...what the consensus of experts believe about an issue? Professional Journals * Why is it important to rely on a consensus rather than individual experts views? Some experts just start drama, past experts have been wrong. Why is it important to rely on consensus rather than individual experts views? -a consensus is more likely to be correct * How is truth defined in class? As defined in class, a statement is true and only true if it matches up with the way things are. * What are the main points of each of the Quickie Arguments? Morality does not equal legality, tradition, profit, standard procedure, not being responsible, offensive Which of the following is one of the points to be drawn from the failure of the Quickie Arguments discussed in class? -something being offensive doesn’t make it morally wrong. The point of one or more of the quickie arguments discussed in class was that -morality is not to be equated with what is frequently done,...
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...corruption and bribery become a controversial issue worldwide. Some countries including the U.S. and China have specific laws to resist these conducts, but some countries like Somalia consider corruption and bribery as a tool of doing business. This difference between countries is due to the deeply cultural distinction. After reading chapter five on ethical values, it brings me a good argument about the definitions of morality and ethics. According to the textbook, ethical relativism and ethical objectivism are two different principles (Lawhead, 2010). Ethical relativism states that the human option decides a person's standpoints to judge if a conduct is ethical or not, while ethical objectivism states the moral principles, which is universally acceptable regardless of the individual and society, do exist and it is objective (2010). These two principles are all true. For example, murder is considered as illegal and unacceptable worldwide. This conduct fits for the ethical objectivism. On the other hand, prostitution is considered as unethical and immoral conduct in China while it is a legitimate occupation in Japan. This is an instance of the ethical relativism. In this journal, I will focus on the ethical relativism. First of all, we should know the definition of bribery. It means to voluntarily offer payment by someone seeking unlawful advantages (Wikipedia). In the U.S., in order to prohibit this conduct, Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA) is established, which forbids...
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...scope of moral values, properties, and words. Whereas the fields of applied ethics and normative theoryfocus on what is moral, metaethics focuses on what morality itself is. Just as two people may disagree about the ethics of, for example, physician-assisted suicide, while nonetheless agreeing at the more abstract level of a general normative theory such as Utilitarianism, so too may people who disagree at the level of a general normative theory nonetheless agree about the fundamental existence and status of morality itself, or vice versa. In this way, metaethics may be thought of as a highly abstract way of thinking philosophically about morality. For this reason, metaethics is also occasionally referred to as “second-order” moral theorizing, to distinguish it from the “first-order” level of normative theory. Metaethical positions may be divided according to how they respond to questions such as the following: * Ÿ What exactly are people doing when they use moral words such as “good” and “right”? * Ÿ What precisely is a moral value in the first place, and are such values similar to other familiar sorts of entities, such as objects and properties? * Ÿ Where do moral values come from—what is their source and foundation? * Ÿ Are some things morally right or wrong for all people at all times, or does morality instead vary from person to person, context to context, or culture to culture? Metaethical positions respond to such questions by examining the semantics...
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...can be said against them? Are they really reasonable for me to hold? Are their implications in this or that particular situation reasonable?” Ethics is the study of moral standards, the process of examining the moral standards of a person or society to determine whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable in order to apply them to concrete situations and issues. The ultimate aim of ethics is to develop a body of moral standards that we feel are reasonable to hold standards that we have thought about carefully and have decided are justified standards for us to accept and apply to the choices that fill our lives. Ethics is not the only way to study morality. The social sciences such as anthropology, sociology and psychology also study morality, but do so in a way that is quite different from the approach to morality that is characteristic of ethics. Although ethics is a normative study the social sciences engage in a descriptive study of ethics....
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...In Conjunction with History of Ethics Instructor: Robert Cavalier Teaching Professor Robert Cavalier received his BA from New York University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duquesne University. In 1987 he joined the staff at Carnegie Mellon's Center for Design of Educational Computing (CDEC), where he became Executive Director in 1991. While at CDEC, he was also co-principal in the 1989 EDUCOM award winner for Best Humanities Software (published in 1996 by Routledge as A Right to Die? The Dax Cowart Case). He also coauthored the CD-ROM The Issue of Abortion in America (Rountledge, 1998) Dr. Cavalier was Director of CMU's Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy from 2005-2007. He currently directs the Center's Digital Media Lab which houses Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly), and is also co-Director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy. Co-Editor of Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy (St. Martin's/Macmillan, England, 1990), Editor of The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives (SUNY, 2003) and other works in ethics as well as articles in educational computing, Dr. Cavalier is internationally recognized for his work in education and interactive multimedia. He was President of the "International Association for Computing and Philosophy" (2001 - 2004) and Chair of the APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers (2000-2003). Dr. Cavalier has given numerous addresses and...
