‘Hear no evil’ – how typical corporate communication leaves out the ethics
Evidence from the 2018 Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry was not the first and won’t be the last revelations of unethical behaviour in business. In fact, it’s been a busy few years for anyone interested in business ethics.
We have seen the Panama Papers and Unaoil scandals play out, the muddied relationship between Clive Palmer and Queensland Nickel (who was in charge of the company, really?), managers falsely inflating earnings at Target and an admission of fraud by a senior manager at Seven Network.
Ethical issues involving accusations of dishonesty, bribery, corruption, fraud and theft are, sadly, never too far away from the news. Sometimes that ethical failure has an easily identifiable cause – someone who negligently steered a course into moral hazard or selfishly set out to do something they knew was wrong. It’s also easy to identify a solution: we deal with those people through education, punishment or both.
But what about those more commonplace ethical slip-ups – the ones that don’t fall into the #epicfail bucket or make headlines, at least not immediately? Where it’s not so easy to find a guilty person in need of punishment? It’s useful to think of these as instances of ethical drift – where an organisation unconsciously drifts away from its ethical True North.
How does ethical drift happen?
A big factor could simply be the way people communicate within an organisation. Ethical context, insight and commentary is easily lost in day-to-day business communications, and it can happen in a number of ways:
The ethical framework is nowhere to be seen
Most organisations have a mission statement about their purpose, values and principles, which is expected to provide the overall direction for the company. But this ethical framework is rarely localised or given the same status as other performance indicators. That makes it hard for people to stand back and assess if, for instance, a change management project is on track to reinforce the organisation’s values as well as meeting other objectives.
Emphasis on short time periods
Internal reporting is time-driven. The emphasis on monthly, quarterly or yearly figures makes it seem irrelevant to include commentary about longer term ethical symptoms or effects. As a result, the ethics of an activity are not assessed with the same regularity and urgency.
Managing up
Managers do manage up. As reports go up the line they narrow the focus of the reader and set the agenda for what might need to be understood. Such reports tend to leave out any information that might go against the usual approach or beliefs, be unclear or prompt questions. On one hand – fair enough. Who wants to get a management report and be confused? But the downside is that the reader might be being well managed toward a certain conclusion rather than being well informed.
The glut of communication
We are drowning in information, so wherever possible reporting is abbreviated and metricated. Qualitative assessments are expected to be backed by hard figures and compared against something – a benchmark, a previous period or a competitor’s results. Assessing whether an organisation is still heading in the right ethical direction isn’t something that lends itself to metrification. And if a report’s format doesn’t include a space for ethical insights, it sends a signal that it’s not important or welcome.
Misplaced emphasis on annual staff surveys
Whether an organisation is on course for its True North is often determined by an annual staff survey. Frequently, such surveys ask people to put a numerical score (say, one to 10) on how well their team lives the ethics of the organisation. This can act as a quick point-in-time morale check, but it hardly lets people question an organisation’s accepted norms. It takes an extra level of sophistication for an organisation to change its routine reporting to capture ethical insights and measures, and to put them on an equal footing with routine performance measures.
For organisations to function at their ethical best, they need to have proactive, fearless but humble debate. But it’s hard to foster debate in an environment where reporting tools are very narrowly defined and don’t link back to the organisation’s ethical framework.
Instead, organisations need a culture where questioning is not treated as a ‘gotcha’ opportunity. Where leaders welcome information that indicates all might not be simple and rosy. Where ambiguity creates interest rather than fear. And where numerically insignificant data or exceptions are not confused with ethical insignificance.
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BY Trent Moy
Trent works as a sessional academic and is a Senior Consultant with The Ethics Centre. Prior to specialising in organisational ethics, culture, and corporate responsibility, he spent more than 25 years in corporate roles with a particular focus on financial services. He has also worked across marketing, strategy and sustainability. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Community Directors which seeks to improve the governance of Australia’s not-for-profit organisations.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Gender quotas for festival line-ups: equality or tokenism?
This article was originally published on THUMP for VICE. Read the original article here.
Diversity matters. Slowly but surely, we’re becoming increasingly conscious of the ethics of representation. From #OscarsSoWhite to the recommendation that ABC’s Q&A increases the amount of women present on the program, there’s a growing sense that if non-white, non-male professionals are to succeed, they need to see others who look like them succeeding. As Marie Wright Edelman wrote, “You can’t be what you can’t see”.
Nor can you be what you can’t hear.
