Module 2: Ethical Issue, Judgment,

Argument, Dilemma

Unit Overview

This unit discusses situations in which there is a choice to be made between two
options, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion. In
such cases, societal and personal ethical guidelines can provide no satisfactory outcome
for the chooser.

Unit Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students must have:

• Understood and defined the concepts of Ethical Issue, Judgment, Argument and
Dilemma
• Analyzed the implications of Ethical Issue, Judgment, Argument and Dilemma
• Articulated and defended a preferred position on the relationship between ethics
and society while appreciating its limitations
Lesson 1: Ethical Issue

Ethical issues abound in contemporary society. Ethical issues involve questions of the
ethical rightness or wrongness of public policy or personal behavior. Actions or policies
that affect other people always have an ethical dimension, but while some people restrict
ethical issues to actions that can help or harm others (social ethics) others include
personal and self-regarding conduct (personal ethics).

Many of today’s most pressing issues of social ethics are complex and multifaceted and
require clear and careful thought. Some of these issues include:
• Should states allow physician-assisted suicide?
• Is the death penalty an ethically acceptable type of punishment?
• Should animals have rights?
• Is society ever justified in regulating so-called victimless crimes like drug use, not
wearing a helmet or a seatbelt, etc.?
• What are our responsibilities to future generations?
• Are affluent individuals and countries obligated to try to prevent starvation,
malnutrition, and poverty wherever we find them in the world?
• Is there such a thing as a just war?
• How does business ethics relate to corporate responsibility?

To reach careful conclusions, these public policy issues require people to engage in
complicated ethical reasoning, but the ethical reasoning involving personal issues can be
just as complex and multifaceted:
• What principles do I apply to the way I treat other people?
• What guides my own choices and my own goals in life?
• Should I have the same expectations of others in terms of their behavior and
choices as I have of myself?
• Is living ethically compatible or incompatible with what I call living well or happily?
An Ethical Issue requires a person or organization to choose between alternatives that
must be evaluated as right (ethical) or wrong (unethical).

People care quite a bit about ethical issues and often voice varied and even sharply
opposed perspectives. So when looking at how we debate ethical issues publicly, it is not
surprising to find debate ranging from formal to informal argumentation, and from very
carefully constructed arguments with well-qualified conclusions, to very biased positions
and quite fallacious forms of persuasion. It’s easy to be dismayed by the discord we find
over volatile issues like gun control, immigration policy, and equality in marriage or in the
workplace, gender and race equality, abortion and birth control, jobs versus environment,
freedom versus security, free speech and censorship, and so on. But it is also easy to go
the other direction and be drawn into the often fallacious reasoning we hear all around
us.

Critical thinkers want to conduct civil, respectful discourse, and to build bridges in ways
that allow progress to be made on difficult issues of common concern. Progress and
mutual understanding is not possible when name-calling, inflammatory language, and
fallacies are the norm. Some mutual respect, together with the skill of being able to offer
a clearly-structured argument for one’s position, undercuts the need to resort to such
tactics.

So critical thinkers resist trading fallacy for fallacy, and try to introduce common ground
that can help resolve disputes by remaining respectful of differences, even about issues
personally quite important to them. When we support a thesis (such as a position on one
of the above ethical issues) with a clear and well-structured argument, we allow and
invite others to engage with us in more constructive fashion. We say essentially, “Here is
my thesis and here are my reasons for holding it. If you don’t agree with my claim, then
show me what is wrong with my argument, and I will reconsider my view, as any rational
person should.”
When we evaluate (analyze) somebody else’s position on an ethical issue, we are not free
to simply reject out-of-hand a conclusion we don’t initially agree with. To be reasonable,
we must accept the burden of showing where the other person errs in his facts or
reasoning. If we cannot show that there are errors in the person’s facts or reasoning, to
be reasonable we must reconsider whether we should reject the other person’s
conclusion.

By applying the common standards of critical thinking to our reasoning about ethical
issues, our arguments will become less emotionally driven and more rational. Our
reasoning will become less dependent upon unquestioned beliefs or assumptions that the
other people in the conversation may not accept. We become better able to contribute
to progressive public debate and conflict resolution through a well-developed ability to
articulate a well-reasoned position on an ethical issue.

Activity 7

Instruction: Illustrate: Explain by using examples

Present three important ethical issues that our

society is facing today.
Lesson 2: Ethical Judgment

Ethical judgments are a subclass of value judgments. A value judgment involves an

argument as to what is correct, superior, or preferable. In the case of ethics, the value
judgment involves making a judgment, claim, or statement about whether an action is
morally right or wrong or whether a person’s motives are morally good or bad. Ethical
judgments often prescribe as well as evaluate actions, so that to state that someone (or
perhaps everyone) ethically “should” or “ought to” do something is also to make an ethical
judgment.

If ethical judgments are a subclass of value judgments, how do we distinguish

them? Ethical judgments typically state that some action is good or bad, or right or
wrong, in a specifically ethical sense. It is usually not difficult to distinguish non-ethical
judgments of goodness and badness from ethical ones. When someone says “That was
a good action, because it was caring,” or “That was bad action, because it was cruel”
they are clearly intending goodness or badness in a distinctly ethical sense.