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...Study Guide: Lesson 16 Philosophy of Religion: Introduction Read chapter. 1 of Philosophy of Religion: Thinking About Faith, “What is Philosophy of Religion?” As you read, make sure you understand the following points and questions: Explain the distinctions between philosophy of religion and sociology, history, theology, and religious philosophy. philosophy of religion focus on the truth and reasonableness of religious beliefs. While the historian or sociologist may study religious beliefs, but his focus is not specifically on the truth or reasonableness of such belief theologian looks at religous beliefs from within, as an adherent or representative of a religous tradition. philosophy of religon may be engaged in by thinkers who are not religous at all, as well as by committed religous thinkers philosophy of religion not so much religious thinking as it is thinking about religion. Religious Philosophy is Religious thinking Explain the arguments for and problems with fideism. Fideism: human beings are never religously neutral; they are always either in faithful service to or in rebellion against God. Claims that faith is the precondition for any correct thinking about religion Problem: fideist cannot attempt to win over his critics by rational argument as the presupposition of such dialouge means the possibility of common ground (fideists deny common ground) eliminates the possibility of showing the nonbeliever the superiority of a religous worldview where should...
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...Forms Plato’s Theory of Forms is similar to many other beliefs about the world. For instance, Heraclitus’ notion was that we see a world of perception in constant flux of which we have no true knowledge, while Zeno believed that we can see a static unchanging world and it can be grasped through reason. Plato’s theory is strongly based on what is real and what is not. What is real is thought to be perfect, but something cannot be real or perfect if it is transient. He explains that the World of Forms is very different to the World of Shadows. The World of Forms can only be properly understood by philosophers and those who seek knowledge, not by the ignorant or those who do not wish to learn the truth. The Theory of Forms makes a distinction between those objects that are real and those that are only real in our minds. His dialogues, like the Allegory of the Cave, portray knowledge as the process of leaving the cave and going into the sunlight. The people in the cave find their reality in the shadows cast in the cave and assume there can never be anything beyond these shadows. These shadows symbolise how the world that we see is just a shadow or reflection of what is real. For Plato, the real world is not what we see around us, it is only the World of Forms that is real. Plato believes there are two distinct realms of existence which exists simultaneously. This approach to the two different worlds is know as dualism. The world we live in is a less perfect version of the other...
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...become increasingly complex in a postmodern society where absolutes have given way to tolerance and ambiguity. This particularly affects managers in HR, where decisions will affect people’s jobs and their future employment. This chapter explores some of the ethical dilemmas encountered in the workplace, discussing ethical behaviour and values that relate to HR. It looks at relevant ethical tools, such as utilitarianism and relativism in order to examine current practices in the workplace and their links to corporate social responsibility. Learning outcomes By the end of this chapter, you should be able to: u u u u Critically explore and evaluate the ethical nature of human resource management; Identify and define current ethical and moral issues confronting HR managers; Compare, contrast and critically appraise a range of approaches to ethical analysis; Critically appraise the relevance and usefulness of philosophical analysis to HR practice. Introduction Human Resource Management is a business function that is concerned with managing relations between groups of people in their capacity as employees, employers and managers. Inevitably, this process may raise questions about what the respective responsibilities and rights of each party are in this relationship, and about what constitutes fair treatment. These questions are ethical in nature, and this chapter will focus on debates about the ethical basis of human resource management. EHR_C02.qxd 6/6/07 3:55 PM Page 28 ...
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...AS Religious Studies [pic] PHILOSOPHY & ETHICS Revision Summary Notes Revision Notes Foundation for the Study of Religion Part One: Philosophy of Religion Plato and the Forms Influence of Socrates • Socrates said that virtue is knowledge – to know what is right is to do what is right. • All wrongdoing is the result of ignorance – nobody chooses to do wrong deliberately. • Therefore, to be moral you must have true knowledge. The problem of the One and the Many Plato was trying to find a solution to the problem that although there is underlying stability in the world (sun comes up every morning), it is constantly changing (you never step into the same river twice). 1. An old theory about this problem is that we gain all knowledge from our senses – empirically. 2. Plato disagreed with this. He said that because the world is constantly changing, our senses cannot be trusted. Plato illustrated his idea in the dialogue, ‘Meno’: Socrates sets a slave boy a mathematical problem. The slave boy knows the answer, yet he has not been taught maths. Plato suggests that the slave boy remembers the answer to the problem, which has been in his mind all along. So, according to Plato, we don't learn new things, we remember them. In other words, knowledge is innate. Plato’s Theory of the Forms Plato believed that the world was divided into: 1. Reality and; 2. Appearance |REALITY ...
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...arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Finally, applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war. By using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues. The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry. For example, the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, “where do rights come from?” and “what kind of beings have rights?” 1. Metaethics The term “meta” means after or beyond, and, consequently, the notion of metaethics involves a...
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...Business Ethics (Supplementary Lecture Notes) Mr. Joel C. Porras “Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actios, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, they beconme your destiny.” ANONYMOUS Preliminary Notions: A. Etymological: The word ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” ,meaning : custom, a habitual way of acting character, a meaning that the Latin terms “mos” , “moris” also connote. Among the Greeks , “ethics” meant what concerns human conduct/human action. B. Descriptive: Largely a concern of cultural anthropologists and sociologists. Its task is to describe how some person, members of a culture or society address all sorts of moral issues, what customs they have, and so, how they are accustomed to behave. C. Met-ethics: Concerns itself with the meanings of moral terms: like good and bad, right and wrong, duties and rights, etc. Hence the concern is with the understanding of the use of these terms, their logical forms and the objects to which they refer. Sometimes the concern of meta-ethicist is even more fundamental: What is the possibility of moral philosophy. D. Normative: Ethics is normative, not in the way that logic is, namely. With regard to the correctness of our thinking, but with regard to the goodness of our living, the right orientation of our existence. It is a practical science, not simply because it treats human action,...
