4. Approaches to Moral Evaluation 1/2

Moral evaluation means judging whether an action, decision, policy, or business practice is ethically right or wrong.

1. Utilitarianism: Which action creates the best overall consequences?

2. Rights: Which action respects individual rights?

3. Justice: Which action distributes benefits and burdens fairly?

4. Care: Which action protects important relationships and people who depend on us?

Utilitarianism is the act of judging an action by its consequences.

-> The morally right action is the one that creates the greatest overall benefit and the least overall harm.

Which option produces the most good and the least harm for everyone affected?

Bentham argued that morality should aim to produce:

The greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

For Bentham, utility means increasing pleasure and preventing pain.

Happiness means pleasure and the absence of pain.

• An action is better when it creates more pleasure and less suffering.

Mill agreed that actions should increase happiness.

However, he argued that some pleasures are more valuable than others.

He called these higher pleasures.

• Higher pleasures: intellectual, cultural or moral activities, such as learning or creating art.

• Lower pleasures: basic physical enjoyment, such as eating or entertainment.

  
  

Mill believed that people who understand both kinds normally prefer higher pleasures.

1. Identify the possible actions.

2. Estimate the benefits and costs of each action for everyone affected.

3. Subtract the costs from the benefits.

4. Choose the action with the greatest net utility.

   
   

• Direct consequences: immediate results of a decision.

• Indirect consequences: later or less visible results.

For example, safer aircraft may directly prevent accidents and indirectly improve the airline’s reputation.

It encourages decision-makers to:

• examine consequences;

• compare different options;

• consider everyone affected;

• use resources efficiently;

• search for the greatest social benefit at the lowest cost.

Some benefits and harms cannot be measured accurately.

Examples:

• the value of a human life;

• happiness & pain;

• dignity;

• friendship;

• environmental damage.

Managers cannot know every future result of a decision. Regulations, customer behaviour, technology and economic conditions may change.

Therefore, a cost-benefit analysis is often based on uncertain assumptions.

Utilitarianism may allow one person or a minority to be harmed when doing so benefits a larger number of people.

Example: it might permit violating one person’s privacy when many others would benefit.

Utilitarianism focuses on the total amount of benefit, but it may ignore how that benefit is distributed.

A policy could create a large total benefit while making poor or vulnerable people worse off.

A right is an individual’s justified entitlement to something or to be treated in a particular way.

-> A right held by one person normally creates a duty for someone else.

• Legal rights: come from a particular legal system.

• Moral or human rights: belong equally to all human beings simply because they are human.

  
  

A legal right may differ between countries.

A moral right should apply everywhere.

• Utilitarianism focuses on the welfare of society as a whole.

• Rights theories focus on protecting each individual.

  
  

Rights limit what society may do to a person, even when harming that person would benefit many others.

1. Positive moral rights — the right to receive basic help and resources.

   
   

2. Negative moral rights — the right to freedom and protection from interference or harm.

   
   

3. Contractual rights — the right to have valid agreements respected

A negative right requires other people to avoid interfering with someone.

Examples:

• right to privacy;

• freedom of speech;

• right to property;

• freedom from injury.

  
  

A positive right requires others or society to provide help or resources.

Examples:

• food; healthcare; education; social security; protection from violence.

  
  

A contractual right is created through an agreement between specific people or organizations.

Example: When a customer pays for a product, the customer has a right to receive the promised product.

1. The parties understand what they are agreeing to.

2. No important information is falsely presented.

3. Nobody is forced or threatened.

4. The agreement does not require an immoral action.

Nozick believed that individual liberty and property rights should not be violated, even when violating them could increase overall happiness.

He supported a very limited government.

• laws protecting people from their own choices;

• laws against harmless private behaviour;

• taxation used to redistribute wealth.

  
  

Libertarians believe people should be free as long as they respect the rights of others.

Locke argued that every person has natural rights to:

• life;

• liberty;

• property.

  
  

Government is legitimate only when it is based on consent and protects these rights.

Kant believed morality is based on human reason and duty, not simply on happiness or consequences.

For Kant, true freedom means acting according to rational moral principles.

Act only according to a rule that you could accept as a rule for everyone. Requries universalizability and reversibility

Ask:

1. What would happen if everyone acted this way (universalizability)?

2. How would you like it if someone did that to you (reversibility)?

 Never use people only as means to your ends, but always…

• treat them as they freely and rationally consent to be treated

• help them pursue their freely and rationally chosen ends

People must not be manipulated, deceived or exploited.

Human beings have an equal dignity -> that sets them apart from things such as tools or machines and that makes it wrong to:

• manipulated,

• deceived, or

• otherwise unwillingly exploited

Just to satisfy the self-interests of another

Note: Becasue no one human is worth more than the other, thus the suffering of one human being cannot justify the happiness of another.

Kant’s categorical imperative asks whether we could accept a rule as a universal law.

-> We can’t rationally want this rule to apply to everyone because we might one day need such help ourselves.

Kant’s second formulation says that people must be treated as ends in themselves, not merely ignored or used.

-> Therefore, people should receive the essential support needed to live as free and rational persons.

Imagine the rule:

This rule cannot reasonably become universal. Nobody could live freely and securely if everyone were allowed to interfere with or injure others.

Kant also says that people must never be treated only as tools.

-> Controlling, injuring or oppressing a person ignores their dignity and ability to make rational choices.

Imagine the rule:

If everyone followed this rule, nobody could trust promises.

-> Contracts would become meaningless because no one would expect agreements to be honoured.

Deception also treats another person merely as a means.

-> The deceived person cannot make a free and rational decision because important information is hidden from them.

Therefore, contracts must be:

• entered into freely;

• based on sufficient information;

• free from deception;

• honoured by the parties.