CHAPTER 4

THE  ACT
REASON AND IMPARTIALITY
• The ultimate basis for ethics is clear: human behavior has
consequences for the welfare of others.
• We are capable of acting toward others in such a way as to
increase or decrease the quality of their lives.
• We are theoretically capable of understanding when we are
doing the one and when the other.
• It is said that “reason requires impartiality” and this
statement has serious implications for truthfulness and
reason.
REASON AND IMPARTIALITY
• Reason and Impartiality are not absolute to any particular group of people,
while morality is absolute.
• Whatever is considered wrong morally within a certain group of people
cannot be debated through reason. Morality decides the outcomes first and
then employs reason to justify it.
• For impartiality, fairness is given more importance where people are
supposed to be treated equally before the law.
• While morality may apply generally to a particular group of people, the
same cannot be said of reason and impartiality because the two take a
more individualized approach.
• Impartiality introduces an aspect of treating people the same, which is a
moral issue.
WHAT IS REASON?
• Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things,
establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or justifying
practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.
• Reason, or an aspect of it, is sometimes referred to as rationality.
• Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect.
• The philosophical field of logic studies ways in which humans reason
formally through argument.
• Reason is a declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or
conviction.
• The proper role of ethical reasoning is to highlight acts of two kinds:
• those which enhance the well being of others that warrant our
praised and those that harm or diminish the well being of others and
thus warrant of our criticism.
• Reasons have everything to do with ethics.
• If someone asks you why you believe or act as you do, don’t just say,
“because I believe (or act) that way. “Give them a reason why. But
before you give a reason why, ask yourself why, and keep on asking
yourself why. Only then will your life become meaningful to you.
• Giving reasons for our actions is important socially, too. It either
connects us to others or divides us from them.
PREDICTING CONSEQUENCES
• Moral Reasoning involves predicting the consequences of an action
before we act.
• When the likely beneficial outcomes of acting on an ethical
presumption seem to outweigh the likely adverse outcomes, then
predicting consequences confirms our presumption,
• But when we predict that the adverse consequences will outweigh
the beneficial consequences, even when we are obeying an ethical
rule or following an inspiring story, then we should consider
whether to make an exception to the rule or to look to a different
story for guidance.
• Before we act we can never know for certain what the
consequences will be. Therefore, we should take care
in predicting what will result from acting on an ethical
presumption.
• In doing ethics, we look at rule (about duty and rights)
and at stories (about character and relationships) to
construct a presumption, and then test this
presumption by predicting what we do know (and
don’t know) about the likely consequences of acting
on it.
IMPARTIALITY
• Also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness is a
principle of justice holding that decisions should be
based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis
of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one
person over another for improper reasons.
• Someone who is impartial is not directly involved in
a particular situation, and is, therefore, able to give
a fair opinion or decision about it.
• Impartiality makes no discrimination as to
nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political
opinions.
Consequences of the fundamental
principle of Impartiality
• It establishes one of its key values: non-discrimination, which is
one of the most important elements of all aspects of the
protection of the human being: human rights law, humanitarian
law, refugee law.
• Although the need to “enjoy the confidence of all” is mentioned
about the principle of Neutrality, this also applies to the principle
of Impartiality.
• Impartiality in its true sense requires that subjective distinctions
be set aside.
• Impartiality is one of the more commonly recognized aspects
of the role of the Mediator.
• This does not mean that the mediator should somehow
become inhuman and not have a feeling of bias towards one
party or another, but that/he she practices in a way that
minimizes any manifestation of this bias.
• No one can genuinely claim to be impartial, but he can
continually review he own feelings and thoughts about
someone or a situation in order to acknowledge this and then
monitor, and adjust where necessary, his practice as a
mediator in the light of this awareness,
• Impartiality serves a purpose in
supporting conflict resolution whether
we are a mediator or not,
• The mediator creates a channel for
communication and not an obstacle to
it and remaining impartial allows for
the channel to be as unimpeded as
possible.