Last year, The Guardian reported that, from a sample of 12 UK music festivals – including major ones such as Glastonbury and Creamfields – 86 percent of performers were male. Australia doesn’t do much better. The 2015 VIVID Live festival was criticised when, of more than 50 acts, only three featured women in any capacity. And the numbers aren’t very different in the US.
These are but a few instances of a growing conversation about gender diversity in the music industry. In one sense, we shouldn’t be surprised this conversation is going on. After all, gender equality in corporate workplaces has been the subject of widespread debate for more than a decade. Why should music be any different? And, if there isn’t any difference, should music festivals accept some social responsibility and impose gender quotas on their line-ups?
First things first; should music be any different when it comes to our expectations of gender diversity? The arguments in favour of gender diversity at festivals seem to be the same as they are elsewhere – they’ve been listed in detail in a report by the Centre for Ethical Leadership. In short, encouraging women’s presence in industries broadens market appeal, attracts more women to participate in the industry or event, and supports women’s rights to equal treatment, participation and representation. So why not pursue it?
Opponents might argue that actively forcing diversity is tokenism, that choosing in favour of women means potentially ignoring more qualified male acts who also deserve to be there. After all, it’s not their fault they were born men, is it? Men’s rights activists unite!
Is it the responsibility of festival producers to change our tastes for us any more than it’s the job of Macca’s to get us craving kale chips rather than fries?
This argument is hard to make in music, though. For one thing, what does it mean to be ‘qualified’? And how might we decide which of two similarly popular acts is more entitled to perform? Furthermore, the whole ‘tokenism’ argument presumes diversity isn’t intrinsically valuable, but that claim needs to be argued for.
There’s every likelihood that three male acts might share a large chunk of audience. So, even if all three outperform a female act in terms of ticket sales, if the women’s act has an entirely different audience they’d then be the better choice, wouldn’t they? Just like if a board of directors is looking for a variety of insights, they would be foolish to hire a bunch of similarly qualified white guys. Even if each of them deserves to be there on merit, it doesn’t follow that all of them deserve to be there together.
Another concern is that festival producers aren’t convinced diversity leads to broader market appeal or, more crucially, greater profits. Festival organisers want guaranteed ticket sellers – and for reasons feminists have been talking about for decades – the top ticket sellers are usually men. Is it the responsibility of festival producers to change our tastes for us any more than it’s the job of Macca’s to get us craving kale chips rather than fries?
When we picture a music artist, what do they look like? For many… they’re young and white.
The argument that ethics comes second to profits isn’t a new one, and it can seem easily dismissed – but if it’s a genuine question of survival, you can see where the organisers are coming from. They’re taking on all the financial risk, so why should they take on any more? If people start buying more tickets to female acts, they’ll book them!
So he question becomes who is responsible for bringing diversity to the industry? Organisers claim it’s the audience who buy the tickets. Many musicians believe they could sell more tickets if festivals had the courage to blood some diverse acts. And most listeners won’t concede to having any gender bias in their listening habits, even if, coincidentally, most of their favourite acts are men.
And here’s the rub – most of the barriers to diversity in representation, in any sphere, aren’t deliberate acts of oppression. They’re the product of unconscious bias. When we picture a music artist, what do they look like? For many, I’d hazard they’re young and white. In some genres – hip hop, for instance – it might be different, but the dominance of men is likely to remain. This is despite the huge success of some female artists in a range of different genres.
The tricky thing about unconscious biases is that it’s harder to specify who’s responsible for countering them. Many will hold that it’s the people bearing the bias, but if they’re not aware they’re biased to begin with, it’s likely to be a slow burn.
People who are seen to benefit from quota systems are often seen as less qualified than those appointed ‘on merit’ – even by other people who have benefited from quotas.
And thus the argument for quotas – by enforcing a minimum standard for representation we force the issue. Festivals make their commitment to diversity public and transparent – and artists and listeners can hold them accountable. Plus, we don’t need to wait around for listeners to wake up to their own biases.
But quotas are no panacea. People who are seen to benefit from quota systems are often seen as less qualified than those appointed ‘on merit’ – even by other people who have benefited from quotas. This suggests the ‘tokenism’ narrative around quotas is hard to shake, and might even be creating negative self-appraisals in the very people quotas are designed to help.
So rather than having arbitrary thresholds for diversity, maybe it’s preferable for festivals to include diversity alongside other values – fun, integrity, artistry and so on – as one of the defining aspects of a festival. This means seeking diversity (and not just diversity of gender) as intrinsically valuable, rather than implementing quotas that make it seem like a necessary evil.