By contrast, non-moral value judgments typically say that something is good (or bad)
simply for the kind of thing it is; or that some action is right or wrong, given the practical
goal or purpose that one has in mind. “That’s a good car” or “That’s a bad bike” would
not be considered to moral judgments about those objects. Goodness and badness here
are still value judgments, but value judgments that likely track features like comfort,
styling, reliability, safety and mileage ratings, etc.

The use of “should” or “ought to” for non-moral value judgments is also easy to recognize.
“You ought to enroll early” or “You made the right decision to go to Radford” are value-
judgments, but no one would say they are ethical judgments. They reflect a concern with
wholly practical aims rather than ethical ones and with the best way to attain those
practical aim.
Activity 8

Instruction: Interpret: Explain in your own words and discuss significance.

“Ethical judgments typically state that some action is

good or bad, or right or wrong”
Lesson 3: Ethical Argument

Ethical arguments are arguments whose conclusion makes an ethical judgment. Ethical
arguments are most typically arguments that try to show a certain policy or behavior to
be either ethical or unethical. Suppose you want to argue that “The death penalty is
unjust (or just) punishment” for a certain range of violent crimes. Here we have an ethical
judgment, and one that with a bit more detail could serve as the thesis of a position paper
on the death penalty debate.

An ethical judgment rises above mere opinion and becomes the conclusion of an
ethical argument when you support it with ethical reasoning. You must say why you hold
the death penalty to be ethically right or wrong, just or unjust. For instance, you might
argue that it is unjust because of one or more of the reasons below:

• It is cruel, and cruel actions are wrong.

• Two wrongs don’t make a right.

• It disrespects human life.

• In some states the penalty falls unevenly on members of a racial group.

• The penalty sometimes results in the execution of innocent people.

Of course you could also give reasons to support the view that the death penalty is a just
punishment for certain crimes. The point is that whichever side of the debate you take,
your ethical argument should develop ethical reasons and principles rather than economic
or other practical but non-moral concerns. To argue merely that the death penalty be
abolished because that would save us all money is a possible policy-position, but it is
essentially an economic argument rather than an ethical argument.

Activity 9

Instruction: Discuss or explain: Give reasons, facts, details that show you
understand.

Present one ethical argument that concerns the

government and its people.
Lesson 4: Ethical Dilemma

An ethical dilemma is a term for a situation in which a person faces an ethically

problematic situation and is not sure of what she ought to do. Those who experience
ethical dilemmas feel themselves being pulled by competing ethical demands or values
and perhaps feel that they will be blameworthy or experience guilt no matter what course
of action they take. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gives the example of a young
Frenchman of military age during the wartime Nazi occupation who finds himself faced,
through no fault of his own, with the choice of staying home and caring for his ailing
mother or going off to join the resistance to fight for his country’s future:

He fully realized that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or
perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair…. Consequently, he found himself
confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but
directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end
infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might
be frustrated on the way. (Sartre, 1977)

What is the role of values in ethical dilemmas?

Frequently, ethical dilemmas are fundamentally a clash of values. We may experience a

sense of frustration trying to figure out what the ‘right’ thing to do is because any available
course of action violates some value that we are dedicated to. For example, let’s say you
are taking a class with a good friend and sitting next to him one day during a quiz you
discover him copying answers from a third student. Now you are forced into an ethical
decision embodied by two important values common to your society. Those values are
honesty and loyalty. Do you act dishonestly and preserve your friend’s secret or do you
act disloyal and turn them in for academic fraud?
Awareness of the underlying values at play in an ethical conflict can act as a powerful
method to clarify the issues involved. We should also be aware of the use of value as a
verb in the ethical sense. Certainly what we choose to value more or less will play a very
significant role in the process of differentiating between outcomes and actions thereby
determining what exactly we should do.

Literature and film are full of ethical dilemmas, as they allow us to reflect on the human
struggle as well as presenting tests of individual character. For example in World War
Z, Gerry Lane (played by Brad Pitt in the movie version) has to make a similar choice as
Sartre’s Frenchman: between serving the world-community of humans in their just war
against Zombies, and serving his own immediate family. It adds depth and substance to
the character to see him struggling with this choice over the right thing to do.

What ethical dilemmas are more common in real life?

Rarely are we called on to fight zombies or Nazis, but that doesn’t mean we live in an
ethically easy world. If you’ve ever felt yourself pulled between two moral choices, you’ve
faced an ethical dilemma. Often we make our choice based on which value we prize more
highly. Some examples:

You are offered a scholarship to attend a far-away college, but that would mean leaving
your family, to whom you are very close. Values: success/future
achievements/excitement vs. family/love/safety

You are friends with Jane, who is dating Bill. Jane confides in you that she’d been seeing
Joe on the side but begs you not to tell Bill. Bill then asks you if Jane has ever cheated
on him. Values: Friendship/loyalty vs. Truth

You are the official supervisor for Tony. You find out that Tony has been leaving work
early and asking his co-workers to clock him out on time. You intend to fire Tony, but
then you find out that he’s been leaving early because he needs to pick up his child from
daycare. Values: Justice vs. Mercy
You could probably make a compelling argument for either side for each of the above.
That’s what makes ethical dilemmas so difficult (or interesting, if you’re not directly
involved!)

Activity 10

Instruction: Justify or prove: Construct an argument for or against and support

with evidence based on the presented situations below.