Ethical Decision Making: Reasons or Results?
Reading this article got me thinking about an ongoing debate in ethical decision making. This debate is more common applies to the decision making process, as well as evaluating a decision in hindsight.
The dilemma is this: when making a decision, which is more important, the reasons for choosing what a given alternative, or the results yielded by choosing a given alternative?
A simplified example: a mother tells her daughter not to steal because if a policeman sees her, she will be punished. The reason the daughter doesn’t steal is fear of punishment. The result is that the daughter does not steal. I’d like to emphasize that this example is highly subjective and over-simplified. I chose it simply because it clearly defines what I mean by “reason” and “result”.
The example that made me think of this idea was that of Sir Charles Napier, a (likely) racist and insensitive ruler evoking a positive change by outlawing the burning of live widows along with their dead husbands. Here, it seems that the result is worth the questionable moral stance of the decision maker, but some may not agree.
What do you think?
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Technorati Tags: ethical decision making, reasons, results
December 9th, 2006 at 06:45:28
Hey Mark.
It seems intuitively obvious to me that the results are what matters. The problem is that nobody can completely know the results of anything, certainly not before it happens and not even really after. So in order to actually make decisions as a practical human being, you need some kind of moral code or set of practices. (Is this what you have in mind by “the reasons for choosing a given alternative”?)
I think the key is to constantly question and deconstruct your moral code, the way a scientist constantly questions and examines a theory. Only then can you have any confidence that your code is useful and helpful.
December 9th, 2006 at 07:05:37
I agree that the final result cannot be known when the decision is made.
You can think of it sort of like a cause and effect. The cause for why you chose what you did, and the desired effect of the decision. Going back to the daughter/mother example, some would say that, if reasons are more important, then the daughter should be taught not to steal because it is morally incorrect, not because it could get her arrested. That’s the reason. In either case, the desired result is that the child does not steal. The question is, which is more important?