Assisted dying: 5 things to think about
Making sense of our lives means thinking about death. Some philosophers, like Martin Heidegger and Albert Camus, thought death was a crucial, defining aspect of our humanity.
Camus went so far as to say considering whether to kill oneself was the only real philosophical question.
What these philosophers understood was that the philosophical dream of living a meaningful life includes the question of what a meaningful death looks like, too. More deeply, they encourage us to see that life and death aren’t opposed to one another: dying is a part of life. After all, we’re still alive when we’re dying so how we die impacts how we live.
The Ethics Centre was invited to make a submission to the NSW Parliamentary Group on Assisted Dying regarding a draft bill the parliament will debate soon. The questions we raised were in the spirit of connecting the good life to a good death.
Simon Longstaff, director of the Centre and author of the submission, writes, “It is not the role of The Ethics Centre to prescribe how people ought to decide and act. Our task is a more modest one – to set out some of the ethical considerations a person might wish to take into account when forming a view.”
Here are some of the key issues we explored, which are relevant to any discussion of assisted dying, not just the NSW Bill.
Does a good life involve suffering?
The most common justification for assisted dying or euthanasia is to alleviate unbearable suffering. This is based in a fairly universal sentiment. Longstaff writes, “To our knowledge, there is no religion, philosophical tradition or culture that prizes suffering … as an intrinsic good”.
Good things can come as a result of suffering. For example, you might develop perseverance or be supported by family. But the suffering itself is still bad. This, Longstaff argues, means “suffering is generally an evil to be avoided”.
There are two things to keep in mind here.
First, not all pain is suffering. Suffering is a product of the way we interpret ourselves and the world around us. Whether pain causes suffering depends on our response: It’s a subjective experience. Nobody but the sufferer can really determine the extent of their suffering. Recognising this could suggest a patient’s self-determination is crucial to decisions around assisted dying.
Second, just because suffering is generally a bad thing doesn’t mean that anything aiming to avoid it is good. We can agree that the goal of reducing suffering is probably good but still need to interrogate whether the method we’ve chosen to reduce suffering is itself ethical.
The connection between a good death and a good life
There’s not always a solution to suffering, no matter what anecdote you try, whether it be medicine, psychology, religion or philosophy. Sometimes suffering stays a while.
When there is no avenue to alleviate someone’s pain and anguish, Longstaff suggests “life can be experienced … as nothing more than an unrelenting and extra-ordinary burden”.
This is the context in which we should consider whether to help someone to end their lives or not. Although many faiths and beliefs affirm the importance and sacredness of life, if we’re thinking about a good, meaningful life, we need to pay some attention to whether life is actually of any value to the person living it. As Longstaff writes, “To say that life has value regardless of the conditions of a person’s existence may justify the continuation or glorification of lives that could be best described as a ‘living hell’”.
He continues, “To cause such a state would be indefensible. To allow it to persist without available relief is to act without mercy or compassion. To set aside those virtues is to deny what is best in our form of being.”
A responsible person should have autonomy over their death
Most people think it’s important for adults to be held responsible for their actions. Philosophers think this is a product of autonomy – the ability for people to determine the course of their own actions and lives.
Some philosophers think autonomy has an intrinsic connection to dignity. What makes humans special is their ability to make free choices and decisions. What’s more, we usually think it’s wrong to do things that undermine the free, autonomous choices of another person.
If we see death as a part of life, not distinct from it, it seems like we should allow – even expect – people to be responsible for their deaths. As Longstaff writes, “since dying is a part of life, the choices people make about the manner of their dying are central considerations in taking full responsibility for their lives”.
The role of the terminal disease
Some proposed laws, like the draft NSW Bill, suggest a person can seek to end their own life when their terminal disease causes them unbearable suffering. So, if you’re dying of lung cancer, you can only end your life if the cancer itself is causing you unbearable pain. It is necessary to consider if assisted dying be restricted in this way.
Imagine you’ve got a month to live and the only thing that gives you meaning is your ability to go outside and watch the sunrise. One day, you break your leg and are bedridden. Should you now be forced to live for a month in a state you find agonising and meaningless because your broken leg isn’t what’s killing you?
Longstaff argues, “If severe pain and suffering are essential criteria for being eligible for assistance, then on the basis that like cases should be treated in a like manner, assistance should be offered to a person who meets all the other specified criteria – even if their pain and suffering is not caused by their illness”.
Who is eligible for assisted dying?
Many laws try to carve out special categories of people who are and aren’t eligible to request assisted dying. They might do so on the basis of life expectancy, whether the illness is terminal or the age of the patient.
In determining who should be eligible, two principles are worth thinking about.
First, the principle of just access to medical care. Most bioethicists agree before we can figure out who receives medical treatment, we need to have a broader idea of what justice looks like.
Some think justice means people get what they need. For these people, granting medical care is based on how urgently it’s required. Others think justice means getting the best outcome. These people think we should distribute medicine in a way that creates the most quality of life for patients.
Depending on how we view justice, we’ll have different views on who is eligible for assisted dying. Is it those whose quality of life is lowest? If so, it might not be terminal cases in need of treatment. Is it those who are most in need of treatment? This might include young children who many people are reluctant to provide assisted dying to. Until we’re clear on this principle, it’ll be hard to decide who is eligible and who is not.
The second principle worth thinking about is to treat like cases alike. This idea comes from the legal philosopher HLA Hart. He thought it was essential for ethical and legal distinctions to be made on the basis of good reasons, not arbitrary measures. A good example is if two people committed the same crime, they should receive the same penalty. The only reason for not treating them the same is if there is relevant difference in the two cases.
