Further Moral Frameworks I

© 2006 by Ron Yezzi

Week 6

Assigned Scenario for This Week: Scenario 6

    This week's moral frameworks build upon the previous ones. The Avoidance Principle combines prohibitions from several previous frameworks, while the Community Principle is a variation on the Principle of Utility.
    After the presentation of the two moral frameworks, submit your work by going to D2L, logging in, clicking on Discussions, and going to your group for Week 6. Remember that you can break your assignment down into separate messages, as long as you are meeting deadlines.

The Avoidance Principle (A Negative Approach)

    The Principle Stated: In order to act in a morally acceptable way, you ought to avoid illegality, greed, and exploitation.

    Assumption: Avoiding these three immoral conditions is enough to produce morally acceptable behavior.

    Explanation: If we examine the ways people are victimized by others, particularly in business-related matters, we are very likely to find illegality, greed, and/or exploitation to be crucial elements in producing the victimization. (As a simple test, you may want to consider some actions you consider reprehensible in business to find out how much merit attaches to this claim.) It follows that avoidance of these three conditions eliminates victimization thereby producing morally acceptable actions.
    According to the Random House Dictionary, greed is "an excessive or rapacious (predatory) desire, especially for wealth or possessions." The greedy person never has enough and often takes unscrupulous measures to gain more. Often we interpret greed in terms of paradigm cases of greedy persons--for example, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol or Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life or Gordon Gekko in the film, Wall Street--that is, really extreme cases of greed. But greed can become a problem whenever worthwhile values are sacrificed for the sake of acquiring more wealth or affluence. So greed can be more pervasive than people are inclined to grant, especially with respect to themselves.
    "We exploit other persons when we use them as means to serve some purpose without consideration of their best interests. For example, the insurance salesperson who preys upon the fears of the elderly to sell them unneeded insurance is exploitative. Exploitation is a serious problem; but its meaning requires careful consideration. Thus actions to mutual advantage, it should be noted, need not be exploitative since they may take into account the best interests of everyone involved" (from Ron Yezzi, Philosophical Problems: The Good Life).

    Strengths:

• The Avoidance Principle provides goals to strive for in terms of actions generally regarded to be morally unacceptable.
• Instead of getting into the complicated question of deciding all the positive goals to be achieved, the Avoidance Principle focuses upon the worst actions to be avoided and thereby produces real moral progress.

    Weaknesses:

• Although extreme greed and exploitation are considered morally unacceptable, a certain amount of greed and exploitation is so characteristic of the human nature that we cannot expect to ban them completely; but then we find it difficult to decide where to draw lines that establish when greed and exploitation become unacceptable.
• There are too many self-serving ways by which to interpret "avoidance of illegality, greed, and exploitation" so that the Principle becomes ineffective.Thus, people find loopholes or excuses to evade the laws; they seldom admit to being greedy themselves (although they may accuse others of the vice), and they will interpret exploitative situations as being mutually advantageous to all parties.

The Community Principle

    The Principle Stated: In order to act in a morally acceptable way, you ought to act so as to preserve and enhance the well-being of the community.

    Assumptions:

• A society is not merely an artificial aggregate of individuals; rather it is a natural entity, a relatively self-sufficient community arising to better provide the basic necessities of life and continuing for the sake of a good life, common to all its members (from Aristotle).
• For the most part, human beings develop through the social conditions under which they live; and, given supportive social conditions, people can act in cooperative harmony instead of being selfish and competitive.

    Explanation: The Community Principle can be interpreted as a variation on the Principle of Utility. Whereas the Principle of Utility serves the common good viewed as a collection of individual interests however, the Community Principle serves the common good viewed as a unified, harmonious whole. There is a stress on communal cooperation (in contrast with the competition of free market principles). Trust, friendship, loyalty, good will, compassion, and mutual sensitivity to everyone's needs become the model for social interaction.

    Strengths:

• Cooperation, trust, friendship, loyalty, good will, compassion, and mutual sensitivity are extremely worthwhile human values.
• The Community Principle takes one away from the "winners-losers" phenomeon of a competitive free market.
• The most well off must act to benefit the least well off, thereby helping the disadvantaged and those in need and promoting greater allegiance to the well-being of the society as a whole.

    Weaknesses:

• The utopian dream of a happy, harmonious community is misleading because it ignores the value of struggle and risk in life. Moreover, the Community Principle tends to be unrealistic in terms of the way people generally act in some areas of life, particularly in business.
• Competition with the hope of winning and the threat of losing is necessary to motivate people to accomplish more and to prevent stagnation. Moreover, it is not clear why the most well off (the "winners" in a competitive environment) are obligated to benefit losers and the least well off.
• Application of the Community Principle encourages creation of governmental bureaucracies that are ineffective and merely perpetuate themselves and their special interests under the guise of serving the common good.

 When you are ready to submit your work, go to D2L, log in, click on Discussions, and then on your particular group under Week 6 Discussion.

© 2006 by Ron Yezzi