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Ethics Explainer: Ad Hominem Fallacy
Ad hominem, Latin for “to the man”, is when an argument is rebutted by attacking the person making it rather than the argument itself. It is another informal logical fallacy.
The logical structure of an ad hominem is as follows:
- Person A makes a claim X.
- Person B attacks person A.
- Therefore, X is wrong.
When you see the logical structure of the argument it becomes clear why it’s a fallacy. The truth or falsehood of X has nothing to do with the person arguing in support of it. Imagine if X had been written down and you didn’t know who was arguing the case. If you couldn’t prove it wrong with arguments, then you can’t prove it wrong at all.
Here are some common ad hominem arguments:
Argument from abuse
Steve: “I don’t think we should catch a taxi to dinner. It’s just a short walk and the environment doesn’t need the extra pollution.”
Jaime: “You would say that – you’re so cheap!”
Jaime’s rebuttal doesn’t address Steve’s argument. Instead it abuses him as a person. Not only is this unpleasant, it’s fallacious because Steve’s character doesn’t impact on the truth or falsehood of what he said.
‘Tu quoque’ fallacy
Jaime: “Now that online streaming services are affordable and available in Australia, there’s no justification for pirating films anymore. People shouldn’t do it.”
Steve: “But earlier you’d said you were about to download a torrent for the new Game of Thrones!”
‘Tu quoque’ is Latin for “you also”. The ‘tu quoque’ fallacy occurs when an argument is rebutted because the arguer’s own behaviour is contrary to what they’re arguing. While this is a good way of highlighting hypocrisy, it isn’t a refutation. Just because a person doesn’t ‘walk the walk’ doesn’t mean what they say is false.
Appeal to authority
Steve: I don’t believe in God. Richard Dawkins is an atheist and he’s really smart.
The appeal to authority is actually a reverse ad hominem in which the credentials of another person are used to strengthen an argument. Rather than relying on arguments against God’s existence, Steve relies on the authority of other people who don’t believe in God.
Although it isn’t criticising the person making the argument, it still doesn’t deal with the argument itself. The appeal to authority is another kind of ad hominem fallacy.
Note that the ad hominem fallacy only applies to attempts to discredit (or strengthen) an argument by reference to the person making the argument. In court cases, lawyers will often use a person’s character to prove or undermine their credibility.
This is not necessarily a case of ad hominem – credibility is about whether or not we should believe whether a person is telling the truth, not whether the arguments they make are reasonable ones or not.
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Capitalism is global, but is it ethical?
Does the dominant economic system of the Western world withstand moral scrutiny? Trevor Treharne asks leading moral philosophers and experts.
While economics are seldom discussed in directly ethical terms, it is through the spirit of moral inquiry that today’s capitalist societies were originally imagined.
Adam Smith, the 18th century thinker known as the father of modern economics and capitalism, was first and foremost a moral philosopher.
Smith’s famous metaphor of ‘the invisible hand’ attempted to describe the wider social benefits that result from individual actions. Capitalism was designed to be ethical, but is it?
The achievement of capitalism
Assuming society has certain obligations – the reduction of poverty, the improvement of health and the extension of human happiness – capitalism plays an important role.
“The best things about capitalism are its mind-boggling productivity and its exquisite sensitivity to what people want and need”, says John Bishop, a moral philosopher at Trent University in the UK and editor of the book Ethics and Capitalism.
Bishop argues that historically and globally, capitalism has caused the life expectancy of people to rise from about 28 years to over 70 years.
“Much of this has been through reducing infant and child mortality – a most ethical goal – and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty.”
“Capitalism creates net new wealth on a scale the world has never before seen”, he says.
Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker says that it’s hard to have an intelligent discussion about capitalism because too many people confuse “capitalism” with “unregulated capitalism with no social welfare”. Their criticisms have nothing to do with capitalism itself but about whether it’s a good idea for governments to regulate economic activity to provide social benefits. This is completely compatible with capitalism, as the capitalist economies of Scandinavia, Canada, and New Zealand prove.
“Putting aside that red herring, there are several advantages to capitalist economies, apart from generating wealth that makes rich and poor alike better off”, Pinker says.
“Countries that trade with each other are less likely to start wars with each other, because with effective markets it’s cheaper to buy things than to steal them.”
“Also, in a market economy, other people are more valuable to you alive than dead. All of this reduces some of the exploitative incentives of war and conquest”, Pinker adds.