This is important to think about in terms of strict eligibility criteria. Let’s say we reserve assisted dying for people over 25 years old, which the NSW draft Bill does. Hart would encourage us to wonder, as Longstaff noted in The Ethics Centre’s submission, “what ethically significant difference lies between a 24-year-old with six months to live and who wishes to receive assisted dying and a 25-year-old in the same condition?”
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The 6 ways corporate values fail
The Ethics Centre works with companies and organisations of all shapes and sizes. We know how different a bank with 40,000 employees is to a small non-profit or a university, or even to a division of the military. Despite that, the same issues arise in business time and again. A failure to live up to corporate values.
One of the first things we do when we start working with an organisation is helping them to define, refine, or re-build their purpose, values, and principles – what we would call an ethical framework. A strong ethical framework is a North Star for all people and all decisions within an organisation.
We frequently encounter companies that have values in place – but they’re not being “lived.” They’re either entirely unknown, or else they are not being used as a reference point. Rarely are they being used to their full potential.
In the course of our work, we’ve uncovered six main ways that corporate values fail to stick.
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Values without purpose or principles
We often encounter a lack of understanding of the way that values, principles and purpose inter-relate. They are fundamentally different and they work best together. Purpose is your “why” (Why does your organisation exist?). Values describe what is good. Principles describe what is right. When making a decision we must ask:
- Does this decision help us achieve our purpose?
- Are we upholding our values in this decision? Is this what we consider to be good?
- Is this decision aligned with what we consider to be right? Is it the right thing to do?
The point about all of this is that we are required to think before we act. Without an ethical framework of purpose, values, and principles, we are left with nothing but a list of rules and behavioural directives. And when we are simply following rules or habits, the critical thinking needed for ethical decision making is removed.
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Leaders failing to lead on values
Ethical frameworks don’t have to start with the CEO or board. It’s been our experience that the best frameworks arise out of consultation with all levels of the organisation. But it is certainly true that it’s the job of all leaders to talk about the values, create a narrative that demonstrates true commitment, and exemplify them in their own behaviour.
This is partly a communication challenge: leaders have to explain the values and tell the story of how they are lived within the organisation. They need to explain how their decisions reflect the values.
But it’s also important the organisation and its stakeholders can see the values being applied constantly and consistently. When leaders fail to do this, the hypocrisy will be noticed and called out – often with disastrous and costly consequences. Hypocrisy over values can destroy the credibility an organisation.
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Designing for a marketing purpose
No offence to marketers, but they definitely shouldn’t be the sole drivers of your ethical framework. In this scenario, the marketing team have identified the need to communicate a particular set of “brand values” to their customers, so they craft uplifting slogans that give the appearance of an ethical framework. Sadly, these values are a facade. They are window dressing designed to sell a product. Managers and staff either don’t know them, can’t relate to them, or don’t know how to use them in decisions.
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Confusing values with behaviours
The danger of HR being the sole architects of your ethical framework is that they will probably build something based on behaviours. Behaviour-based statements tend to describe the desired “good” behaviours and call out the undesirable “bad” ones. They are displayed in posters on the kitchen wall – and the only time they are really discussed is in performance reviews, where they become a stage-gate for a bonus. The employees may find the behaviours helpful in interacting with colleagues within and across teams, but they won’t be very helpful when applied to the big day to day decisions.
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Values not embedded within your systems and processes
The beauty of an ethical framework is that it can help guide every decision that your managers make. This includes major corporate manoeuvres and daily interactions with customers and other stakeholders. But this will only work if your values and principles are embedded in your policies, systems, and processes.
It’s easy for these frameworks to become misaligned. If you uphold corporate values like trust, integrity, and customer service whilst imposing ambitious KPIs that prioritise profit growth above all else, then you will have a confused workforce with no idea what to do. When systems are in conflict with values, bad decisions can be made by well-meaning people.
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People failing to talk about corporate values
You can tell a purpose-led organisation from any other because their values and principles are on display, every day. They’re not just a page on the website, but the subject of daily conversation. They come up time and again in company presentations, in meetings and in micro-interactions. In times of change or disruption, they’re the only way to navigate successfully.
Your people need not only to know what the values are and what they mean; they also need to understand how to communicate with them and apply them to everyday decisions. And perhaps most importantly, you need to foster a culture in which a failure to live the values is explicitly called out. You know a company truly has a strong ethical framework when even the most powerful executive is held to account for not living the values.
Corporate values are much more than mere slogans or behaviours. They are an important and fundamental element in decision making. Organisations are shaped by the choices their individual employees and directors make. And this in itself shapes the world around us.
A famous Australian corporate leader once said that companies are successful when they “make more good choices than bad choices.” If values represent what is good then we know where to look to shape good choices.
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The rise of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on our future
It’s all fun and games until robots actually take over our jobs. AI is in our future and is fast approaching. Simon Longstaff considers how we make that tomorrow good.
Way back in 1950, the great computer scientist, Alan Turing, published in Mind a paper that set a test for determining whether or not a machine possesses ‘artificial intelligence’.
In essence, the Turing Test is passed if a human communicating with others by text cannot tell the difference between a human response and one produced by the machine. The important thing to note about Turing’s test is that he does not try to prove whether or not machines can ‘think’ as humans do – just whether or not they can successfully imitate the outcomes of human thinking.
