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360 Business Ethics
Chapter 4
Moral facts derived from reason
• Reason has three properties that have bearing
on moral facts understood as the outcomes of
rational procedures.
– Consistency: the truths of reason can all be true at
the same time, else they are not truths of reason.
– Universality: the truths of reason are the same for
everyone at all times.
– A priori: the truths of reason are apprehended
independently of experience.
Two kinds of imperatives:
• Hypothetical (conditional)
– “If you want to be a great volleyball player, you
must practice volleyball.”
– Only those who fit the antecedent condition are
bound by this imperative
• Categorical
– This imperative applies to all rational beings
– Every moral rule should have an appropriately
rational form
Testing actions
• Actions themselves can’t be contradictory, and
are themselves particular, not universal.
• So what we test are instead Maxims, or Rules
of action, to see if these contain any rational
difficulties (such as not being universal or not
being consistent) without any appeal to
experience (a priori).
Is the maxim rationally consistent?
• Since reason works the same for everyone, and
since morality is derived from reason, then
morality will work the same for everyone.
• So, if something CANT be a maxim for everybody,
it isn’t moral for anybody.
• Examples: Lying, killing in anger
• Note: the problems with these actions are a priori
properties of maxims, not a result of the
consequences of the actions themselves
Does the action treat persons as
things?
• Rational beings recognize other rational beings as
those who are worthy of being treated like
rational beings.
• This is a flowery way of saying not to treat people
like merely things.
• In many contexts, we use others as means to our
ends, like when we are waited on in a restaurant,
or when we hire someone to fix our plumbing,
but in these cases, it is moral if they are acting at
the same time as free agents.
Is the maxim universalizable?
• If some action would not be accepted by every
rational person, whether they were the agents
or receivers of the action, it could not be part
of the moral law, because the moral law is
universal.
Some difficulties:
• Maxims may be presented more or less
generally, with seemingly different results on
the first test (consistency).
• See De George’s example concerning bribery
(p.67-68) for the details of the reply that at
any level of generality, an immoral action will
have difficulty with at least one of the three
tests.
Conflicts of Duties
• This is the famous “lie to save a life” family of
examples
• Some responses:
– Lying to someone with immoral aims is not
denying legitimate rights to information, and so
therefore is not lying
– Moral obligations are ‘prima facie’ binding, so
when they conflisct, the more important moral
principle applies.
Kant’s responses:
• Lying in order to manipulate someone is
wrong for just the same reasons that slavery is
wrong.
• There should be no such thing as moral luck
• If you tell the truth, you control the only thing
that you can control: you. If you lie you are
now morally and legally responsible for
whatever happens.
Ross and Prima Facie Duties
• It is clear that we are often faced with a variety of
moral duties, and that sometimes these duties
conflict.
• There appears to be no easy hierarchy of duties
such that one duty always supersedes others.
• W.D. Ross is the philosopher credited with
proposing that we have a large set of duties that
often conflict, and that when this occurs the
more important duty is the morally binding one.
Ross’s Prima Facie Duties:
• Duty to self (prudence
• Duties to others
– Dependent on past actions:
• Gratitude
• Reparation
• Fidelity
– Not dependent on past actions:
• Benevolence
• Non-malevolence
• Justice
When duties conflict:
• Whatever action seems to have less difficulty
fitting moral arguments like those we have
seen to this point is likely to be the most
important duty in each given case.
• Whenever duties conflict, rights also conflict,
and we must determine by the same
reasoning which rights are more important
than others.
Rights
• Rights are a claim to a moral good, and should be
important, normative, and justifiable.
• Every right held by one entity implies a claim on
another entity. That is, every right implies that
someone else or everyone else has a duty.
– One person’s right not to be killed implies everyone
else’s duty not to kill them.
– A person’s right to an attorney implies someone’s duty
to supply an attorney.
Two kinds of rights
Positive rights
• These are rights that come
with a corresponding duty
of others to do something
for the right-holder.
• Examples: Education (others
are duty-bound to provide
education for you), Due
Process, Health Care
Negative rights
• These are rights that come
with a duty of others to
refrain from doing
something to the rightholder.
• Examples: Life (others are
duty-bound not to kill you),
Property, Various Freedoms
Principles of Justice:
• There are many sorts of justice:
compensatory, retributive, procedural,
commutative, distributive
• De George specifically addresses distributive
justice because it is a major factor in
examining economic systems, social
structures, and laws that regulate businesses
and other organizations
The veil of ignorance:
• Rawls, a famous and influential figure in the
philosophy of distributive justice uses a
method referred to as the “original position”
or “veil of ignorance”.
• This is akin to Kantian moral reasoning. It asks
us to consider the acceptability of a law, or
social or economic institution without
knowing our place in society, and relies on
pure reason to supply the just answer.
Rawls’s Principles:
• Maximize liberty compatible with equal liberty
for everyone.
• Inequalities are to be arranged such that:
– They are reasonably expected to be to everyone’s
advantage
– They are attached to positions and offices that are
open to all