The issues with capitalism
Bishop warns that capitalism has a tendency to distribute its benefits in an extremely unequal fashion.
“It also has the inability to value important things that do not have market value such as human dignity, caregiving, the climate, the environment, and people who have nothing to offer the market, such as children, the severely disabled, and the elderly”, he says.
Bishop says capitalism also fails to account for the needs of future generations.
“Given this, our ethical duty is to mitigate the harms and omissions of capitalism without serious disruption of its immense productivity and wealth creation.”
Simon Tormey, a political theorist at The University of Sydney, says the problems of capitalism depend on the governing system it operates within.
“What has tended historically to dictate which end of the [ethical] spectrum capitalism appears on is the ability of ordinary people to rein back capitalism’s excesses through the actions of the state on the one hand, and of social movements such as trade unions on the other”, he says.
“Countries with strong states and strong social movements are able to develop forms of capitalism that are quite ethical in this respect and Scandinavia would perhaps offer the most complete examples.”
“However, countries where there is authoritarian governance, where trade unions and other social movements are weak, are often characterised by a highly unethical and obnoxious form of capitalism that prays on individual weakness to generate profits for a small minority.”
Tormey adds that unfortunately much of the evidence of the past 40 years suggests a progressively slippery slope to domination by “the 1%” and thus to “unethical capitalism”.
Not perfect, but superior
Society is ordered by picking a preference from a series of competing systems, all of which flourish and flounder in varying degrees.
It is not sensible to overthrow a system such as capitalism on the mere basis of a few potential pitfalls.
But noting the issues can start a conversation about its reform or adaption.
“Is capitalism ethical? As compared to what?” asks moral philosopher Peter Singer.
“So far, none of the alternatives tried have done nearly as good a job as capitalism of keeping most of the population out of poverty and even providing them with a reasonable level of comfort.”
“Until we have evidence that there is another system that can do better, the sensible course seems to be to stick with capitalism and attempt to deal with its flaws rather than to abandon it”, Singer adds.
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BY Trevor Treharne
Trevor Treharne is a news editor at Yahoo7 and is completing a Masters of Bioethics at the University of Sydney.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Philosophy must (and can) thrive outside universities
A recent article in ABC Religion by Steve Fuller described philosophy being “at the crossroads”. The article explores philosophy’s relationship to universities and what living a “philosophical life” really looks like.
Reading it, my mind whisked me back to some of my earliest days at The Ethics Centre. Before returning to Sydney, I enjoyed the good fortune to complete my doctorate at Cambridge – one of the great universities of the world. While there, I mastered the disciplines of academic philosophy. However, I also learned the one lesson that my supervisor offered me at our first meeting – I should always “go for the jugular”. As it happens, I was quite good at drawing blood.
Perhaps this was a young philosopher’s sport because, as I grew older and read more deeply, I came to realise what I’d learned to do was not really consistent with the purpose and traditions of philosophy at all. Rather, I had become something of an intellectual bully – more concerned with wounding my opponents than with finding the ‘truth’ in the matter being discussed.
This realisation was linked to my re-reading of Plato – and his account of the figure of Socrates who, to this day, remains my personal exemplar of a great philosopher.
The key to my new understanding of Socrates lay in my realisation that, contrary to what I had once believed, he was not a philosophical gymnast deliberately trying to tie his interlocutors in knots (going for the jugular). Rather, he was a man sincerely wrestling, with others, some of the toughest questions faced by humanity in order to better understand them. What is justice? What is a good life? How are we to live?
The route to any kind of answer worth holding is incredibly difficult – and I finally understood (I was a slow learner) that Socrates subjected his own ideas to the same critical scrutiny he required of others.
In short, he was totally sincere when he said that he really did not know anything. All of his questioning was a genuine exploration involving others who, in fact, did claim to ‘know’. That is why he would bail up people in the agora (the town square) who were heading off to administer ‘justice’ in the Athenian courts.
Surely, Socrates would say, if you are to administer justice – then you must know what it is. As it turned out, they did not.
The significance of Socrates’ work in the agora was not lost on me. Here was a philosopher working in the public space. The more I looked, the more it seemed that this had been so for most of the great thinkers.
So that is what I set out to do.
One of my earliest initiatives was to head down to Martin Place, in the centre of Sydney, where I would set up a circle of 10 plastic chairs and two cardboard signs that said something like, “If you want to talk to a philosopher about ideas, then take a seat”. And there I would sit – waiting for others.