Although the makers of a chat-bot called Eugene Goostman claimed it passed the test (by masquerading as a 13 year old boy) general opinion is the bot was designed to ‘game’ the system by using the boy’s apparent young age as a plausible excuse for the mistakes it made in the course of the test. Even so, the development of computers continues apace – with ‘expert systems’ and robots predicted to displace humans in a variety of occupations ranging from the legal profession to taxi drivers and miners.
All of this is causing considerable anxiety – not unlike that felt by people whose lives were upended by the development of steam power and mass production during the first Industrial Revolution. Back then people could more or less understand what was going on. The machines (and how they worked) were fairly obvious.
These days the inner workings of our advanced machines are far more mysterious. Coal or timber burning in a furnace is tactile and observable. But what exactly is an electron? How do you see it? And a Q-bit?
Add to this the extraordinary power of modern machines and it is not surprising that some people (including the likes of Stephen Hawking) are expressing caution about the potential threat our own technologies present, not only to our lifestyles, but to human existence. Of course, not everybody is so pessimistic.
However, the key thing to note here is we have choices to make about how we develop our technology. The future is not inevitable – we make it. And that is where ethics comes in.
This is one small example of how our choices matter. At first glance, let’s imagine how wonderful it would be if we could build batteries that never need recharging. That might seem to solve a raft of problems.
However, as Raja Jurdak and Brano Kusy observe in The Conversation, there may be ‘downsides’ to consider, “creating indefinitely powered devices that can sense, think, and act moves us closer to creating artificial life forms.
Couple that with an ability to reproduce through 3D printing, for example, and to learn their own program code, and you get most of the essential components for creating a self-sustaining species of machines.” Dystopian images of the Terminator come to mind.
However, back to Turing and his test. As noted above, computers that pass his test will not necessarily be thinking. Instead, they will be imitating what it means to be a thinking human being. This may be a crucial difference.
What will we make of a medi-bot that tells us we have cancer and tries to comfort us – but that we know can have no authentic sense of its (or our) mortality? No matter how good it is at imitating sympathy, won’t the machine’s lack of genuine understanding and compassion lead us to discount the worth of its ‘support’?
Then there is the fundamental problem at the heart of the ethical life lived by human beings. Our form of being is endowed with the capacity to make conscious, ethical choices in conditions of fundamental uncertainty. It is our lot to be faced with genuine ethical dilemmas in which there is, in principle, no ‘right’ answer.
This is because values like truth and compassion can be held with equal ‘weight’ and yet pull us in opposite directions. As humans we know what it means to make a responsible decision – even in the face of such radical uncertainty. And we do it all the time.
What will a machine do when there is no right answer? Will it do the equivalent to flipping a coin? Will it be indifferent to the answer it gets and act on the results of chance alone? Will that ever be good enough for us and the world we inhabit?
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BY Simon Longstaff
Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. After a period studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, he pursued postgraduate studies as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.
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.
The ethics of smacking children
Every generation likes to reflect on the way they were disciplined. They’re like old war stories, told with the fondness that comes with time and age.
I do the same. I was smacked as a child. For a time, I was convinced my backside was made of something other than flesh, such was its power to shatter wooden spoons. Weirdly, it’s something of a point of pride these days.
When it comes to smacking, it’s not just nostalgic to reminisce like this. It shapes our thoughts about whether smacking is ethical or not. “I was smacked and I turned out fine, so it must be OK.”
But that’s bad logic. The argument is a logical fallacy called “survivorship bias”.
Survivorship bias happens when we focus on those who made it through a difficult process without considering those who didn’t. The logic of “I was smacked and turned out OK” is the same as “I was tortured and I turned out OK”, but the fact you survived it doesn’t make it ethical.
When thinking about smacking, we need some better arguments. Here are a few things to consider.
Smacking is a show of force
With the exception of the grumpy nun from The Blues Brothers known as The Penguin, smacking only works on children who are too small to defend themselves.
Acknowledging this power imbalance changes how some people feel about the act of smacking. Philosopher and parent Damon Young writes, “deliberately striking [kids], whether coolly or in a rage, takes advantage of their weakness”.
Young thinks this is a question of character, writing “I don’t want to be the kind of man who hurts a smaller, weaker person”. Do you want to be the kind of parent who relies on physical power to command discipline, respect or obedience from your child?
Political philosopher Niccolo Macchiavelli said it was “much safer to be feared than loved when one must be dispensed with”. He thought fear was the most effective way to prevent people from betraying you because it creates “a dread of punishment which never fails”.
But Machiavelli had despotic political leaders in mind, not parents.
Effectiveness and ethics aren’t the same
Let’s go back to Macchiavelli for a second. He wasn’t interested in how to rule ethically, he wanted to know how to rule effectively. Sometimes it’s tempting to approach parenting the same way.
‘What’s the best way to get my child to sleep?’ ‘How can I stop him from biting me?’ When we’re bleary-eyed and desperately Googling for answers at three in the morning, we’re looking for whatever will get us the result we want. The means are less important to us than the ends.
Desperation doesn’t make for good ethical judgement. Telling your bub bedtime stories about the monsters who eat naughty children until they’re sobbing in fear might be an effective way to get them to toe the line but it’s not going to win you any parenting awards.
Parenting expert Barbara Coloroso suggests a slight modification to the ‘if it works, do it’ mentality. She suggests, “if it works and leaves a child’s and my own dignity intact, do it”. This is a crucial distinction – the dignity of both children and parents serves as a line in the sand against brute efficiency.
This doesn’t necessarily rule smacking out. Pope Francis himself thought smacking could be a dignified way of teaching kids about ethics.