Reasons and Impartiality
as Requirement of Ethics
• In the Euthyphro, Socrates expresses astonishment that a young man
would prosecute his own father for murder.
• The conventional assumption he seems to be making is that filial
relationships impose special constraints that may override other
considerations, even in the gravest matter.
• For Euthyphro, by contrast, a murder is a murder, the fact us was
committed by his father has no bearing upon what he is required to
do about it. He must prosecute his father just as he would a stranger.
• This brief passage can serve as an emblem of a perplexing range of
problems that bedevil ethical theory.
 There are at least three distinct elements that run
through these problems, namely:
1. We grant the powerful and persistent force of self-interest in our
lives, and assume that morality must somehow give us reasons for
constraining such motives;
2. We grant that rules and principle of conduct will be useless or
counter-productive in purely local or short-range terms, and
assume that morality must give us reasons for acting in principle
in spite of it;
3. We grant that our favorites and fiends have special claims on our
attention, and assume that morality must give us reasons for
occasionally denying such claims.
Morality, thus, requires that we should
play favorites, or manipulate rules to our
personal advantage, or make ad hoc
exceptions for ourselves. In that sense it
requires us to be Impartial.
REASONS AND FEELINGS
• Broadly stated that ethics is “concerned with making
sense of intuitions” about what is right and good. We
do this by reasoning our feelings.
• Biologists verify that ‘Emotion is never truly divorced
from decision making, even when it is channeled
aside by an effort of the will.”
• Moral philosopher Mary Midgley writes “Sensitivity
requires rationality to complete it, and vice versa”.
• Scientific evidence supports this approach to ethics, as children, we
manifest empathy before developing our rational abilities, and
there is evidence for the same order of development in the
evolution of the human brain.
• Empathy enables us to identify with other, and may generate a
“perception of the other as a being who deserves concern and
respect”. This does not guarantee ethical conduct, but it makes
morality possible.
• Conscience, at its best, reflects our integration of moral sentiments
and principles.
• Both our feelings and our reason reflect our participation in a moral
community.
Ethics vs Feelings
• Many times, there’s a conflict between what
we naturally feels and what is considered to
be ethical.
• The problem is most of our feelings in today’s
world are unethical, politically incorrect or
even outright harmful.
1. GROUPISM
a. Natural Feeling: I am part of a group. I am supposed to help
this group become better. I am also supposed to compete with
other groups.
b. Reasoning: Being part of a herd made it easier for our
ancestors to survive in the wild. There were so many survival
benefits that belonging to a group brought. Naturally, our
ancestors started developing good feelings about belonging to
a group.
c. Ethical viewpoint: Help the group. Help other groups too,
there is no compelling reason to compete in today’s times of
peace.
2. PATRIOTISM
• Natural Feeling: I was born in a place. I am supposed to help
people in the geographical vicinity around me. Those outside the
border don’t deserve that much attention as those inside the
border do.
• Reasoning: Patriotism is Groupism in a higher scale. There have
been countless stories of propaganda by governments to motivate
people to join their wars to fight people over borders. We humans
tends to justify these efforts as noble.
• Ethical viewpoint: wars are always bad. There is no reason to be
proud of your country just because you were born in it.
3. DUNBAR’S NUMBER
a. Natural feeling: I cannot maintain more than 150
stable relationships.
b.Reasoning: Our brains have limited capacity and it
becomes mentally hard to maintain more relationships.
c. Ethical viewpoint: Acceding to the Dunbar’s number
promotes groupism. Just as we push ourselves to
become better human’s we should also try to push the
Dunbar number further.
4. NEGATIVE FEELINGS TO CONTENT ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
a. Natural Feeling: I hate what’s being posted on Facebook.
They are just stupid selfies, people gloating their
achievement or just distracting, unproductive content.
b. Reasoning: Many of us have been taught to compete with
others since our childhood. We tend to compare ourselves
with other.
c. Ethical Viewpoint: We don’t have to compete with our
friends, we can applaud their life achievements without
comparing our lives with theirs.