Without fail they would come – young, old, rich, poor – wanting to talk about large, looming matters in their lives. I remember cyclists discussing their place on our roads, school children discussing their willingness to cheat in exams (because they thought the message of society is ‘do whatever it takes’).
Occasionally, people would come from overseas – having heard of this odd phenomenon. A memorable occasion involved a discussion with a very senior and learned rabbi from Amsterdam – the then global head (I think) of Progressive Judaism. On another occasion, a woman brought her mother (visiting from England) to discuss her guilt at no longer believing in God. I remember we discussed what it might mean to feel guilt in relation to a being you claimed not to exist. There were few answers – but some useful insights.
Anyway, I came to imagine a whole series of philosophers’ circles being dotted around Martin Place and other parts of Sydney (and perhaps Australia). After all, why should I be the only philosopher pursuing this aspect of the philosophical life. So I reached out to the philosophy faculty at Sydney University – thinking (naively as it turned out) I would have a rush of colleagues wishing to join me.
Alas – not one was interested. The essence of their message was that they doubted the public would be able to engage with ‘real philosophy’ – that the techniques and language needed for philosophy would be bewildering to non-philosophers. I suspect there was also an undeclared fear of being exposed to their fellow citizens in such a vulnerable position.
Actually, I still don’t really know what led to such a wholesale rejection of the idea.
However, I think it was a great pity other philosophers should have felt more comfortable within the walls of their universities rather than out in the wider world.
I doubt that anything I write or say will be quoted in the centuries to come. However, I would not, for a moment, change the choice I made to step outside of the university and work within the agora. Life then becomes messy and marvellous in equal measure. Everything needs to be translated into language anyone can understand (and I have found that this is possible without sacrificing an iota of philosophical nuance).
I think it was a great pity other philosophers should have felt more comfortable within the walls of their universities rather than out in the wider world.
You constantly need to challenge unthinking custom and practice most people simply take for granted. This does not make you popular. You are constantly accused of being ‘unethical’ because you entertain ideas one group or another opposes. You please almost nobody. You cannot aim to be liked. And you have to deal with the rawness of people’s lives – discovering just how much the issues philosophers consider (especially in the field of ethics) really matter.
This is not to say that ‘academic’ philosophy should be abandoned. However, I can see no good reason why philosophers should think this is the only (or best) way to be a philosopher. Surely, there is room (and a need) for philosophers to live larger, more public lives.
You constantly need to challenge unthinking custom and practice most people simply take for granted. This does not make you popular.
I have scant academic publications to my name. However, at the height of the controversy surrounding the introduction of ethics classes for children not attending scripture in NSW, I enjoyed the privilege of being accused of “impiety” and “corrupting the youth” by the Anglican and Catholic Archbishops of Sydney. Why a ‘privilege’? Because these were precisely the same charges alleged against Socrates. So far, I have avoided the hemlock. For a philosopher, what could be better than that?
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Ethics Explainer: Dirty Hands
The problem of dirty hands refers to situations where a person is asked to violate their deepest held ethical principles for the sake of some greater good.
The problem of dirty hands is usually seen only as an issue for political leaders. Ordinary people are typically not responsible for serious enough decisions to justify getting their hands ‘dirty’. Imagine a political leader who refuses to do what is necessary to advance the common good – what would we think of them?
Michael Walzer steps in
This was the question philosopher Michael Walzer asked when he discussed dirty hands, and another philosopher, Max Weber, had asked before him.
Walzer asks us to imagine a politician who is elected in a country that has been devastated by civil war, and who campaigned on policies of peace, reconciliation and an opposition to torture. Immediately after this politician is elected, he is asked to authorise the torture of a terrorist. The terrorist has hidden bombs throughout apartments in the city which will explode in the next 24 hours. Should the politician authorise the torture in the hope the information provided by the terrorist might save lives?
Finding common ground
This is a pretty common ethical dilemma, and different ethical theories will give different answers. Deontologists will mostly refuse, taking the ‘absolutist’ position that torture is an attack on human dignity and therefore always wrong. Utilitarians will probably see the torture as the action leading to the best outcomes and argue it is the right course of action.
What makes dirty hands different is it treats each of these arguments seriously. It accepts torture might always be wrong, but also that the stakes are so high it might also be the right thing to do. So, the political leader might have a duty to do the wrong thing – but what they are required to do is still wrong. As Walzer says, “The notion of dirty hands derives from an effort to refuse ‘absolutism’ without denying the reality of the moral dilemma”.
