Asking Ethical Questions

Elder and Paul frame ethics as the study of what benefits or harms persons and other creatures. Human behavior can be either ethically praised (if someone acts to benefit the welfare of others) or criticized (when someone acts so as to harm others). Ethics is not to be confused with social convention, law, or religious beliefs. Their account emphasizes rights and principles that apply across cultures. Laws, conventions, and religious beliefs vary; whether an act is legal or customary does not, on its own, settle whether it is ethical. Ethical questions can be either simple or complex.

They use the following classes of harmful acts to illustrate violations of rights. These are ethical descriptions rather than a statement of any jurisdiction’s legal definitions:

• SLAVERY: Enslaving people, whether individually or in groups.
• GENOCIDE: Systematically killing with the attempt to eliminate a whole nation or ethnic group.
• TERRORISM: Waging war against civilians.
• TORTURE: Inflicting severe pain as an act of revenge or to obtain information from a person.
• SEXISM: Treating people unequally (and harmfully) in virtue of their gender.
• RACISM: Treating people unequally (and harmfully) in virtue of their race or ethnicity.
• MURDER: The pre-meditated killing of people for revenge, pleasure, or to gain advantage.
• ASSAULT: Attacking an innocent person with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
• RAPE: Forcing an unwilling person to have intercourse.
• FRAUD: Intentional deception to cause someone to give up property or some right.
• DECEIT: Representing something as true which one knows to be false in order to gain a selfish end harmful to another.
• INTIMIDATION: Forcing a person to act against his interest or deter from acting in his interest by threats or violence.
• Putting persons in jail without telling them the charges against them or providing them with a reasonable opportunity to defend themselves.
• Putting persons in jail, or otherwise punishing them, solely for their political or religious views.

Simple ethical questions are questions involving clear-cut ethical principles. Some examples:

• Is it cruel to subject an innocent creature to unnecessary suffering?
• Is it unjust to deny someone a basic human right?
• Is it ethically wrong to cheat or deceive people?
• Is it ethically wrong to torture people in order to exact a confession?
• Is it ethically wrong to use another person to serve your selfish interests?

Complex ethical questions are questions that can be argued in more than one way (using ethical principles). Some examples:

• Under what conditions, if any, should animal experimentation be allowed?
• Is it ethically wrong to kill animals for food?
• To what extent should scientists be allowed to experiment with new viruses (when the virus they create might itself cause harm)?
• Under what conditions should people be kept artificially alive?
• Do scientists have a special ethical responsibility to society?
• Are we ethically justified in engaging in unethical practices in our own defense because our enemies use them against us?
• To what extent are we ethically obligated to contribute to the healthfulness of the environment?
• Under what conditions, if any, is capital punishment ethically justifiable?

Distinguishing Among Questions of Ethics, Questions of Cultural Preference, and Questions of Religion

Ethical questions are often confused with questions from other domains, for example, social conventions, religion and the law. People commonly believe that social conventions, laws, and religious beliefs are self-evidently ethical. Yet social norms, religious theology, and laws all may (inadvertently) advocate unethical behavior. People can be socially ostracized or imprisoned for behavior that is not ethically wrong. Many religions have been used to justify such ethically repugnant practices as racism and slavery.

The following examples highlight confusions of ethics with religion, law, or social conventions:

Confusing ethics and the law:

• Many sexual practices (such as homosexuality) have been unjustly punished with life imprisonment or death (under the laws of one society or another).
• Many societies have enforced unjust laws based on racist views.
• Many societies have enforced laws that discriminate against women.
• Many societies have enforced laws that criminalize unpopular beliefs.
• Many societies have made torture and/or slavery legal.

Confusing ethics with social conventions:

• Many societies have created taboos against showing various parts of the body and have severely punished those who violate them.
• Many societies have created taboos denying women the same rights as men.
• Many societies have socially legitimated religious persecution.
• Many societies have socially stigmatized interracial marriages.

Confusing theological beliefs with ethical principles:

• Members of majority religious groups often enforce their beliefs on minorities.
• Members of religious groups often act as if their theological views (which are in fact debatable) are self-evidently true, scorning those who hold other views.
• Members of religious groups often fail to recognize that “sin” is a theological concept, not an ethical one. (“Sin” is defined theologically.)
• Divergent religions defend divergent views of what is sinful (but often expect their views to be enforced on all others as if a matter of ethics).