Talking about a dad who sometimes smacks his kids – but never in the face – the Pope said, “How beautiful. He knows the sense of dignity. He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on.”
As a counter example, it’s worth wondering how dignified the Pope would feel being bent over someone’s knee.
What are you really communicating?
Some people defend smacking as a way of communicating with a child when words won’t do the job. They suggest that in the midst of a meltdown, it’s hard to reason with a child, but if a quick ‘love tap’ gets them to listen to you, it might allow for a constructive conversation.
These folks might enjoy reading Hannah Arendt. The 20th century philosopher thought violence was an effective form of communication to help moderate, reasonable voices to be heard. However, Arendt’s support for violence comes with a warning: the use of violence risks its being legitimised as a form of communication in a community (or family). Once violence becomes the talk of the town, everyone can be tempted to start speaking it.
Arendt concluded, “the practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world”.
If the same is true of families, it might be worth thinking twice before talking with the hand.
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BY Matthew Beard
Matt is a moral philosopher with a background in applied and military ethics. In 2016, Matt won the Australasian Association of Philosophy prize for media engagement. Formerly a fellow at The Ethics Centre, Matt is currently host on ABC’s Short & Curly podcast and the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship Program Director.
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.
Office flings and firings
If you heard the phrase “cheaters never prosper” talked about at AFL headquarters, you’d assume they were talking about performance enhancing drugs, salary cap breaches or breaking the rules to win a game.
This week, as AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan announced the resignations of two senior officials, Richard Simkiss and Simon Lethlean, after they admitted to adulterous affairs with junior staff, the phrase took on a whole new meaning.
The reaction to McLachlan’s decision has been mixed. Some have applauded the move as a strong defence of the AFL’s culture and values. Others have suggested the AFL has gone too far. Writing in The Australian Financial Review, Josh Bornstein suggested office affairs that don’t involve “harassment or stalking or bullying” should “not be grounds for loss of employment”.
Particulars of the AFL case aside, this view is misguided. It conflates ethics and the law and demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the important role values and principles play in corporate governance. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s ethical.
Yes, the law should play a role in guiding an organisation when developing an ethical framework. But it is far from sufficient. Arguably, the best test of an organisation’s ethics will arise when they’re operating in areas not covered by the law.
When a power imbalance could potentially cause harm to the more vulnerable party, then we have good reason to question that conduct.
With that said, what should we make of the AFL’s decision? When announcing the resignation of the two senior officials, McLachlan spoke to his organisation’s values. He stated that he would like to lead “a professional organisation based on integrity, respect, care for each other, and responsibility”.
An organisation’s values are affirmed by the actions, choices, and decisions that are made and condoned by its people, especially its most senior leaders. This also was not lost on McLachlan. “I expect that executives are role models and set a standard of behaviour for the rest of the organisation,” he said. “They are judged, as they should be, to a higher standard”.
The response by the Seven West Media board to revelations that their CEO Tim Worner had an adulterous affair with executive assistant Amber Harrison was a little more benign. They engaged a private law firm to undertake an independent investigation into a variety of allegations made by Harrison, including the inappropriate use of company funds and illicit drug use by Worner.
Although the findings of the investigation were not made public, the board concluded there was no evidence supporting the claims of wrongdoing by Worner. Furthermore, they stated he had been disciplined over his “personal and consensual” relationship with Harrison, which it also said was “inappropriate due to his senior position”.
So what are we to make of these seemingly contrasting responses? Should we cast judgement and declare that one organisation is more virtuous than the other?
We must be careful not to instantly assume that an individual who has become involved in an extra-marital affair is less committed to the organisation or its values. Infidelity is not a simple question of character deficiency.
It should be acknowledged that although the two organisations handled the incidents differently, neither condoned the conduct of the leaders involved. When judging the individuals and the organisation’s responses, commentators and the public appear to point to two factors.
The first is the power asymmetry between the people in each of the affairs. This is not unique. Power asymmetries in organisations are inescapable and almost all leaders have at some stage used their power to gain advantage, even if they did so unwittingly. However, when a power imbalance could potentially cause harm to the more vulnerable party then we have good reason to question that conduct.
The second factor inviting people’s judgement is the fact the affairs were adulterous. Understandably, infidelity arouses a range of moral responses. But we must be careful not to instantly assume that an individual who has become involved in an extra-marital affair is less committed to the organisation or its values. Infidelity is not a simple question of character deficiency.
Stories are powerful. After notable incidents like these, they become folklore within organisations.
Whenever a senior executive becomes involved in a regrettable or unsavoury incident similar to these, an employer has no choice but to respond. How they do so is a defining moment for the organisation. Their response (or lack thereof) reveals to us what the organisation really values and how committed it is to those values.
However, judging the appropriateness of the response is difficult. Perhaps the best measure is one we don’t yet have access. Namely, the stories that these events inspire within the organisation.
Stories are powerful. After notable incidents like these, they become folklore within organisations. If they affirm and are aligned to stated values and principles, they can strengthen the organisation’s ethical foundations. If not, people can quickly become cynical, compromising the organisation’s character.
When we look past the salacious gossip surrounding office romances, this is arguably the most important thing to take from these unfortunate incidents. For the sake of the boards at the AFL and Seven West Media, I hope that the stories being told within their organisations are reflective of the values they extol.
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BY Dennis Gentilin
Dennis Gentilin is an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University and currently works in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice.
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.
Ethical dilemma: how important is the truth?
Someone I know has just told me that the wife of a very good friend had an affair a few years ago.
