Eric Hammell

4/3/1999

Mass. Comm. Law and Ethics

Take Home Exam

1. Partiality is not treating everyone affected by a decision equally. It is deciding to favor one group or individual (including oneself) over another. It is discriminating between people when there is no good reason to do so. This is what can happen when we apply our prior opinions and feelings to a given situation with no regard for the facts.

James Rachels feels we have a Requirement of Impartiality. (EMP 18) That is, a duty to not be partial in moral considerations. Impartiality, according to Rachels, is "the basic idea that each individual’s interests are equally important: From within the moral point of view, there are no ‘privileged’ persons." (EMP 18) For Rachels, morality "requires the impartial consideration of each individuals interests." (EMP 15)

Rachels feels we can be partial in our decision making when we "want to believe some version of the facts because it supports our preconceptions." (EMP 17) The main problem Rachels sees with partiality is that it is arbitrary. Arbitrary decision making violates his idea that "moral judgements must be backed by good reasons." (EMP 18) It essentially ignores the facts and is therefore not sound reasoning. Rachels example of problem arbitrary (partial) reasoning is racism. Here a person wants to believe a certain race is inferior besides evidence to the contrary. There is no good reason for treating people differently in this example, and our decision is simply arbitrary. (EMP 18)

3. Cultural Relativism is the idea that "right" and "wrong" are defined by the standards of the culture within which the deed is to be judged. In other words, what is acceptable or unacceptable varies between different cultures. Therefore, it is not acceptable to judge other cultural practices based on our own moral framework.

Rachels gives the premise of Cultural Relativism to be simply, "different cultures have different moral codes." (EMP 22) He also explains that Cultural Relativists believe "the idea of universal truth in ethics… is a myth. The customs of different societies are all that exist. These customs cannot be said to be ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect,’ for that implies we have an independent standard of right and wrong by which they may be judged… Every standard is culture-bound. " (EMP 22)

The Cultural Differences argument employed by Cultural Relativists is, according to Rachels, problematic. It leads us to false conclusions from the premise. In an example, our premise of "what people believe" doesn’t square with our conclusion of "what really is the case." (EMP 24) We make a conclusion simply on the fact that there is a disagreement between right and wrong. Rachels doesn’t follow the argument that when two cultures’ standards are in conflict neither is ever correct. He believes one of them can simply be wrong. Rachels believes in an "objective truth" in some cases. (EMP 24)

Another problem for Rachels is that we cannot criticize others. We couldn’t even say certain practices were better or worse than eachother. (EMP 26) Also, nothing we do is wrong so long as it is acceptable in our society. We cannot criticize our own moral standards. (EMP 26) There can be no moral progress because a society cannot say that our way of doing things today is "better," for that would be judging the cultural context of past practices as worse, which is not allowed by Cultural Relativism. (EMP 26)

4. The Social Contract philosophy is basically the idea that there are certain moral rules we should follow for the good of all of us. We all live better working together than we do individually, so its to our advantage to agree upon moral rules and follow them.

Thomas Hobbes’ Social Contract Theory stated that when we make rules for all of us to follow, we rise above the "state of nature" and "gain the benefits of social living." (EMP 143-144) He points out that in the state of nature we live in a state of fear and have no industry, culture, navigation, arts, etc. (EMP 144) The Social Contract Theory recognizes: Each of us needs the same basic things, and these things are scarce. None of us is better than everyone else so we should all share of our scarce resources equally. Finally, we all must understand that people will not always put their interests aside for you. (EMP 144-145)

The relevance of this theory is clear within the law and in professional standards. When we violate a rule in our social contract, we may have a benefit of it taken away from us by the law or by our superiors within our profession.

An example of this in the mass media is a journalist deciding whether he or she should break the law to gain information. Should he lie to an interviewee to get information out of her? Should she break into private property to get information for her story? In both cases the journalist is breaking a rule in the social contract. Surely the journalist would not want everyone to break the rule (lying or robbery) all the time. However, the information obtained by breaking the rule may benefit more than just the journalists career, it may benefit the public at large. Still, besides this fact, the Social Contract Theory states that we should not break the rules that we’ve made with eachother if we don’t want everyone to behave this way.

5a. Utilitarianism states that actions are to be judged on the amount of happiness or unhappiness they cause as a consequence. The act itself is only to be considered right or wrong based on the consequences it causes. Everyone’s happiness is equally important. We should always strive for actions that result in the most happiness.

We can apply Utilitarianism to the photograph of the drowning child we discussed in class. A Utilitarian would weigh the amount of happiness the reporter receives from printing the photo to the amount of unhappiness the family might experience seeing it in the paper. Neither parties happiness is more important. The Utilitarian would point out that he is not responsible for the incident which is ultimately causing the unhappiness, the drowning. In making his decision he is not concerned with the past event of the drowning, only what future consequences might arise in publishing a picture of it.

A strength of Utilitarianism is it examines particular situations. While overall we may feel it is wrong to take advantage of a family in mourning we can look at this particular situation separately. Utilitarianism says it ok to speculate on the feelings the parties involved will experience as a consequence of the choice. We need no other rigid framework than our own understanding of human emotion to base our decision by. Both the reporters feelings and the family’s are equally important. In Utilitarianism, we don’t find ourselves making automatic decisions based on an unspecific and unfeeling rule.

A weakness of Utilitarianism is that perhaps the unhappiness caused to the family should be given greater weight than the happiness for the reporter. Does adding more unhappiness to an already unhappy person have more weight than adding happiness to a person we presume to be neutral in happiness? Shouldn’t our sympathy for the family outweigh the reporters monetary gain? By what standard do we measure happiness?

Rachels, James: The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1999.