Samenvatting
Summary mandatory literature Ethics (EDW) ()
- Vak
- Ethics (EDW)
- Instelling
- Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
These are summaries of the mandatory literature/articles of the course Ethics in a Digital World (EDW) for .
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Summaries mandatory literature EDW (2019-2020)Ethical Theories 1 and Teleopathy
Normative Ethics and Responsibility
Goodpaster, K.E. (2004). Ethics or excellence? Conscience as a check on
the unbalanced pursuit of organizational goals.
Ethical Theories 2, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and Friedman's
criticism of CSR
Grigore G., Molesworth M., Watkins R. (2017) New Corporate
Responsibilities in the Digital Economy. In: Theofilou A., Grigore G., Stancu
A. (eds) Corporate Social Responsibility in the Post-Financial Crisis Era.
Friedman, M. (1970). The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase
its Profits.
Ethics and Digitalization
Royakkers, L.M.M., Timmer, J., Kool. L, Van Est, Q. (2018). Societal and
ethical issues of digitization.
The ethics of the sharing economy, digital disruption, and stakeholders
relationships
Frenken, K., & Schor, J. (2017). Putting the sharing economy into
perspective.
The ethics of digital labour
Est, R. van & L. Kool (eds.) (2015). Working on the robot society: visions
and insights from science concerning the relationship between technology
and employment.
The ethics of self-driving cars
Nyholm, S. (2017). The ethics of crashes with self‐driving cars: A roadmap,
I.
Nyholm, S. (2017). The ethics of crashes with self‐driving cars: A roadmap,
II.
, Normative Ethics and Responsibility
Royakkers, Pieters & van de Poel (2018)
1. Normative ethics
Ethics and morality
Ethics: determines about what is good or bad, wise or unwise and people’s deeds. It is the systematic
reflection on what is moral which increases our ability to cope with moral problems.
Morality: the totality of opinions, decisions and actions with which people express what they think is
good or right.
Descriptive and normative judgements
Descriptive ethics: a description of morality, including customs and habits, opinions about good and
evil, responsible and irresponsible behaviour, and acceptable and unacceptable action. Its judgements
are about what is, was, or will be the case and are true or false. The truth of a descriptive statement
might not yet been determined because testing is impossible (God exists). Science plays an important
role in determining the truth of descriptive judgments.
Normative ethics: a judgement of morality. Do the norms and values used conform to our ideas about
how people should behave? What is the right opinion, decision or action? Its judgements are value
judgements (not factual judgements) and indicate whether something is good or bad, desirable or
undesirable. They often refer to moral norms and values.
Points of departure: values, norms and virtues
Three primary normative theories:
Values: help us determine which goals or states are worth striving for (more general not just
for themselves);
o Intrinsic values: an objective in and of itself (work for job satisfaction);
o Instrumental values: a means to realizing an intrinsic value (work to become rich).
Norms: rules that prescribe what actions are required, permitted or forbidden. Norms are
required to guarantee values (means to realize values);
Virtues: human characteristic or qualities that are desired characteristics and express a value
that is worth striving for, expressed in action, lasting and permanent, always present, but are
only used when necessary and they can be influenced by the individual. By shaping a person’s
character or personality, people can learn virtues.
o Moral virtues: the desirable characteristics of people (the character development one
has to have gone through to realize values);
o Intellectual virtues: focus on knowledge and skills.
Moral values: which goals or states of affairs are worth striving for, to lead a good life or to realize a
just society.
Moral norms: rules that prescribe what action is required, permitted or forbidden.
Moral virtues: character traits that make someone a good person or that allow people to lead good
lives.
Values Norms
Ends Means
Global Specific
Hard to achieve without norms Ineffective without values
,Ethical theories
We can evaluate each moral action from three perspectives:
Action: make use of deontology (obligations or duty). The point of departure is norms, it is
your obligation to ensure that your actions agree with an applicable norm;
Actor: make use of virtue ethics. It is the quality of the person acting that makes the action
morally right or not. The point of departure is virtues;
Consequences: make use of consequentialism. Choose the action with the best outcomes. The
point of departure is values. Realize goals or states that should be strived for.
Utilitarianism (consequentialism)
Consequentialism: the consequences of actions are central to the moral judgment of those actions.
An action in itself is not right or wrong; it is only the consequence of action that is morally relevant.
Utilitarianism: measures the consequences of actions against one value: human pleasure,
happiness or welfare.
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was the founder of utilitarianism. The consequence of an action are central to its
moral judgment (an action is morally right if it results in pleasure and morally wrong if it results in
pain). The purpose has to be something that has intrinsic value (it has to be good in itself). This means
that the utilitarian is primarily concerned with values. By nature, people strive for pleasure and avoid
pain. Besides, people know what provides pleasure, what results in pain, and how pleasure can be
realized. Based on experience, people can form a moral judgment without the intervention of an
authority. The only sufficient ground for action is the utility principle: the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. It gives a reason to act morally. Pleasure and pain can be measured. In a moral
balance sheet, the costs and benefits for each possible action must be weighed against each other.