The thing is that they seem very happy together, as do their children, and they are a solid family unit. The source of information is good, in that I can trust the person telling me, but he heard from someone else rather than ‘knowing’ for himself. What to do now that I have this information? Do I follow the lead to the original source to find out if it’s true? Do I confront my friend’s wife? Tell my friend? Forget about it altogether? If it isn’t true, I risk looking like an idiot; if it is, I risk breaking up a marriage and family. How important is the truth?
It’s tempting to say “this is none of your business – this is a matter for the person who had the affair to own up to”, but I’m not convinced by that. By saying nothing, you’re still making a decision to withhold potentially life-changing information from someone.
Let’s say that if your friend knew of the affair, they’d leave their wife, decide to stop sleeping with them or whatever. By withholding that information, you’re preventing them from making a choice they would otherwise make, which they have the right to make and which might be in their best interests. That’s a serious responsibility to take on, so you’d need to have pretty good reasons to justify saying nothing.
One such reason might be uncertainty. You say you’ve had this information given to you by a trustworthy source, but your source got that information as gossip. So, the question isn’t ‘can I trust my source?’; it’s ‘can I trust gossip?’
Your source might have good reasons to trust that gossip – you should ask what they are. If there aren’t any special circumstances, it’s hard to see on what basis you’d believe the allegations.
Now you’re wondering whether you need to investigate further. You’ve been told something but it’s an unreliable source – should you go out and find a more reliable source to make a decision one way or the other?
If you do decide to pursue the source further, it’s important you recognise exactly what that means. You’ve been told something is true, realised the source is unreliable and then decided it’s your job to try to find another source that proves it to be true. That’s not an impartial way to make the decision.
Most people would think if you only have one source of evidence for a claim and that evidence is bad, then you no longer have any reason to believe the claim. To keep looking for new evidence to prove the claim true is what psychologists call ‘confirmation bias’.
Still, if you have a close enough relationship to your friend you might be willing to fly in the face of reason and leave no stone unturned. But it would be wrong to say you’re obliged to investigate further: there’s just not enough evidence for that.
This article originally appeared in New Philosopher issue #17 on Communication.
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BY Matthew Beard
Matt is a moral philosopher with a background in applied and military ethics. In 2016, Matt won the Australasian Association of Philosophy prize for media engagement. Formerly a fellow at The Ethics Centre, Matt is currently host on ABC’s Short & Curly podcast and the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship Program Director.
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.
4 questions for an ethicist
Though not as common as GPs, therapists, or personal trainers, ethicists still have a lot to say about how to live a good life. Here are four of the common questions they get asked.
1. There are so many conflicting versions of ethics out there – legal, social, religious. Which should I listen to?
With all these voices vying for our attention it can be difficult to know who to listen to. An important starting point with ethics is to untangle the nature of these conflicting voices to better be able to hear our own.
Our beliefs and values are influenced by our upbringing, community, professions, and for many people, their faith. It’s useful to think of these voices – social customs, the law and religion – as ‘morality’ rather than ethics.
Morality is a set of deeply held and widely shared norms and rules within a community. Like ethics, morality provides us with opinions, rules, laws, and principles to guide our choices and actions. But unlike ethics, morality can be followed unthinkingly and without asking questions.
Ethics is about reflecting on who we are, what we value, and how we want to live in a world where many others may not share the same values and principles as us.
What makes ethics both timely and timeless is it arises in any moment when we find ourselves faced with the question of what is right. This question is both a philosophical and practical one. Philosophically, it involves exploring the nature of concepts like truth, wisdom, and belief and providing a justification for right and good actions.
On a practical level, it is a question we find ourselves asking every day. Whether it’s the big ethical issues – abortion, capital punishment, immigration – or everyday ethical questions – whether to tell the truth to a friend when it may hurt their feelings, or being asked to provide a reference for a close colleague who isn’t qualified for the job – ethical questions are inescapable parts of being human.
Ethics does not rely on history, tradition, religion, or the law to solely to define for us what is good or right. Ethics is about reflecting on who we are, what we care about, and how we want to live in a world where many others may not share the same values and principles as us.
2. Isn’t ethics just a matter of opinion? If there’s no way to tell who is right and who is wrong, isn’t my opinion as good as anyone’s?
In the 1990s Mike Godwin famously argued when it comes to online arguments, the longer and more heated a debate gets, the more likely somebody will bring up the Nazis in an attempt to close it down.
When it comes to discussions of ethics there is an inverse law which anyone who has taught an ethics class will have experienced. The shorter the conversation about ethics, the greater the likelihood somebody will claim, “Ethics is just personal opinion”.
When the stakes are high, it becomes abundantly clear that we want to hold others to a similar standard of what we think matters.
This view implies ethics is subjective. What follows from this is there are no better or worse opinions on ethics.
However, it would be hard to find someone say in response to being robbed, “The thief had their own values and I have mine, they are entitled to their view, so I won’t pursue this further”. When the stakes are high, it becomes abundantly clear we want to hold others to a similar standard of what we think matters.
We will inevitably reach a point in any discussion of ethics where people will strongly express a fundamental moral belief – for example, it’s wrong to steal, to lie or to harm others. These opinions are the beginning of a common, rational basis for discussions about what we should or shouldn’t do.
And when those discussions become heated, let’s try and leave Hitler out of it.
3. I’m a good person, why do I need ethics?
Ethics helps good people become better people.
Being a good person doesn’t necessarily mean you will always know what’s right. Good people disagree with each other about what is right all the time. And good people often don’t know what to do in difficult situations, especially when these situations involve ethical dilemmas.