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...Source: CHRYSSIDES, GEORGE D. and KALER, JOHN H. (1993). An Introduction to Business Ethics. London: Chapman and Hall. Pages 79−106, 143‒146. [The text is derived from a publisher’s proof, and may differ slightly from the finished book. If quoting, it is best to cite the relevant WOLF page.] CHAPTER THREE ETHICAL THEORY In the previous chapter we looked at the role of values in business and considered how business ethics was becoming part of the professionalization of business. But what exactly are ethical judgments, and how do we justify them? At first appearance this may seem a needless difficulty. After all, is it not obvious what is happening when we make ethical decisions? Do we not do so almost every day of our lives in fact? It is one thing to engage in an activity, but often quite another to state what exactly is going on when we do it. For example, someone may have a tremendous gift for selling goods to people, but may not necessarily be aware, until he or she is taught, exactly what is going on when a successful marketing strategy is put into operation. One can instinctively put into operation the classical ‘three Ps’ of marketing (attention to Product, Price and Packaging), but yet be unaware, until this is pointed out, that these are the key features of selling. In a similar way, we can make moral judgments, but yet find some difficulty in explaining exactly what is taken place when we do so. In the case of ethical judgments, the situation is...
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...adfh JIS S e c 3 (1 ) 2 0 0 7 Journal of Inform ation System Security w w w.jissec.o rg Ethics and Morality - a business opportunity for the Amoral? Ian O. Angell Professor of Information Systems Information Systems Department London School of Economics and Political Science London, United Kingdom Preamble It is common for speakers at computer security conferences to tell audiences that 'they should do' this, and 'should do' that. The word 'should' is regularly thrown about as some jumbled-up mixture of efficiency and ethics, without any justification of the imperative. This paper will concentrate on the ethical issues, and so it will quickly dispose of 'efficiency,' leaving detailed argument for another time. Then, taking the devil's advocate position, it will focus on demolishing the certainty behind the ethical obligation, by questioning the role of ethics in society in general, but specifically in computer security. Indeed this paper will claim that an unsuspected morality and ritual lies behind many real-world security choices and much so-called 'objective' academic analysis. Furthermore, it will propose that such moralistic positions are highly problematic, and that all recommendations phrased in terms of virtue rather than pragmatism be treated as highly suspect. This polemical paper formed the basis of a keynote address given at the 5th Computer Security Conference, held in Las Vegas on the 20th-21st April 2006. 4 Angell, JISSec ...
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...adfh JIS S e c 3 (1 ) 2 0 0 7 Journal of Inform ation System Security w w w.jissec.o rg Ethics and Morality - a business opportunity for the Amoral? Ian O. Angell Professor of Information Systems Information Systems Department London School of Economics and Political Science London, United Kingdom Preamble It is common for speakers at computer security conferences to tell audiences that 'they should do' this, and 'should do' that. The word 'should' is regularly thrown about as some jumbled-up mixture of efficiency and ethics, without any justification of the imperative. This paper will concentrate on the ethical issues, and so it will quickly dispose of 'efficiency,' leaving detailed argument for another time. Then, taking the devil's advocate position, it will focus on demolishing the certainty behind the ethical obligation, by questioning the role of ethics in society in general, but specifically in computer security. Indeed this paper will claim that an unsuspected morality and ritual lies behind many real-world security choices and much so-called 'objective' academic analysis. Furthermore, it will propose that such moralistic positions are highly problematic, and that all recommendations phrased in terms of virtue rather than pragmatism be treated as highly suspect. This polemical paper formed the basis of a keynote address given at the 5th Computer Security Conference, held in Las Vegas on the 20th-21st April 2006. 4 Angell, JISSec adfh The quest for efficiency, where...
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...I. Introduction In this paper I want to outline a metaethical view that I think represents an addition to the standard alternatives in metaethics. I shall indicate how it connects to historical approaches and to some leading views in the contemporary literature. There are several recent authors working along similar lines, but the view emerged in my own work from an extended treatment of emotion, which supplies a somewhat different moral- psychological basis.2 The view is meant to contrast with noncognitivist accounts of ethics in terms of emotion (emotivism and more recent versions of expressivism), but I shall not review in detail the arguments that the basis it assigns to ethics allows for moral realism.3 Instead I want mainly to present the view here and to recommend it for further attention, first in more or less the form in which it emerged, as a way of explaining the special motivational force of moral judgments (Section II), and then recast in somewhat artificial terms, for comparison with another (at least arguably) realist approach to metaethics known as "response-dependency" (Section III).4 My own view can be seen as a social or two-level version of response-dependency, but with a less rigid account of motivational force introduced by the move to the social level. I shall go on to acknowledge some difficulties but also to cite further advantages of my suggested approach on issues of justification (Section IV) and on the question of the relevance of emotion to...
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