The paradox of dirty hands – that the right thing to do is also wrong – poses a challenge to political leaders. Are they willing to accept the possibility they might have to get their hands dirty and be held responsible for it? Walzer believes the moral politician is one who has dirty hands, acknowledges it, and is destroyed by it (because of feelings of guilt, punishment and so on): “it is by his dirty hands that we know him”.
Note that we’re not talking about corruption here where politicians get their hands dirty for their own selfish reasons, like fraudulent reelection or profit. What we’re talking about is when a politician might be obliged to violate their deepest personal values or the ethical creeds of their community in order to achieve some higher good, and how the politician should feel about having done so.
A remorseful politician?
Walzer believes politicians should feel wracked with guilt and seek forgiveness (and even demand punishment) in response to having dirtied their hands. Other thinkers disagree, notably Niccolo Machiavelli. He was also aware political leaders would sometimes have to do ‘what’s necessary’ for the public good. But even if those actions would be rejected by private ethics, he didn’t think decision makers should feel guilty about it.
Machiavelli felt indecision, hesitation, or squeamishness in the face of doing what’s necessary wasn’t a sign of a good or virtuous political leader – it was a sign they weren’t cut out for the job. Under this notion, the good political leader won’t just accept getting their hands dirty, they’ll do it whenever necessary without batting an eyelid.
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Ethics Explainer: Double-Effect Theory
Double-effect theory recognises that a course of action might have a variety of ethical effects, some ‘good’ and some ‘bad’.
It can be seen as a way of balancing consequentialist and deontological approaches to ethics.
According to the theory, an action with both good and bad effects may be ethical as long as:
- Only the good consequences are intended (we don’t want the bad effects to occur, they’re just inescapable, even if they can be foreseen).
- The good done by the action outweighs the harm it inflicts.
- The bad effect is not the means by which the good effect occurs (we can’t do evil to bring about good – the good and bad consequences have to occur simultaneously).
- The act we are performing is not unethical for some other reason (for example, an attack on human dignity).
- We seek to minimise, if possible, the unintended and inadvertent harm that we cause.
Double-effect is best explained through the classic thought experiment: the Trolley problem.
Imagine a runaway train carriage is hurtling down the tracks toward five railroad workers. The workers are wearing earmuffs and unable to hear the carriage approaching. You have no way of warning them. However, you do have access to a lever which will divert the train onto a side-track on which only one person is working. Should you pull the lever and kill the one man to save five lives?
Take a moment to think about what you would do and your reasons for doing it. Now, consider this alternative.
The train is still hurtling toward the five workers but this time there’s no lever. Instead, you’re a lightweight person standing on a bridge above the railroad. Next to you is a very large man who would be heavy enough to stop the train. You could push the man onto the tracks and stop the train, but it would kill the heavy man. Should you push him off the bridge?
Again, think about what you would do and why you would do it.
Did you say ‘yes’ in the first scenario and ‘no’ in the second? That’s the most common response, but why? After all, in each case you’re killing one person to save five. According to many consequentialists that would be the right thing to do. By refusing to push the man off the bridge, are we being inconsistent?
Double-effect theory provides a way of consistently explaining the difference in our responses.
In the first case, our intention is to save five lives. An unintended, foreseeable consequence of pulling the lever is the death of one worker. But because the stakes are sufficiently high, our intended act (pulling a lever to redirect a train) isn’t intrinsically wrong. The good consequences outweigh the bad. The negative outcomes are side-effects of our good action, and so, we are permitted to pull the lever.
In the second case, the death of the heavy man is not a side-effect. Rather, it is the means (pushing the man off the bridge to stop the train) by which we achieve our goal (saving the five men). The negative outcomes are not unavoidable side-effects that occur at the same time as the good deed. It is causally prior to and directly linked to the good outcome.
This fact has ethical significance because it changes the structure of the action.
Instead of ‘saving lives whilst unavoidably causing someone to die’, it is a case of ‘killing one person deliberately in order to save five’. In the lever scenario, we don’t need the one worker to die in order to save the five. In the latter, we need the heavy man to die. Which means when we push him, we are intentionally killing him.
Double-effect is used in a range of different contexts. In medical ethics it can be used to explain why it would be ethical for a pro-life pregnant woman to take life-saving medicine even if it would likely kill her unborn child (unintended side-effect). It also explains the actions of doctors who increase the dose of opiates to end pain – even though they know that the dosage will end the patient’s life.