We all have the tendency to act unethically given the ‘right’ conditions. Fear, guilt, stress, and anxiety have been shown to be significant factors that prevent us from acting ethically.
Good people make bad choices. Despite the widespread view that bad things happen due to a small percentage of so called ‘evil people’ intentionally doing the wrong thing, the reality is that all of us can make poor decisions.
We all have the tendency to act unethically given the ‘right’ conditions. Fear, guilt, stress and anxiety have been shown to be significant factors that prevent us acting ethically.
Food has been shown to directly influence the quality of decisions made by judges. Other studies have shown that even innocuous influences can have a disproportionate effect on our decisions. For example, smells affect the likelihood a person will help other people.
Ethics is not only about being aware of our values and principles. It is also about being alive to our limited view of the world and striving to expand our horizons by trying to better see the world as it really is.
4. People only do ethics when it makes them look good. Why would anyone put ethics above self-interest?
One argument often heard in philosophy and psychology is that everything we do, from the compassionate to the heroic, is ultimately done for our own benefit. When we boil it down, we only save lives, donate to charity or care for a friend because these things make us feel good or benefit us.
However, despite being a widely held view it is only half the story – and not even the most interesting part of the story. While human beings are undoubtedly self-interested there is a wealth of evidence that shows human beings are hard wired to care for others, including total strangers.
Research has shown the existence of ‘mirror neurons’ in our brains that naturally respond to other people’s feelings.
Ethics is rooted in this fundamental human capacity to be connected to others. It provides a rational foundation for this connection. This is the foundation of empathy. It’s an intrinsic part of what makes us human.
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BY John Neil
As Director of Education and Innovation at The Ethics Centre, John collaborates closely with a talented team of specialists and subject matter experts to shape the tools, frameworks, and programs that drive our work forward. He brings a rich and varied background as a consultant, lecturer, and researcher, with expertise spanning ethics, cultural studies, sustainability, and innovation. This multidisciplinary perspective allows him to introduce fresh, thought-provoking approaches that energise and inspire our initiatives. John has partnered with some of Australia’s largest organisations across diverse industries, to place ethics at the heart of organisational life. His work focuses on education, cultural alignment, and leadership development to foster meaningful and lasting impact.
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.
Tough love makes welfare and drug dependency worse
“Look, if somebody has got an addiction to drugs and you love them, what do you want to do? You want them to get off it, don’t you?” Malcolm Turnbull said recently in defence of the Coalition’s new plan to conduct drug tests on welfare recipients. “This is a policy that is based on love”.
The policy warrants some analysis – starting with the methodology.
The government plans to conduct drug tests on 5000 welfare recipients in three undisclosed locations as a pilot program – with these locations selected by testing waste water. Just so we’re clear on this, they’ll be testing sewage water for the presence of drugs. So if, for example, Toorak registers a high reading for drugs, welfare recipients in that suburb may be nominated to participate in the pilot program.
It’s not clear whether the government plans to test the sewage pipes of every suburb of Australia, or just the ones with a lot of welfare recipients.
Once this messy, smelly, but undeniably fascinating work has been completed, the policy will operate on a “three strikes” approach. The first positive drug test will place welfare recipients on a cashless debit card that cannot be used for alcohol, gambling or cash withdrawals. A second strike gets you a referral to a doctor for treatment. After three strikes, your welfare payments are cancelled for a month.
Unfortunately, sanctions and punishment won’t help people manage their drug use. Love – even tough love – isn’t going to get us anywhere near a solution. Here’s why.
Drug use and drug dependence aren’t the same thing
Not everyone that takes drugs is dependent on them and not everyone needs treatment. All the drugs on the proposed testing list are used recreationally and the majority of people who use them are not dependent.
Only a relatively small proportion of current users – around 10% – are dependent on alcohol or other drugs. For example, very few people who use ecstasy ever become dependent on it. Only 1% of people seeking help from alcohol and other drug services name it as their primary drug of concern. Seventy percent of people who have used methamphetamine in the last year have used less than 12 times. Around 15 percent are dependent on it.
This means the government is potentially wasting large amounts of money drug testing and sanctioning people who only use occasionally.
It will do more harm than good
Whatever you believe about the morality of drug use, the reality is that just restricting income and expenditure will not stop people using drugs. It’s just not that simple. And it creates a number of potential unintended consequences.
Even if we assume that everyone who uses drugs needs treatment (which is not the case), you can’t just say “Stop it!” and hope that works. Dependence is a chronic and relapsing condition. Anybody who has been a regular smoker or has participated in Dry July probably has some experience of how hard it is to abstain from their drug of choice, even for a short time.
Even if it could stop people using, this proposal doesn’t address any of the broader social risk factors that maintain drug use and trigger relapse.
The idea that taking away money to buy drugs will magically stop people using them is a gross oversimplification of why people use drugs, what happens when they are dependent on them, and why they quit. Theft and other crime may increase as people denied payments find other ways to buy drugs.
Even if it could stop people using, this proposal doesn’t address any of the broader social-risk factors that maintain drug use and trigger relapse: mental health issues, disrupted connection with community, lack of employment and education, housing instability, and poverty.
Worse still, the policy may discourage people who are dependent on drugs from seeking help for fear of losing their benefits.
Drug testing doesn’t reduce drug use or its consequent harms. But what it can do is shift drug use to other (often more dangerous) drugs that are not part of the testing regime. People who use cannabis may switch to more dangerous synthetic cannabinoids and those using ecstasy or methamphetamine may switch to other more harmful stimulants.
