in these countries should be cared and protected for. Furthermore as we saw in the employees and employers sections workers need to be given a fair wage and good working conditions.
Strengths
Supports laws that already exist e.g. informing the consumer
Supports Havard University’s stakeholder theory
Promotes fairness and equality
Has some great implications for the future
Weaknesses
Is it realistic?
The idea of firms not being rivalrous and competing has some problems e.g. in economics we see this can lead to adverse affects for the consumers
You can’t satisfy employees with good pay, working conditions etc and consumers with low prices - they clash.
In this video I explore the application of utilitarianism to four aspects of business ethics (employees and employers, business and consumers, business and the environment and business and globalisation). I also look at some of the strengths and weaknesses with the utilitarian approach to business ethics.
Application of utilitarianism to business ethics
Employees and Employers
In act utilitarianism any action is permissible given that it increases pleasure for the greatest number of people and a successful business does exactly this. Therefore, there is no correct way to treat employees. It is completely fine to exploit workers. Rule utilitarianism however differentiates between the material pleasures of the consumers and shareholders and the the higher pleasures of taking care of employees. This implies that there should exist a code of conduct on how to treat employees. Preference utilitarians look at all the preferences and keeping workers happy is one of the company’s preferences because it determines how motivated people are and hence the productivity of the firm. For this reason it is important to treat employees properly. Whistle-blowing is an acceptable activity for utilitarians because it produces pleasure for consumers, employees and the market.
Business and Consumers
According to Bentham all of the pleasures of consumers should be met as they are the biggest stakeholder and so a business should do everything they want e.g. lower price, provide customer service etc. Mill would say, obviously consumer happiness is important but this should not override the pleasures of employees who work for that business. Preference utilitarianism suggests that a mid-point should be found between this ‘trade-off’ of consumers material preference and employees welfare preferences. The Ford Pinto case is where Ford realised that their batch of cars was faulty but still decided to sell them on the grounds that compensation was a lot cheaper. However, this raises questions about utilitarianism. In principle utilitarianism should agree what Ford did. The consumers were happy because they found compensation and so was the shareholders however this means that the faulty cars could have caused an accident and this makes utilitarianism a lesser consumer friendly ethical theory.
Business and Globalisation
This section is mainly concerned with cheap labour used overseas in places like India and China. Bentham as we can imagine would have no problem with this because the pain of the group of employees is significantly less than the material happiness that consumers find from the products. Mill would be in total disagreement and would forbid child/slave labour as he said before the welfare pleasures of employees are much higher than any financial and material pleasures. Singer’s belief in human intrinsic worth would prevent humans from being utilized to make cheap products overseas.
Business and the Environment
This is similar to when we look at issues in environmental ethics. The environment for Mill and Bentham has no intrinsic worth only instrumental. Therefore, Bentham would suggest that businesses would have every right to exploit the environment as long as consumer pleasure was being met. Mill again would disagree and say, no, businesses are allowed to use the environment but in moderation and they should not exploit it because caring for the environment is a higher pleasure than destroying it. Singer believed that the environment has intrinsic worth and so he argues that businesses should limit the amount of damage they do and care about the environment.
Strengths
Businessmen and women like Bentham’s version of utilitarianism because it provides an easy to use cost-benefit way of working out what is right and what is wrong.
The purpose of satisfying the greatest good for greatest number seems logical, practical and realistic.
It is an egalitarian theory - no one person is worth more. (Well consumers are in act utilitarianism.)
Weaknesses
The greatest good for greatest number, seems to be focused around greatest good for consumers which makes an unequal distribution of good arise.
Not always possible to predict consequences or calculate utility particularly when large amount of data are required (particularly if this theory were to be used in reality).
No common definition of good exists.
It has some dangerous implications e.g. the subjection of workers
There are mixed views which means it does not fit exactly in stakeholder or shareholder theory and makes it confusing.
In this video I explore Freudian beliefs about the conscience.
Freud and the conscience - transcript
Freud provided a developmental approach to the conscience which explained why people have different explanations of the conscience and use different moral reasoning.
Freud first divided the human pshye into three sections to explain this: the Id, ego and the superego.
The id is the innate part of us which has two main desires: sex and aggression. These are desires we are born with and provide most of the energy in human life. “We are programmed by instinctive psychic structures in the unconscious mind”
The ego is our conscious self: the part of us which is seen by the rest of the world and the part of us that tries to control the id. The ego is acquired it is not innate.
The Superego is what Freud believes is our conscience. It carries guilt from the anger and disapproval of other, forming a set of moral controls. This part is usually always in conflict with the id. For religious people Freud says this is the so called rejection from God and for non-religious people it is rejection from external authorities such as teachers, parents, government etc.
Strengths
Explains why people have different moral beliefs and belief their conscience is the voice of God.
It makes sense and is fairly realistic understanding of our conscience
His work provided the foundation for other developmental theorists such as Piaget and Kohlberg
Explain why different things are acceptable in different societies
Weaknesses
Can be seen to be too simple we can’t simply act in a certain way because of guilt
To say we are motivated by sex and aggression makes us seem like animals and for many of us other things motivate us e.g. like getting a good paying job and family
The research his work is based on seems to be a small sample and many psychologist argue that children have other needs not sexual needs when they are between the ages of 3-6.
