Using An Ethical Tool Box

People from all walks of life face many ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas have consequences. Our worldview determines how we deal with these dilemmas, and guides us to the right decisions. In this essay, I will examine an ethical issues through my Christian worldview. I will also present other viewpoints, and compare them to mine.

To start with, executive compensation has been a major and main target for criticism by the stakeholders as well as academics over the time of last several years. “Liberty Mutual’s longtime chief earned an average of nearly $50 million a year from 2008 to 2010, making him one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the country, according to state insurance filings reviewed by the Globe (Wallack, 2012)”. At first glance at this question I think; well we live in a capitalistic society where there are no limits on how much money people can make. Also if this CEO started the business and why shouldn’t they be entitled to that much money from the company, right?

John Stuart Mill wrote on his moral theory of Utilitarianism, which many have refuted by explaining that it failed to respect the dignity and worth of human beings. Mills theory of utility bases an actions morality on its ability to create the maximum amount of happiness. Happiness as described by Mill, is the maximization of pleasure over grief. Some critics have even said that Mill’s theory degraded humans to swine as it belittled morals to come from pleasures of the body that even animals had. Mill defended his theory by stating that human happiness is much more complex than that of swine. I do not believe that Mill’s defense was particularly convincing, and many facets of his theory continue to degrade the dignity, values, and worth of humans.

Created by Harvard University professor and theologian Ralph B. Potter, we will discuss in this paper how and why to apply the Potter Box, which is an analytical tool that assesses ethics of decision making and dilemmas. By using the Potter Box, we are guided towards a decision after considering a number of elements and steps very carefully. To be more specific, we will be understanding the four interrelated steps for making an ethical decision. As you complete each quadrant it is important to remember that two point of views need to be exposed so you can have a clear picture of the situation presented and the alternatives to making the final decision. Let’s dive into the Potter Box.

Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” is his method for stripping away information from the decision making process that would prejudice the outcome by introducing inequalities (i.e. wealth, age, etc…). His veil aims to QUOOOOTE

“Veil of Ignorance” means that personal original position should be ignored before making decision. And “Veil of Ignorance” is for the achievement of justice and fairness. I have same opinion with the majority people that John Rawls’ theory is with the basis of utilitarianism, though Rawls has two principles for arguing the difference between utilitarianism and his own theory.

John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher that believed in utilitarianism. Per utilitarianism, the source of moral duty comes from the consequences of an action. Mill is known for his Greatest Happiness Principle, which says actions are right when they promote the “greatest happiness” to the greatest number of people. Whether Mill’s statement is right or wrong is debatable. In the general sense, his statement seems logical. Doing what will make a greater number of people happy is what we should do. In order to determine what is good, a person must weigh the outcome of his or her actions. What may please the most people seem logical, but has issues associated. It can lead to overlooking a person’s individual right and interferes with equality.

by unhappiness, the promotion of pain and the privation of joy. As indicated by the Greatest Happiness Principle, whether we are pondering our own particular great or the once for other individuals, we should act in a way that excluded us as much as could reasonably be expected and encourage as much happiness as we could. In the event that one was given two decisions, a valuable is obligated to pick the action that advantages the best measure of individuals. For Mill, Happiness was something that was well understood, and it was more on cultural and spiritual instead of just physical. And also he told the difference between lower and higher pleasure. He said “It is batter to be a human being satisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” (BOOK). He rcognised that there were different ways oftesting/evaluating the value of happiness. He did this by claiming that 'Love your neighbor as yourself' makes up/is equal to the ideal perfection of useful sense of right and

J.S. Mill was a firm believer that an individual’s personal liberty was essential to both the individual and for the growth of a society. These liberties consisted of the free expression of thought, character and action by the people (Macleod, 1). Mill understood that these personal core liberties were crucial and should never be taken away or suppressed. Exercising these liberties, people would make moral and rational decisions that would benefit both themselves and aid to a society. Mill rationalized this through his “greatest happiness principle”, where he believed that a person based their decisions on what provided them the highest level of pleasure. Mill understood that each person was different, so pleasure as an end state would not always be the same throughout a society, but that happiness in any form was the basis of all human conduct (APUS,1). Mill believed that this was the core to the choices that all humans made, based on learned inductive reasoning.

Mill describes the basic moral standard of utilitarianism as "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." It means that actions are right if they provide happiness and benefits society and vice versa.

John Stuart Mill introduced his ideas of ethics in which he argued that the most morale actions were the ones that provided the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. His theory become known as Utilitarianism and gained prominence in the 18th century and his ideas received much criticism when first introduced because many thought that he promoted selfishness – although he argued that it was not an individual’s happiness but the happiness of the group that truly mattered. Mill’s brand of Utilitarianism focuses on a balance of happiness over suffering and is an absolute principle. I will argue that Mill’s theory tends to focus more on the maximization of utility in the short-term, and because of this there are flaws in

Mill also argues that there are several reasons why we should try to follow the greatest happiness principle. These reasons involve external motivations and internal motivations. One of the reasons why we are often motivated to do something in our society is because we do not want to anger people around us. Even though this is an important consideration when dealing with moral issues, there is another internal motivation that is more important according to Mill. This internal motivation is our own conscience. Our conscience is the little voice that we hear inside of our head that tells us what we should and should not do. Following your conscience will lead to causing happiness for both yourself and everyone else around you according to Mill.

Mill’s recognizes higher and lower pleasures, intellectual pleasures, aesthetic pleasures, and of course purely hedonistic pleasures. Happiness, for Mill’s seems a bit more of an objective condition of a human being; For Mill’s happiness is human wellbeing in all its complexity and sophistication. Mill’s can then suggest that human happiness is the foundational to all of morality, and the purpose of morality to promote human wellbeing. This is because Mill’s theory is egalitarian and considers everyone’s happiness equally and that everyone’s happiness matters. In determining the correct course of action, we need to be impartial and objective, not favoring our own happiness, or the happiness of those close to us, over relative strangers.

Mill states that we should always aim at ensuring the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of individuals which could be thought of, as if a lie that was told was going to have a positive effect then the lie it good since it

Reading Reflection #2: John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism In John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, he implements consequential ethics. Mill's utilitarianism conjoins three claims: 1, the morally right action is the one that maximizes aggregate good, 2, what is good is the happiness of individual humans (and other sentient creatures), and 3, happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain (Mill). Mill also explains the General Happiness Principle, in which (1) actions are ‘right’ in proportion to how much happiness/pleasure produced, and actions are ‘wrong’ proportion to how much pain/unhappiness produced, and (2) we must give equal weight to happiness of all persons affected by the action (Mill). The role of Greatest Happiness Principle