1.1 Theory building activities: mountain terrorist exercise  (Page 3/5)

Activity 1

Activity 2

Taxonomy of ethical approaches

There are many ethical approaches that can be used in decision making. The Mountain Terrorist Exercise is based on an artificial scenario designed to separate these theoretical approaches along the lines of the different "horns" of a dilemma. Utilitarians tend to choose to shoot a villager "in order to save 19." In other words they focus their analysis on the consequences of an action alternative and choose the one that produces the least harm. Deontologists generally elect to walk away from the situation. This is because they judge an action on the basis of its formal characteristics. A deontologist might argue that killing the villager violates natural law or cannot be made into a law or rule that consistently applies to everybody. A deontologist might say something like, "What right do I have to take another person's life?" A virtue ethicists might try to imagine how a person with the virtue of courage or integrity would act in this situaiton. (Williams claims that choosing to kill the villager, a duty under utilitarianism, would undermine the integrity of a person who abhorred killing.)

Table connecting theory to domain

1. Row 1: Utilitarianism concerns itself with consequences. It claims that the moral value of an action is "colored" by its results. The harm test, which asks us to choose the least harmful alternative, encapsulates or summarizes this theoretical approach. The basic principle of utilitarianism is the principle of utility: choose that action that produces the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarians would shoot a villager in order to save 19. But Utilitarianism, like other forms of consequentialism, has prediction challenges. What are the short-, middle-, and long-term consequences of an action? These become harder to determine the further we are from the present.
2. Row 2: Npn-consequentialism turns away from consequences to focus on the formal characteristics of an action. (For example, Kant says the good action is one that does duty for duty's sake.) Deontology, a kind of non-consequentialism, helps us to identify and justify rights along with their correlative duties The reversibility test summarizes deontology by asking the question, "Does your action still work if you switch (=reverse) roles with those on the receiving end? Deontology has two formulations of its fundamental principle. The Categorical Imperative exhorts us to act only on that maxim which can be converted into a universal law. The Formula of the End proscribes that we "treat others always as ends, never merely as means," The rights that represent special cases of treating people as ends and not merely as means include (a) informed consent, (b) privacy, (c) due process, (d) property, (e) free speech, and (f) conscientious objection. The deontologist would choose not to kill a villager because the act of killing is formally wrong.
3. Row 3: Virtue ethics turns away from the action and focuses on the agent, the person performing the action. The word, "Virtue," refers to different sets of skills and habits cultivated by agents. These skills and habits, consistently and widely performed, support, sustain, and advance different occupational, social, and professional practices. (See MacIntyre, After Virtue, and Solomon, Ethics and Excellence, for more on the relation of virtues to practices.) The public identification test summarizes this approach: an action is morally acceptable if it is one with which I would willingly be publicly associated given my moral convictions. Individual virtues that we will use this semester include integrity, justice, responsibility, reasonableness, honesty, trustworthiness, and loyalty.