It threatens civil liberties
In a workplace context, court rulings clearly indicate that drug testing is only justified on clear health and safety grounds. This is because there is a balance required with privacy and consent. Greg Barnes from the Australian Lawyers Alliance has already highlighted the potential conflict in gaining consent of a vulnerable individual under duress of sanctions.
The measure targets the most vulnerable, poorest, and youngest Australians, potentially further marginalising and stigmatising them. We know that when people feel stigmatised they are less likely to seek the help they need.
Punitive measures just don’t work. They reflect a deep lack of understanding about drug use, its effects and of what works to address drug-related problems.
It creates a “deserving” and “undeserving” dichotomy based on private moral judgements about whether it is right or wrong to use drugs.
It assumes, without evidence, that drug use is a major cause of welfare dependence and a barrier to finding work. Research from the US suggests neither is true.
We need evidence-based policy
It’s difficult to see what the government will achieve from this paternalistic measure. Politically, it may appease the far right’s “tough on drugs” rhetoric – but as a piece of policy, it is unlikely to achieve what it hopes to.
The experience from the US is that punitive measures just don’t work. They reflect a deep lack of understanding about drug use, its effects and of what works to address drug-related problems.
This is not going to reduce drug use or harms. It has the potential to increase crime, infringes on civil liberties and it is going to cost a lot of money that would be better spent in harm reduction and drug treatment.
If the government really wants to put this kind of money into reducing drug use among those on welfare, providing more money to the underfunded treatment sector would be a better place to start.
According to the Drug Policy Monitoring Program at UNSW, drug treatment is funded at less than half the amount the community needs. Yet for every dollar we put into treatment we save $7 in health and social costs. If we want to save money in the budget, it seems like a no-brainer.
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BY Nicole Lee
Dr Nicole Lee is Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute Curtin University and Director of drug and alcohol consultancy 360Edge.
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.
The anti-diversity brigade is ruled by fear
To some men, the presence of a woman at work seems like an unexploded grenade, ticking away, just waiting to blow up their careers.
The Deputy US President, Mike Pence, famously refuses to eat alone with a woman who is not his wife for fear he may be “compromised”. His inspiration in this, the recently “departed” evangelist Billy Graham, even reportedly refused to be alone in a lift with one.
Since the tidal wave of #MeToo sexual harassment claims surged around the world’s workplaces over the past few months, there has been a backlash of complaints on mainstream and social media that men are now afraid that an act – that once seemed innocuous to them – would now return to destroy them.
Outside a function to raise support for Movember – a men’s health foundation – former INXS guitarist Kirk Pengilly vocalised the angst with this reply to a question about the sexual harassment allegations that fell movie producer Harvey Weinstein and gardening TV star Don Burke:
“I really loved the ’60s and ’70s when life was so simple and you could slap a woman on the butt and it was taken as a compliment, not as sexual harassment.”
Diversity initiatives have also attracted their share of pushback. Google recently fired an engineer who wrote a 10 page memo against the company’s affirmative action programs. The engineer has now filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination against white people, men and political conservatives.
The engineer claimed women are underrepresented in the tech industry “largely because of their innate biological differences from men – their ‘stronger interest in people rather than things’, their propensity for ‘neuroticism’, their higher levels of anxiety”.
How nervous are they?
Does this backlash indicate that men are becoming afraid of women, as some media reports claim? That women now have too much power and an inclination to take men’s jobs? Just how nervous are they?
One of Australia’s foremost experts on men and masculinity, Dr Michael Flood, says speculation about men’s growing trepidation around women has been overstated.
“For many men, the primary reaction has been one of disinterest. They don’t see the these as issues of direct concern to them”, says Flood, a sociologist and associate professor at the Queensland University of Technology School of Justice.
Flood’s research shows that men are widely supportive of gender equality initiatives, however, they are also less likely than women to recognise discrimination when it occurs.
Fewer than one third of women in Australia think men and women are treated equally at work, compared with 50 percent of men who said the same, according to the Australian Women’s Working Futures 2017 report from the University of Sydney.
Belief of false accusations
Despite the overwhelming support for the idea of equality, some men find the new workplace gender politics threatening.
“I think [#MeToo] is going to push some men’s buttons. I think there is a widespread perception, a false perception, that women make up allegations of sexual harassment and that draws on a very old stereotype of the lying, vindictive woman – a very long standing sexist stereotype”, Flood says.
“And so that belief that false accusations of domestic violence and sexual assault are common, then plays itself out in fears about men being falsely accused of sexual harassment.”
False reporting of rape and sexual assault are between two percent and six percent in the UK, Europe, and the US.
US sociologist and masculinity researcher Dr Michael Kimmel, says Mike Pence’s solution makes him the “American equivalent of the Taliban”.
The logic is that women are so tempting and that men are so incapable of control, they cannot be trusted to interact in the workplace, says Kimmel, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Stony Brook University in New York and author of Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.
“This is a way of punishing women for men’s predatory behaviour. It is just evangelical Talibanism.”
Punishing women for men’s behaviour
Kimmel says he has heard men in companies claim that the situation is so perilous they will not hire a woman, go to a meeting with a woman, have a meal or a drink with a woman in case they are accused of sexual harassment.
“My analogy to this is the crazy straight guys who are afraid that every gay guy is going to hit on them. It is not going to happen. You are just not that interesting”, he says.
Kimmel says he also hears from men that they do not know what to do, are worried about saying the wrong thing or feel like they are “walking on eggshells” in their interactions with women.
