Business Ethics, Philosophy 2074F

Instructor: Dr. Ryan Robb.

The Point of the Course:

To learn to identify and distinguish between good and bad philosophical

arguments, specifically in respect of the ethical issues that arise in the
context of modern business, and to produce good arguments of your own in
response to those issues.

Today:

A: What is Philosophy? A method for justifying beliefs

A.i: The Common Sense Approach to Writing Essays
B: What is Ethics/Morality? A set of Rules of conduct

A: What is Philosophy?

Literally translated, it means ‘lover of wisdom’.

But what we care about for the purposes of a course like this one is the
methodology by which a philosopher gathers wisdom.

The key to gathering wisdom, for a philosopher (and hopefully anyone else)
is to ensure that their beliefs are well founded… that is, they have good
reasons that support their beliefs.

The manner by which philosophers ensure their beliefs are well-founded

involves the formulation of arguments.

Arguments can be represented formally as follows:

Premise (P) 1: It was raining when I came in to class

P2: The Weather Network says the rain is expected to continue
Conclusion (C): It will probably still be raining when I leave class

Practically, philosophical arguments are intended to, at the very least,

convince those to whom the argument is presented to accept the conclusion
of the argument (the belief) as ‘compelling’ or ‘plausible’.
Ideally, a philosophical argument is intended to reveal some ‘T’ruth about
the world and/or the human experience that was previously unknown.

A good philosopher only accepts/endorses beliefs that are supported by good

reasons, i.e., beliefs supported by the best possible arguments.

Note: ‘Good reasons’ do not imply that our beliefs are supported ‘with
certainty’… owing to the finite and fallible nature of human existence, the
best we can hope for is that our beliefs be supported by the best available
reasons.

It follows that a good philosopher needs to be a fallibilist with respect to

their beliefs (be weary of anyone who claims to know anything with
absolute certainty).

The goal of any philosopher is, by means of rational argumentation, to

engage with some element of the incomprehensible complexity of human
existence in the universe in an effort to make it slightly less
incomprehensible.

While the burden of ‘accepting beliefs only when there are good reasons’ is
one that each individual philosopher accepts, the means by which knowledge
is acquired and developed by humans using arguments is a collective
undertaking.

The basic idea behind the collective enterprise can be traced at least as far
back as Plato… each of us presents our beliefs and the reasons that support
those beliefs, and if those reasons survive all possible criticism, then our
beliefs must be ‘true’.

Of course, philosophers don’t typically present their arguments is support of

particular beliefs in the form I’ve outlined above… instead, they write
essays.
A.i: The ‘Common-Sense’ Approach to Writing Essays

The goal of every essay:

A successful essay convinces all (or the majority of) readers that the position
taken (the thesis) is the position the reader should also take because the
reasons presented are rationally compelling/plausible.

If the purpose of an essay is to defend a thesis by means of an argument

designed to convince readers to accept that thesis, the first ‘common sense’
concern of every essay must be:

CLARITY

The Possibility of Convincing Anyone Using an Argument Depends First on

CLARITY!!!

If I am a reader of your work, and I cannot understand what you are trying to
convince me of, you cannot convince me of anything.

This point cannot be overemphasized!!! Your writing must be clear to

have any hope of being convincing.

There will be two sorts of clarity that are relevant to writing an essay:
1. Clarity of Structure
2. Clarity of Expression

1. Clarity in the Structure of an Argument:

There are three elements present in every single convincing argument:

a. A POINT/thesis/claim you will be trying to convince the reader to accept.

b. An explanation of the argument that stimulated your thesis - your thesis
must be about something, this is where you explain what it’s about.
c. A set of reasons designed to explain why you are defending the thesis you
are defending, in a way that convinces readers to adopt your position as their
own.
These three steps represent, for shorter essays (say up to 6 pages), how an
entire essay should be structured. In a longer essay (say 7 pages and over),
these steps represent a pattern.

a. The Thesis a.k.a., The POINT!

The thesis is one of the most important parts of any essay, because it is a
statement of the position the essay is designed to articulate and/or defend.

Indeed, for every word/sentence/paragraph in your essay you should be able

to tell yourself how that word/sentence/paragraph contributes to making
your thesis more convincing… if you can’t, you need to get rid of that
word/sentence/paragraph.

Notice that, if your thesis is the focal point of your essay, you shouldn’t start
writing until you have a working thesis… otherwise, how will you decide
what you should/should not include in the essay?

YOUR THESIS MUST (IN THIS CLASS ANYWAY) BE THE FIRST

SENTENCE OF YOUR ESSAY.

Why? Because essays are not mystery novels! You do not want to build
suspense. In other words, part of what it means to ‘be clear’ is being direct.

