Application of Utilitarianism to Business Ethics

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.

Freud and the conscience

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.

Naturalism

Naturalism

• Belief that moral knowledge can be true as we can prove it through empirical evidence. It is a form of cognitivism.
• We can say something is good if it is provable.
• A good example we can use to describe is that just like the statement ‘David Cameron is the Prime Minister of the UK’ can be verified or falsifies so can ‘killing is wrong’ on the bases of the hurt and pain it causes. 

Strengths

• It is a good attempt at making morality absolute like science.
• It supports our current legal system.

Criticisms

• Moore said that you cannot derive an ought (a value) from an is (a fact) which is what naturalism does by saying ethical and non-ethical statements can verified or falsified.
• Moore also puts forward the Open Question Argument. Moore attempts to define good and said we can’t because for example if we say good is pleasure than this means anything I find pleasurable is good even if it is hurting people. This has huge problems and kills the Naturalism argument.

Intuitionalism

Non-naturalism - Intuitionalism

• This is where ethical statements cannot be proved through empirical evidence, at most by examples. For non-naturalists something is good because it is good. It is not something that can be defined by experience.
• GE Moore compares defining good to defining a color - it is impossible to define without showing it and when ‘good’ is said everyone has a different interpretation of it. 
• If I am asked ‘what is good’ my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter.
• Moore’s approach lead to the creation of intuitionalism.
• A special faculty called called moral intuition helps us understand basic moral principles. 
• H.A. Pritchard said intuitionalism was the joining of reason and human intuition. Reason brought together facts of the situation and intuition worked out what is the right thing to do. He believed good wasn’t the only thing that couldn’t be defined - obligation couldn’t too. We all know when we ought to do a certain act. These are all different for everyone as everyone has a different moral intuition and some developed clearer than others. He also identified that obligations could and said that in these cases our intuition choses the higher obligation. 
• W.D.Ross was also a big supporter of intuitionalism, he created the term ‘prima facie duties’ which means duties at first appearance. He said these duties are ones which are identified by the identifies them and applies them to our situation. 

Strengths

• Particularly Ross’s account where he gives a personal account makes everything very realistic.
• Supports the idea of morality and defeats the naturalistic fallacy which other accounts are a victim of.

Criticisms 

• The existence of the intuition and what it is is quite vague.
• We can never know whose intuition is right making moral discourse extremely difficult. 

Natural Law and Environmental Ethics

One of the central principles in Natural Law is the idea of doing what is 'good' and avoiding what is 'evil'. This principle implies that exploitation and abuse of the environment would be wrong as it is something it is evil. However, humans are higher and have a higher purpose hence for those reasons we are allowed to control and use the environment just not exploit or abuse it.

For some Natural Law thinkers even controlling the environment is wrong because the telos of the natural world gives it intrinsic worth. Although, personally I believe this clashes with the telos of humans, the primary precepts. For example, reproduction and living are primary precepts and to be able to do this man needs to control the environment, to be able to provide food for his kin etc.

Some acts of destruction can be justified because if by destroying habitats one is able to provide shelter for humans then the principle of double effects say that consequences of the two must be weighed up and it seems fine to suggest animal loose their home for humans.

It is important though that we protect species because it is God's divine creation and by protecting and caring for them we are able to appreciate the creator and fulfil the primary purpose of worshipping God.

Strengths

- Can lead to some positive changes in our society.

- Does not have radical or dangerous outcomes.

- Clear and easy to use.

- For theist obviously it is a benefit that they take God's creation into account.

Weaknesses

- Some rules formulated by this theory don't work. For example, pollution is seen as evil as it destroys God's creation and causes harm to some humans (asthma). The theory suggests that pollution should not be committed to any degree however this is not realistic.

- Not universal - does not make sense why atheist should follow suit.

- Sometimes it is important to exploit some people or nature in order to promote long-term happiness which Natural Law dismisses.

Emotivism

In this video I discuss what is emotivism and the views of Hume, GE Moore, Ayer and Stevenson and the strengths and criticisms of this branch of emotivism. 

Emotivism - Notes

• It is a non-cognitive branch of meta-ethics which means that it believes we have no moral knowledge. 
• Emotivists believe that ethical statements are meaningless are they are just opinions.