“I regard this as relatively good news because what most men are saying is, ‘I don’t want to be a jerk. I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore, but I don’t want to do the wrong one’.”
“That is a good start.”
Flood agrees, saying he welcomes the fact that many men are asking themselves some difficult questions about how they treat women.
“I think that is probably, in some, leading to more respectful, more equitable and more enjoyable relations among women and men in workplaces.”
Kimmel takes some comfort from research that shows younger men are savvier about what is acceptable behaviour around women in the workplace.
“The rules have changed. The old Don Draper [1950s Mad Men] rules no longer apply and many of us, who are aged 60 and above, were raised on those Don Draper rules and so we kind of don’t know what to do now.
“Age is a missing variable in the conversation and it needs to be discussed.”
However, this is not to say that older men cannot adapt. “I think we don’t give men enough credit sometimes. Most of us have adapted [to the new rules] just fine. Why? Because we actually like it. It is better.”
Flood cautions that it is important not to dismiss the trepidation of those who do feel threatened.
“We need to listen to men’s fear and work with it, but that doesn’t mean we give it a space or legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve”, he says.
If those fears are not dealt with, those men tend to “dig themselves in to resistance and defensiveness”.
Kimmel says we are now in a transitional period where neither men or women are comfortable in the workplace.
“The reason I am so sanguine about this is because I know young people. Young people are coming into the workplace and they already know the rules have changed.
“The Millennials are far more equal when they come in, they are far more capable of working in teams, they have far more cross-sex friendships. Yes, it is going to be discomforting – we all understand that – but I also think it is going to be fine.”
This article was originally written for The Ethics Alliance. Find out more about this corporate membership program. Already a member? Log in to the membership portal for more content and tools here.
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BY Fiona Smith
Fiona Smith is a freelance journalist who writes about people, workplaces and social equity. Follow her on Twitter @fionaatwork
BY The Ethics Centre
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What Harry Potter teaches you about ethics
If you’ve read the Harry Potter series – and let’s face it, many of us have – you will have gained insight into a number of things: the value of friendship, the nature of heroism, the redeeming power of love… the list goes on.
But amidst all the magic, there’s one lesson you might have missed – a lesson which is crucial to the way we think and talk about ethics. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry is able to secure the titular stone and keep it away from the villainous Voldemort for one simple reason. Even though the stone is powerful, Harry has no desire to use it.
Genius wizard Dumbledore protects the stone with an enchantment. Any person who wanted to use the stone to become immortal would never be able to access it. Only someone who wanted the stone for the right reasons would be successful. The benefits, in other words, were only available to people who didn’t want them.
If your only reasons for committing to ethics are external – because of what ethics will give you – then your motivation will come and go.
Working in ethics, it’s tempting to present the external benefits the ethical life provides to people. In convincing people to set aside self interest and do what’s right, we sometimes appeal to people’s self interest. We use the very logic we’re trying to unwind.
For example, we convince a business to take ethics seriously because it’ll enable them to recruit and keep better staff (it does). We tell a person that living ethically is more likely to make them popular, employable and happy, which it might.
The problem is, if we’re serious about getting people to live ethically, even if we win the argument, we’ve failed in achieving our goal. As soon as someone commits to acting ethically for instrumental reasons – to make money, become popular or whatever – they’re no longer doing it because they think it’s right, they’re doing it because they think it’s effective.
This is a problem. If your only reasons for committing to ethics are external – because of what ethics will give you – then your motivation will come and go. The moment ethics doesn’t help you keep staff or stay popular, your reasons for committing to living an ethical disappear.
Genuine ethical behaviour isn’t only about doing the right thing, it’s about doing it for the right reasons. It means doing what’s ethical because it’s ethical, not because it’ll give us some other advantages.
The debates around torture are a good example of this. Recently, many opponents to torture have argued ‘torture doesn’t work’, so we shouldn’t do it. But this suggests that if torture did work, we wouldn’t have any problem with it. The logic of the argument supports abandoning torture but it also supports undertaking further research to find forms of torture that do work.
But the ethical argument against torture isn’t that it doesn’t work, it’s that even if it did work, it would be wrong. In whatever walk of life you apply it, ethical demands are at their strongest when they force you to choose between what’s beneficial and what’s right.
When someone starts to use the language of ethics to pursue their own ends, they often reveal themselves through hypocrisy. Often, they abandon their so-called values when the costs get too high.
It’s easy to do the right thing when it benefits you. Ethics asks you to set aside what’s convenient, profitable or comfortable and do what’s right. Genuine ethical behaviour isn’t only about doing the right thing, it’s about doing it for the right reasons. It means doing what’s ethical because it’s ethical, not because it’ll give us some other advantages.
In short, ethics is a totally different language to that of self interest, efficiency or effectiveness. It uses different arguments, demands a different kind of thinking and asks us to reconsider our priorities.
It’s only those who are authentically committed to ethics for its own sake who inspire support and trust in the long term.
The reason this is tricky for ethicists is because ethics is a Philosopher’s Stone of sorts. It does offer lots of benefits. But like the enchanted stone in Harry Potter, these benefits are only available to the people for whom ethics isn’t about achieving them.
People value authenticity and loathe hypocrisy. When someone starts to use the language of ethics to pursue their own ends, they often reveal themselves through hypocrisy. Often they abandon their so called values when the costs get too high. When this happens, the good will and support offered by others will disappear.
It’s only those who are authentically committed to ethics for its own sake who inspire support and trust in the long term. Like the magic stone, the benefits of ethics don’t come to those who seek them, they are given to those who deserve them.
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