 Steps in Moral Reasoning Model
Step 1: Identify the problem. What facts make this an ethical
situation?
Step 2: Identify the potential issues involved. What level of ethical
issues are we dealing with: systematic, corporate, or individual?
Step 3: Review relevant ethical guidelines. Given the facts and the
ethical issues, what alternative actions are possible in this situation?
Step 4: Know relevant laws and regulations. Who will be affected
by the alternatives and to what degree?
Step 5: Obtain consultation. Use ethical principles to decide on
the best alternative. The ethics of each of the most plausible
alternatives is assesses using ethical principle or rules.
Step 6: Consider possible and probable courses of action. Can the
best alternative be put into effect? Having decided on one
alternative, we need to see whether there are any practical
constraints which might prevent that alternative from being acted
upon.
Step 7: List the consequences of the probable courses of action.
Step 8: Decide on what appears to be the best course of action.
Implementing the best alternative.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REASON AND WILL
• Will – is the faculty of the mind which selects, at the
moment of decision, the strongest desire from among
the various desires present.
• Within Philosophy, will is important as one of the
distinct parts of the mind -along with reason and
understanding.
• It is considered central to the field ethics because of its
role in enabling deliberate action.
• According to Schopenhaeur, will “is the innermost essence, the core, of every
particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force
of nature, and also in the deliberate conduct of man.”
• Schopenhaeur’s philosophy holds that all nature, including man, is the
expression of an insatiable will to life. It is through the will that mankind finds
all suffering. Desire for more is what causes this suffering.
• Since the derivation of actions from laws requires reason, the will is nothing
but practical reason.
• The will is guided by reason. Reason directs action by “determination of the
will” as long as the will is guided by reason.
• Reason has the capacity to direct action. Where the will is guided by reason, it
is free.
LESSON 2
Moral Theories
CONSEQUENTIALISM.
• Consequentialist theories, unlike virtue and deontological
theories, hold that only the consequences, or outcomes, of
actions matter morally.
• According to this view, acts are deemed to be morally right
solely on the basis of their consequences.
• It is sometimes criticized because it can be difficult, or even
impossible, to know what the result of an action will be
ahead of time.
 CONSEQUENTIALISM
IS BASED ON TWO PRINCIPLE
1.Whether an act is right or wrong
depends only on the results of the act;
2.The better consequences an act
produces, the better or more right the
act.
MORAL SUBJECTIVISM
• Right and wrong is determined by what you, the subject, just
happens to think or ‘feel’ is right or wrong.
• It amounts to the denial or moral principle of any significant
kind, and the possibility of moral criticism and argumentation.
• If you are a moral subjectivist, you cannot object to anyone’s
behavior assuming people are in fact in accordance to what they
think or feel is wight.
• It holds that there are no objective moral properties and that
ethical statements are in fact arbitrary because they do not
express immutable truths.
 DIFFERENT TYPES OF MORAL SUBJECTIVISM
1. Simple Subjectivism: the view that ethical statements reflect
sentiments, personal preferences, and feelings rather than
objective facts.
2. Individualist Subjectivism: the view originally put forward by
Protagoras, that there are as many distinct scales of good and
evil as there are individuals in the world.
3. Moral Relativism/ Ethical Relativism: the view that for a thing
to be morally right is for it to be approved of by society, leading
to the conclusion that different things are right for people in
different societies and different periods in history.
4. Ideal observer theory: the view that what is right is determined by
the attitudes that a hypothetical ideal observer (a being who is
perfectly rational, imaginative, and informed) would have.
5. Ethical Egoism: Right and wrong is determined by what is in your
self-interest. Or, it is immoral to act contrary to your self-interest.
6. Utilitarianism: a theory that holds that the best way to make a
moral decision is to look at the potential consequences of each
available choice, and then pick the option that either does most to
increase happiness or does least to increase suffering. (first
popularized by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill in 19th century)
7. Deontology: or deontological ethics is an approach
to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness
of the consequences of those actions or to the
character and habits of the actor.