The action with the best result (providing the most utility) is the preferred one. To find out which action
leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people, we need to count the pleasure and
pain of all individuals. This is not simple, because pleasure cannot be measured objectively:
The pleasure of different people cannot be compared (pleasure is a rather subjective term);
It is not easy to compare actions: what action is worth more?
Mill and the freedom principle
John Stuart Mill extended and revised Bentham’s thinking. Two differences between Bentham and Mill
Qualities must be taken into account when applying the utilitarian calculus. It is possible that
a quantitatively smaller pleasure is preferred over a quantitatively larger one because it is by
nature more valuable. ‘Higher’ desires (such as intellectual ones), should be preferred above
‘lower’ desires (such as physical or animal desires);
The position of individuals cannot always be protected if the calculation indicates that the
pleasure of the majority outweighs the unhappiness of a few individuals. This could result in
the exploitation and abuse of minorities. Therefore, we must choose the action that provides
the most pleasure but does not conflict with human nature and dignity.
o Freedom principle: everyone is free to strive for his/her own pleasure, as long as they
do not deny or hinder the pleasure of others (the right to interfere with someone who
is drunk only arises when the person who is drunk starts to do harm to others). The
freedom principle is also known as the no harm principle: one is free to do what one
wishes, but only to the extent that no harm is done to others.
Criticism of utilitarianism
Two important points of criticism were discussed above:
Happiness cannot be measured objectively;
Utilitarianism can lead to exploitation.
, Four other points of criticism:
Consequences: the consequences cannot be foreseen objectively and often are unpredictable,
unknown, or uncertain. Therefore, we should work with expected consequences and pleasure;
Distributive justice: the value of having a just distribution of certain important goods (income,
happiness, and carrier). Utilitarianism can lead to an unjust division of costs and benefits.
According to John Rawls, utilitarianism suffers from this problem because it does not recognize
the fundamental separateness of persons;
Personal relationships: utilitarianism ignores the personal relationships between people. The
total happiness counts instead of the individual happiness of specific persons. In daily life,
some people’s happiness has a greater impact on us than the happiness of others (friends,
family). Do we have moral obligations to the people we have a personal relationship with?;
Actions: certain actions are morally acceptable even though they do not create pleasure and
some actions that maximize pleasure are morally unacceptable. A solution to this problem is
proposed by rule utilitarianism that recognizes the existence of moral rules. Rule utilitarianism
looks at the consequences of rules (in contrast with actions) to increase happiness. If such a
rule withstands the test of promoting happiness then it turns into a moral rule.
The Ford Pinto case
The safety aspect of the design of the Ford Pinto did not receive sufficient priority. Ford had no
experience with small cars which led to the positioning of the petrol tank just behind the rear axis. The
gear construction in the rear axis was situated such that it would puncture the petrol tank in the event
of a collision. In Ford's tests, this problem already occurred at a speed of 35 km per hour. The puncture
of the tank caused an extremely hazardous situation. It was estimated that the change in the design
would raise the price of the car by $11. However, because the design met the safety requirements of
the government, the Pinto was taken into production without any alterations. To justify this action,
Ford made a cost-benefit analysis in which the costs of the deaths and injuries (nearly $50 million) were
lower than the costs for technical improvement ($137 million). Therefore, Ford decided that the
technical improvement would not be cost-effective for society.
Kantian theory
Duty (deontological) ethics: an action is morally right if it is in line with a moral rule (law, norm or
principle) independent of the consequences of that action.
The most well-known system of duty ethics has been developed by Immanuel Kant. According to Kant,
moral laws or normative ethics cannot be based on happiness since happiness is individual and changes
during a lifetime. Besides, it is hard to determine what increases happiness. Kant argued that duty is a
better guide for ethics. A core notion in Kantian ethics is autonomy. One should be able to determine
what is morally correct through reasoning.
Moral or categorical norm: we should place a moral norm upon ourselves and should obey it:
it is our duty. We can speak of acting with good will if our actions are led by the moral norm.
Thus, the notion of good will is different from having good intentions. Since a moral norm has
validity independent of time and place, a moral norm is unconditionally applicable (or
categorically applicable) to everyone in all circumstances. Often a norm follows the form of
‘thou shalt…’ (such as ‘thou shalt not kill’).
Hypothetical or conditional norm: only applies under certain circumstances. A hypothetical
norm usually has the following shape: ‘if you wish to achieve this goal, then you will have to
act in this way’.
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