...below minimum wage, over working hours, welfare discrimination, etc. This essay is going to discuss the recent case of “BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico” in 2010 that has got many attentions of countries and international actors including some INGOs and WTO. The US president Barrack Obama has compared the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to the September 11 terrorist attacks as he began a tour of the region: "In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come”, said Obama (Telegraph, 2010). We will use the four well-known moral frameworks discussed throughout the semester (utilitarianism, contractualism, ethics of virtue and deontology) to analyse why and how heavy the impact that disaster had on society under different points of view across international actors and the BP company itself. I. The Facts On April 20, 2010, the methane gas from the well, under high pressure, shot all the way up and out of the drill column, expanded onto the platform, and exploded. According to the global views, BP’s oil spill in Mexico was the biggest and the worst environmental disaster in the petroleum industry (even worse than 1989 Exxon Valdez Case). The explosion polluted hundreds of miles of coast, seriously affected local residents and communities and...
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...GE 1301- PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND HUMAN VALUES UNIT I & II – HUMAN VALUES The Story of a Carpenter An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house- building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He would miss his paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by. The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career. When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, the contractor handed over the house key to the carpenter. “This is your house,” he said, “it is my parting gift to you.” What a shock! What a Shame! If only he had known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he built none too well. (Modified from LIVING WITH HONOUR by SHIV KHERA) Do we find ourselves in similar situations as the carpenter? Moving through our work hours fast paced, driven to “get the job done”, without much thought to moral values. How do we regain our focus as individuals and organizations? This is the challenge for the employee and the employer. Ethics are fundamental standards of conduct by which we work as a professional. VALUES Values...
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...Metaethics Metaethics is a branch of analytic philosophy that explores the status, foundations, and 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...
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