The remainder of your introduction (after the thesis) should consist in a

‘road-map’… a summary of the steps you will take to defend your thesis.

b. The Exegesis

I hope the following is obvious: If you are going to state and try to defend an
opinion about something as indicated in your thesis, there must be some
‘thing’ your opinion is about.

Step b. is the point at which you describe to your reader the issue your thesis
is about. In the case of every academic essay, this will involve some sort of
literature review.

The key to an exegesis is that it is supposed to be non-evaluative… during

your exegesis, you are simply outlining in detail the view that your essay
tries to address, without saying whether the view in question is either good
or bad.

Your exegesis will typically be divided into at least two parts… in the first
part, you’ll provide a general overview of the position you’re describing, and
the second part will be narrowly focused on the element of the piece you
intend to criticize.

Note: this is an important step on a practical level, because this is the point
at which you will be demonstrating your knowledge of the subject matter.

c. The Reasons, i.e., The Step that Does or Does not Make Your Essay
Convincing

Having stated your opinion, then described the issue and relevant literature
about which you have an opinion, you must now ‘defend’ your opinion, i.e.,
explain why that’s the opinion you took.

This is the most important part of any essay because this is the part that’s
going to make your thesis convincing.

The irony is that it’s the most difficult step to describe because there are a
myriad of possible ways to construct and/or present reasons in defence of a
thesis.

Two Broad Strategies for essays in which you criticize an author’s position:

i. Attack the truth of one or more of the premises.

ii. Attack the inference from the premises to the conclusion.

2. Clarity of expression.

Use the simplest, most precise language possible (seriously, just forget the
Thesaurus exists).

Only make one (1) point per paragraph; the grammatical function of a
paragraph is to isolate distinct (but obviously related) points.

Short sentences and short paragraphs, while stylistically ‘choppy’, are

nonetheless clear.
Revision is unavoidable… it’s not just you, it’s everyone.

Reread outloud - that’s the single best way of catching grammatical errors.

Try to pretend you’re a reader, not the author.

Grading Scheme:

I've worked out a ‘rough’ marking scheme that corresponds to the

description above:

If you have a good exegesis (accurate and focused) and a convincing set of
reasons: A range (80 - 100).
If you have a good exegesis (accurate and focused) and a set of reasons that
aren't very convincing: B (70-79).
If you have a clear statement of your position and a good exegesis but no
reasons, or you have reasons but they’re based on a misinterpretation of the
argument you’re responding to: C range (60-69).
If you grossly misrepresent the position of the author you’re addressing,
and/or have no clear position of your own: F – D range (0 – 59).

Again, this is just a ROUGH standard so there will be some variance, but it
should give you a good idea of what the graders will be thinking when they
assign grades for your essays.

NOTE: In order to appeal an assigned essay grade, you need to be able to

explain, according to this grading scheme, how the grade you received was
at least 5% lower than the grade you deserved.
B. What is Ethics/Morality?

A (set of) rule(s) or a principle(s) or a norm(s) intended to guide and/or

evaluate freely chosen human behaviour, rules concerned primarily with our
actions toward other humans.

A moral norm/rule/principle usually assumes the form of a statement about

how we ought to act, or what we should believe.

So the rules are normative statements and as such they imply the assertion of
some value, a value that justifies the norm. E.g., the moral norm ‘it is wrong
to lie’ reflects the value placed on truth telling.

Normative statements are not only ethical. There are for example, economic
norms, e.g., supplying more goods than the market demands can negatively
affect profits, or social norms, e.g., wear clothing in public.

Normative statements are typically distinguished from descriptive or factual

statements, i.e., statements about the empirical character of the world, i.e.,
statements that do not rely upon some value.

This is a linguistic distinction, known as ‘The Fact/Value Distinction’;

there’s a difference between what we are doing (the fact), and what we
should be doing (the value).

The significance of this distinction is, at the very least, that it reminds us
when we’re reading an argument to be attentive to the character of the claim
being made… is the author merely asserting some fact, or are they asserting
a value?

This distinction is also normally understood to have a significant impact on

the character of normative arguments:

A set of facts are never going to be independently sufficient to justify a

value claim.

For example: The mere fact that we always act a certain way (e.g., as a
matter of tradition) does not, on its own, entail that we should continue
acting that way.
Some value (e.g., the value in perpetuating traditions) must be asserted to
justify that claim.

Where do moral rules/norms/principles come from? Ethical theories. We’ll

briefly discuss four over the next two weeks.

Next Class:

What is ‘Business,’ and what are some preliminary reasons for thinking that
ethical rules apply to human behavior in a business context?