In military ethics it explains how an air strike which causes some unavoidable ‘collateral damage’ (the death or injury of non-combatants) might still be permissible – assuming it meets the criteria described above and involves the proportionate and discriminate use of force.
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“Animal rights should trump human interests” – what’s the debate?
Are the ways humans subject animals to our own needs and wants justified?
Humans regularly impose our own demands on the animal world, whether it’s eating meat, scientific testing, keeping pets, sport, entertainment or protecting ourselves. But is it reasonable and ethical to do so?
Humans and animals
We often talk about humans and animals as though they are two separate categories of being. But aren’t humans just another kind of animal?
Many would say “no”, claiming humans have greater moral value than other animals. Humans possess the ability to use reason while animals act only on instinct, they say. This ability to think this way is held up as the key factor that makes humans uniquely worthy of protection and having greater moral value than animals.
“Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as means to an end. That end is man.” – Immanuel Kant
Others argue that this is “speciesism” because it shows an unjustifiable bias for human beings. To prove this, they might point to cases where a particular animal shows more reason than a particular human being – for example, a chimpanzee might show more rational thought than a person in a coma. If we don’t grant greater moral value to the animal in these cases, it shows that our beliefs are prejudicial.
Some will go further and suggest that reason is not relevant to questions of moral value, because it measures the value of animals against human standards. In determining how a creature should be treated, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, “… the question is not ‘Can they reason?’, nor ‘Can they talk?’, but ‘Can they suffer?’”
So in determining whether animal rights should trump human interests, we first need to figure out how we measure the value of animals and humans.
Rights and interests
What are rights and how do they correspond to interests? Generally speaking, you have a right when you are entitled to do something or prevent someone else from doing something to you. If humans have the right to free speech, this is because they are entitled to speak freely without anyone stopping them. The right protects an activity or status you are entitled to.
Rights come in a range of forms – natural, moral, legal and so on – but violating someone’s right is always a serious ethical matter.
“Animals are my friends. I don’t eat my friends.” – George Bernard Shaw
Interests are broader than rights and less serious from an ethical perspective. We have an interest in something when we have something to gain or lose by its success or failure. Humans have interests in a range of different projects because our lives are diverse. We have interests in art, medical research, education, leisure, health…
When we ask whether animal rights should trump human interests, we are asking a few questions. Do animals have rights? What are they? And if animals do have rights, are they more or less important than the interests of humans? We know human rights will always trump human interests, but what about animal rights?
Animal rights vs animal welfare
A crucial point in this debate is understanding the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Animal rights advocates believe animals deserve rights to prevent them from being treated in certain ways. The exploitation of animals who have rights is, they say, always morally wrong – just like it would be for a human.
Animal welfare advocates, on the other hand, believe using animals can be either ethical or, in practice, unavoidable. These people aim to reduce any suffering inflicted on animals, but don’t seek to end altogether what others regard as exploitative practices.
As one widely used quote puts it, “Animal rights advocates are campaigning for no cages, while animal welfarists are campaigning for bigger cages”.
Are they mutually exclusive? What does taking a welfarist approach say about the moral value of animals?
‘Animal rights should trump human interests’ took place on 3 May 2016 at the City Recital Hall in Sydney.
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‘Eye in the Sky’ and drone warfare
Warning – general plot spoilers to follow.
Collateral damage
Eye in the Sky begins as a joint British and US surveillance operation against known terrorists in Nairobi. During the operation, it becomes clear a terrorist attack is imminent, so the goals shift from surveillance to seek and destroy.
Moments before firing on the compound, drone pilots Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) see a young girl setting up a bread stand near the target. Is her life acceptable collateral damage if her death saves many more people?
In military ethics, the question of collateral damage is a central point of discussion. The principle of ‘non-combatant immunity’ requires no civilian be intentionally targeted, but it doesn’t follow from this that all civilian casualties are unethical.
Most scholars and some Eye in the Sky characters, such as Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), accept even foreseeable casualties can be justified under certain conditions – for instance, if the attack is necessary, the military benefits outweigh the negative side effects and all reasonable measures have been taken to avoid civilian casualties.
Risk-free warfare
The military and ethical advantages of drone strikes are obvious. By operating remotely, we prevent the risk of our military men and women being physically harmed. Drone strikes are also becoming increasingly precise and surveillance resources mean collateral damage can be minimised.