Hume 

• He said the reason why we act so kind and nice to one another is because we genuinely feel compassion for one another not that we are trying to obey some kind of moral law or that our reason dictates us to do so.
• He to identified that there was naturalistic fallacy that normative ethicists make and that is  that we cannot get an ought (value) from an is (fact).

G E Moore

• He extended Hume’s views on the naturalistic fallacy by suggesting just like we can replace the term ‘unmarried man’ with ‘bachelor’ we cannot replace ‘pleasurable’ or ‘nice’ etc with ‘morally good’. It simply does not work.

Ayer

• Ayer was a logical positivist who belonged the Vienna Circle. These members used a verification principle to try and deduce whether statements were meaningless or meaningful.
• Subsequently, he believed the only meaningful statements that exist were analytic (true by definition e.g. 2+3=5) or synthetic (they could be verified through observation e.g. the cat is black, we can check through evidence whether this is correct).
• Hence, he concluded that ethical statements were just emotive responses to our preference, attitudes or feelings.
• Ayer describes this as the ‘Boo-Hurrah’ theory. By this he means that when we say, for example, abortion is wrong what we are saying is boo abortion and if we were to say charity work is good it is like saying hurrah charity work.

Stevenson

• Stevenson was an American philosopher who believed just because they were meaningless did not mean they had not purpose.
• The purpose, he suggested was to manipulated and change people’s opinions and behavior and the effect was obviously that people did this.
• He went as far as to differentiate between two types of language in order to explain this. The first is descriptive language which simply describes things e.g. ‘she washed her hair’ and the second is dynamic language. Dynamic language is used to express our feelings or to evoke our feeling e.g. ‘I am so tired just if you understood how hard and tiring it is to sort out accounts’.
• In moral discourse dynamic language is important for several reasons for example it is useful in manipulating your opponent and as ‘abortion is wrong is not a fact’ the only way you can make it seem like one is by the use of emotion.

So why is there so much moral discourse?

• This is termed ‘moral deadlock’ and what it means is that your opponent is a moral discourse will never agree with your opinion and so emotion is basic human way of manipulating and persuading them.

Strengths

• Valid and logical contributions for the 21st century.
• They raise fundamental question which is good because it is keeping us on our feet!

Weaknesses

• It is not a popular theory.
• James Rachel says that it is illogical to draw parallels between ‘ouch’ I burnt my finger and ‘abortion is wrong’.
• Dismissive of all moral discourse which makes it impractical and hence not a realistic theory people should adhere or listen to.
• Peter Vardy said emotivism is just bizarre as it suggests that moral discourse is just ‘a lot of hot air’.
• Has dangerous implications for the future - it questions our judicial system e.g. why is it wrong to kill someone?
• Advertisement, blackmail etc use emotion to manipulate and are not ‘facts’ so does that mean they are meaningless too?
• McIntyre points out there are times in language were we do not mean what we literally say e.g.‘I am boiling’ does not mean I am literally boiling in a pan and Stevenson does not account for these occasions. 
• McIntyre also points out that it is hard to find evidence that our primary motive is to manipulate one another.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivism 

• R.M. Hare suggests that ethical statements are more than just expressions of opinion. They suggest a prescription. For example, if I saw ‘abortion is wrong’ what I am actually doing is prescribing you not to commit abortion.
• Hare felt that Ayer and Stevenson’s approach was too subjective and that ethical statements prescribe behaviors and attitudes. 
• The statements are universal and because of these universal qualities , it is in our best interest to prescribe to them
• Because moral statements are prescriptive and they are absolute ideas to follow.
• Another difference between emotivism and prescriptivism is that Hare suggests that reason has a role to play in moral statements.

Strengths

• He made a case for universal and prescriptive moral statements while accounting for the work carried out by Ayer.
• It would be beneficial to have moral system to have common rules and that a person’s moral system may have influence over others.
• It supports our legal system.

Criticisms

• The relativist philosopher J.L.Mackie disagreed and said morals are nor absolute and universal. He believed that in reality Hare’s theory did not work. As morals are something that vary from person to person a good example is too look at cultural differences.
• The extent of a universal maxim - can a maxim cover the similar situation but with different individuals?
• Raises questions about who has authority to prescribe.
• Foot points out that we can point out how good someone is without the intention to become a better person them-self.