3.
Applied Ethics
Applied ethics is the branch of ethics which consists of the analysis of specific,
controversial moral issues such as abortion, animal rights, or euthanasia. In recent
years applied ethical issues have been subdivided into convenient groups such as
medical ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics, and sexual ethics. Generally
speaking, two features are necessary for an issue to be considered an “applied ethical
issue.” First, the issue needs to be controversial in the sense that there are significant
groups of people both for and against the issue at hand. The issue of drive-by
shooting, for example, is not an applied ethical issue, since everyone agrees that this
practice is grossly immoral. By contrast, the issue of gun control would be an applied
ethical issue since there are significant groups of people both for and against gun
control.
The second requirement for an issue to be an applied ethical issue is that it must be a
distinctly moral issue. On any given day, the media presents us with an array of
sensitive issues such as affirmative action policies, gays in the military, involuntary
commitment of the mentally impaired, capitalistic versus socialistic business
practices, public versus private health care systems, or energy conservation.
Although all of these issues are controversial and have an important impact on
society, they are not all moral issues. Some are only issues of social policy. The aim of
social policy is to help make a given society run efficiently by devising conventions,
such as traffic laws, tax laws, and zoning codes. Moral issues, by contrast, concern
more universally obligatory practices, such as our duty to avoid lying, and are not
confined to individual societies. Frequently, issues of social policy and morality
overlap, as with murder which is both socially prohibited and immoral. However, the
two groups of issues are often distinct. For example, many people would argue that
sexual promiscuity is immoral, but may not feel that there should be social policies
regulating sexual conduct, or laws punishing us for promiscuity. Similarly, some
social policies forbid residents in certain neighborhoods from having yard sales. But,
so long as the neighbors are not offended, there is nothing immoral in itself about a
resident having a yard sale in one of these neighborhoods. Thus, to qualify as an
applied ethical issue, the issue must be more than one of mere social policy: it must
be morally relevant as well.
In theory, resolving particular applied ethical issues should be easy. With the issue of
abortion, for example, we would simply determine its morality by consulting our
normative principle of choice, such as act-utilitarianism. If a given abortion produces
greater benefit than disbenefit, then, according to act-utilitarianism, it would be
morally acceptable to have the abortion. Unfortunately, there are perhaps hundreds
of rival normative principles from which to choose, many of which yield opposite
conclusions. Thus, the stalemate in normative ethics between conflicting theories
prevents us from using a single decisive procedure for determining the morality of a
specific issue. The usual solution today to this stalemate is to consult several
representative normative principles on a given issue and see where the weight of the
evidence lies.
a. Normative Principles in Applied Ethics
Arriving at a short list of representative normative principles is itself a challenging
task. The principles selected must not be too narrowly focused, such as a version of
act-egoism that might focus only on an action’s short-term benefit. The principles
must also be seen as having merit by people on both sides of an applied ethical issue.
For this reason, principles that appeal to duty to God are not usually cited since this
would have no impact on a nonbeliever engaged in the debate. The following
principles are the ones most commonly appealed to in applied ethical discussions:
Personal benefit: acknowledge the extent to which an action produces beneficial
consequences for the individual in question.
Social benefit: acknowledge the extent to which an action produces beneficial consequences
for society.
Principle of benevolence: help those in need.
Principle of paternalism: assist others in pursuing their best interests when they cannot do so
themselves.
Principle of harm: do not harm others.
Principle of honesty: do not deceive others.
Principle of lawfulness: do not violate the law.
Principle of autonomy: acknowledge a person’s freedom over his/her actions or physical
body.
Principle of justice: acknowledge a person’s right to due process, fair compensation for harm
done, and fair distribution of benefits.
Rights: acknowledge a person’s rights to life, information, privacy, free expression, and
safety.
The above principles represent a spectrum of traditional normative principles and
are derived from both consequentialist and duty-based approaches. The first two
principles, personal benefit and social benefit, are consequentialist since they appeal
to the consequences of an action as it affects the individual or society. The remaining
principles are duty-based. The principles of benevolence, paternalism, harm,
honesty, and lawfulness are based on duties we have toward others. The principles of
autonomy, justice, and the various rights are based on moral rights.
An example will help illustrate the function of these principles in an applied ethical
discussion. In 1982, a couple from Bloomington, Indiana gave birth to a baby with
severe mental and physical disabilities. Among other complications, the infant,
known as Baby Doe, had its stomach disconnected from its throat and was thus
unable to receive nourishment. Although this stomach deformity was correctable
through surgery, the couple did not want to raise a severely disabled child and
therefore chose to deny surgery, food, and water for the infant. Local courts
supported the parents’ decision, and six days later Baby Doe died. Should corrective
surgery have been performed for Baby Doe? Arguments in favor of corrective surgery
derive from the infant’s right to life and the principle of paternalism which stipulates
that we should pursue the best interests of others when they are incapable of doing
so themselves. Arguments against corrective surgery derive from the personal and
social disbenefit which would result from such surgery. If Baby Doe survived, its
quality of life would have been poor and in any case it probably would have died at an
early age. Also, from the parent’s perspective, Baby Doe’s survival would have been a
significant emotional and financial burden. When examining both sides of the issue,
the parents and the courts concluded that the arguments against surgery were
stronger than the arguments for surgery. First, foregoing surgery appeared to be in
the best interests of the infant, given the poor quality of life it would endure. Second,
the status of Baby Doe’s right to life was not clear given the severity of the infant’s
mental impairment. For, to possess moral rights, it takes more than merely having a
human body: certain cognitive functions must also be present. The issue here
involves what is often referred to as moral personhood, and is central to many
applied ethical discussions.
b. Issues in Applied Ethics