However, the damage radius of a missile strike drastically exceeds most infantry weapons – meaning the tools used by drones are often less discriminate than soldiers on the ground carrying rifles. If collateral damage is only justified when reasonable measures have been taken to reduce the risk to civilians, is drone warfare morally justified, or does it simply shift the risk away from our war fighters to the civilian population? The key question here is what counts as a reasonable measure – how much are we permitted to reduce the risk to our own troops?
Eye in the Sky forces us to confront the ethical complexity of war.
Reducing risk can also have consequences for the morale of soldiers. Christian Enemark, for example, suggests that drone warfare marks “the end of courage”. He wonders in what sense we can call drone pilots ‘warriors’ at all.
The risk-free nature of a drone strike means that he or she requires none of the courage that for millennia has distinguished the warrior from all other kinds of killers.
How then should drone operators be regarded? Are these grounded aviators merely technicians of death, at best deserving only admiration for their competent application of technical skills? If not, by what measure can they be reasonably compared to warriors?
Moral costs of killing
Throughout the film, military commanders Catherine Powell and Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) make a compelling consequentialist argument for killing the terrorists despite the fact it will kill the innocent girl. The suicide bombers, if allowed to escape, are likely to kill dozens of innocent people. If the cost of stopping them is one life, the ‘moral maths’ seems to check out.
Ultimately it is the pilot, Steve Watts, who has to take the shot. If he fires, it is by his hand a girl will die. This knowledge carries a serious ethical and psychological toll, even if he thinks it was the right thing to do.
There is evidence suggesting drone pilots suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other forms of trauma at the same rates as pilots of manned aircraft. This can arise even if they haven’t killed any civilians. Drone pilots not only kill their targets, they observe them for weeks beforehand, coming to know their targets’ habits, families and communities. This means they humanise their targets in a way many manned pilots do not – and this too has psychological implications.
Who is responsible?
Modern military ethics insist all warriors have a moral obligation to refuse illegal or unethical orders. This sits in contrast to older approaches, by which soldiers had an absolute duty to obey. St Augustine, an early writer on the ethics of war, called soldiers “swords in the hand” of their commanders.
In a sense, drone pilots are treated in the same way. In Eye in the Sky, a huge number of senior decision-makers debate whether or not to take the shot. However, as Powell laments, “no one wants to take responsibility for pulling the trigger”. Who is responsible? The pilot who has to press the button? The highest authority in the ‘kill chain’? Or the terrorists for putting everyone in this position to begin with?
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Ethics Explainer: Naturalistic Fallacy
The naturalistic fallacy is an informal logical fallacy which argues that if something is ‘natural’ it must be good. It is closely related to the is/ought fallacy – when someone tries to infer what ‘ought’ to be done from what ‘is’.
The is/ought fallacy is when statements of fact (or ‘is’) jump to statements of value (or ‘ought’), without explanation. First discussed by Scottish philosopher, David Hume, he observed a range of different arguments where writers would be using the terms ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and suddenly, start saying ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’.
For Hume, it was inconceivable that philosophers could jump from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ without showing how the two concepts were connected. What were their justifications?
If this seems weird, consider the following example where someone might say:
- It is true that smoking is harmful to your health.
- Therefore, you ought not to smoke.
The claim that you ‘ought’ not to smoke is not just saying it would be unhealthy for you to smoke. It says it would be unethical. Why? Lots of ‘unhealthy’ things are perfectly ethical. The assumption that facts lead us directly to value claims is what makes the is/ought argument a fallacy.
As it is, the argument above is unsound – much more is needed. Hume thought no matter what you add to the argument, it would be impossible to make the leap from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ because ‘is’ is based on evidence (facts) and ‘ought’ is always a matter of reason (at best) and opinion or prejudice (at worst).
Later, another philosopher named G.E. Moore coined the term naturalistic fallacy. He said arguments that used nature, or natural terms like ‘pleasant’, ‘satisfying’ or ‘healthy’ to make ethical claims, were unsound.
The naturalistic fallacy looks like this:
- Breastfeeding is the natural way to feed children.
- Therefore, mothers ought to breastfeed their children and ought not to use baby formula (because it is unnatural).
This is a fallacy. We act against nature all the time – with vaccinations, electricity, medicine – many of which are ethical. Lots of things that are natural are good, but not all unnatural things are unethical. This is what the naturalistic fallacy argues.
Philosophers still debate this issue. For example, G. E. Moore believed in moral realism – that some things are objectively ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. This suggests there might be ‘ethical facts’ from which we can make value claims and which are different from ordinary facts. But that’s a whole new topic of discussion.
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