8. Virtue Ethics: A virtue is an excellent trait of
character. It emphasizes an individual’s character as
the key element of ethical thinking, rather than rules
about the acts themselves or their consequences.
THREE MAIN ELEMENTS OF
VIRTUE ETHICS
1. EUDAIMONISM
• It holds that the proper goal of human life is eudaimonia (which can be
variously translated as “happiness”, “well-being” or the “good life”), and
that this goal can be achieved by a lifetime of practicing “arete” (the
virtues) in one’s everyday activities, subject to the exercise of “phronesis”
(practical wisdom) to resolve any conflicts or dilemmas which might arise.
• Aristotle, with whom Virtue ethics is largely identified, categorized the
virtues as moral virtues (including prudence, justice, fortitude and
temperance) and intellectual virtues (including “Sophia” or theoretical
wisdom), and “phronesis” or practical wisdom.
• He also argued that each of the moral virtues was a golden mean, or
desirable middle ground, between two undesirable extremes.
2. ETHICS OF CARE
• Developed by Feminist writers Annette Baier in the second half of the 20th
century.
• It emphasizes the importance of solidarity, community and relationships
rather than universal standards and impartiality
• Agent-Based Theories, as developed recently by Michael Slote, give an
account of virtue based on our common-sense intuitions about which
character traits are admirable which can identify by looking at the people
we admire, our moral exemplars/
• The Theory of Natural Rights, every person is endowed with certain
inalienable rights, such as the right to life, the right to own property, and
the right to liberty.
3. MORAL RELATIVISM
• Is a theory which states that no one person’s morals are
better or worse than any other.
• Relativists argue that a person’s moral code is shaped by
the society in which he is raised, and that no society is
inherently better or worse than any other.
• Normative moral relativism is the idea that all societies
should accept each other’s moral differing moral values,
given that there are no universal moral principles.
 
LESSON 3
Mental Frames
 
THE MENTAL FRAMES
• Is a selective, reductive excessively narrow way by which a
question or information used to take a decision is expressed,
presented, worded, formulated, categorized, and pictured.
• A framing is done by the agent itself who designates his selective
perceptions and representations of realities and issues and by the
advisors or third parties who feed the agent with a selective
formulation that disseminates their own picture of things.
• Framing is the process of understanding and interpreting a
particular event.
• Goffman (1974) define frames as “principle of organization which
govern events at least social ones and our subjective involvement
in them.”
• Frames are the “schemata of interpretation” that allow individuals
“to locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number
of concrete occurrences… rendering what would otherwise be a
meaningless aspect of the scene into something is meaningful.
• Gitlin (1980) suggest that “frames are principles if selection,
emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about
what exists, what happens, and what matters.”
• Shon (1983) describes framing as a mental device that sets
the Boundaries of our attention, while Ahn and Ergin
(2006) model frames in terms of different levels of
awareness,
• Framing acts similar to a model is an attempt to simplify
complex issues.
THE FRAMING BIAS
• Framing becomes easily a damaging mental bias, which distorts the
perception and analysis of an issue and the whole decision-making
process.
• The framing bias gives a selective (framed) and simplistic picture of
reality. This leads to flawed decision with unwanted effects, this has
some relation with heuristic:
1. Representativeness heuristic in which we take simplified stereotypes
as models, and:
2. Availability heuristics such as our first perception/ interpretation of
things, or the memory of a recent event or data seen as similar, but
often unrelated or irrelevant, that jumps into the mind.
•Biased mental frames can result from a
kind of cognitive myopia a narrow mental
selectivity (selection bias), or a
representation that is deliberately
reductive, manipulative, one sided, partial,
truncated, non-neutral.
 THE CONSEQUENCES OF DECIDING WITH BLINDERS.
• To use narrow, selective (or wrong) data, explanations, ideas
and approaches about either an issue or the facts themselves:
• Thwart the ensuing reasoning, conclusions and decisions. As
a common example, gives usually a too favorable or too
unfavorable impression (positive or negative framing);
• Those flawed decisions bring dubious, damaging or at least
“anomalous” practical effects.