Moral Motivation & Ethical Action

 "Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do."

Ethics. 

Why does it get so confusing and complicated? 

Why does it get so messy? 

Why is it not straightforward?

Why is it not black and white?

Because we are human. 

Humans are confusing and complicated, humans are messy, humans are not straightforward, and humans are definitely not black and white. We are a beautiful rainbow of chaos, cultures, conventions, and connections.

So operating 'ethically' in a world such as this is not only open to criticism, it's open to interpretation. It's open to intuition, understanding and debate. Ethics is an issue of morality, and since different people have different morals, their standards of right and wrong, of wise and unwise, of correct and incorrect, are inherently different.

The primary aim of ethics is to determine how we ought live, how we should act, and how we should exist amongst others.

That's a tall order.

According to John Deigh, a professor of philosophy and law at The University of Texas at Austen, ethics is, "above all, a practical discipline", and therefore not just concerned with thinking in moral terms, but acting in moral terms.

But what makes an action moral? What makes an action right or wrong?

Moral subjectivists would say moral judgements reflect a personal attitude, opinion or preference; in which case you would act based on what you believe to be morally correct.

Moral realists would say moral judgements can be true or false because they are based on moral facts and values; in which case it doesn't matter what your personal feelings and attitudes are, there are correct and incorrect ways of acting, in the same way that 2+2 = 4 is correct and 2+2 = 5 is incorrect.

Now hold up, let's get some context on this situation. 

When I was in my second year of college, we had to write a performance critique essay. If you know me, you will know I adore writing and so actually enjoy tasks such as this that other people hate. Yes, I'm weird, just go with it. 

So we all submitted our essays and one morning the whole year had to gather in a studio while they were given back to us. Everyone got them back except for me and another girl. Weird, I thought. We looked at each other confused and we knew there was no way the other one hadn't done the work. In fact, I thought maybe our teacher was going to use my friend's essay as an example of excellent work or something.

No. That didn't happen.

Instead, we were accused in front of the entire year of plagiarism. Of "at least 90%" plagiarism. We were publicly accused of stealing work and claiming it as our own, of behaving in an unacceptable manner and, actually, of behaving illegally. 

I know you don't know me or my friend well enough, but let me just say that of everyone you've ever known, we are the two least likely people to ever, ever do this. And it isn't like our teacher didn't know us well enough. Everyone in that room knew we would never have done it.

Let's pause for a minute. 

Why did our teacher do this? 

Well, on a basic level, because she has morals. She really believed we had done this immoral act and would not stand by and let it happen. She would call us out on it and, presumably, reprimand us. Of course, she had very valid morals - plagiarism is an unacceptable act and shouldn't be allowed, so her morals motivated her to act as she did (and as our teacher it was her responsibility to deal with it).

However, as I've mentioned, we weren't actually guilty. So how did we get here? Morals and workplace obligations aside, she was factually incorrect. She had sound morals, but she was factually wrong.  

We got here because upon reading our essays and presuming we were guilty of plagiarism (whether she thought we weren't actually capable of writing such material or it just didn't sound like us I don't know), she jumped straight to acting on her morals. 

No questioning, no talking to us privately, no checking if it was actually plagiarism, no running it through a system to validate her presumption, no words with other teachers, no discussion, no looking at our previous essays (marked by a different teacher) to see if it was similar to old work, no questioning her assumption.

She had valid morals. Fact. She was incorrect. Fact. She handled a situation by acting on her valid morals without checking if she was incorrect or considering the potential consequences. Fact.

So might we say she behaved unethically? If ethics is a "practical discipline", then surely it doesn't matter if she had good morals because her actions led to upset, humiliation and unwarranted accusation.

Well, the Teleological Ethics Theory claims that whether an act is moral or immoral is the result of the consequences of the act ('tele' = end) - if it causes some sort of pleasure or pain, goodness, happiness etc.

Whereas, the Deontological Ethics Theory says the morality of an act is based on some kind of authority independent of the consequences of the act - people must act in a moral way because it is their duty, not because of the consequences of the act ('deon' = duty).

So a subjectivist view lends itself to the teleological theory; where my teacher acted based on her personal attitude and opinion, but acted unethically because her act led to negative consequences. 

A realist view may also lend to this theory; where my teacher behaved immorally because she acted 'incorrectly' in the situation, no matter her attitudes, because she was in fact wrong.

Realism may also lend itself to deontological theory because if there was a set rule of the college (the authority) in place on how to act if you suspect plagiarism, it definitely wasn't followed and therefore she acted immorally.

Now that's all a bit long and complicated, but that is the nature of ethics. 

I should say, I do not wish any ill on this teacher as this event was actually really important for me. It made me consider morals and, though I couldn't label it at the time, ethics, as well as teaching me about how to deal with this sort of challenge where I am accused of something (I'd never been accused of anything, especially not this extreme) and how to act in response. 

It also led to her helping me get my writing published in a magazine and we are actually good friends, so I do not write this to judge her for what happened, only to examine it from an ethical perspective.

This I did mainly to wrap my own head around ethics, and as I go forward I will examine where ethical considerations come into my own actions within my practice. 

To wrap up the story, after we got over the shock and upset, we protested our innocence and the essays were taken to be run through a plagiarism checker.

They came back 0% plagiarism.

But don't worry, I got some chocolate buttons out of it.

References

THE BASICS OF PHILOSOPHY (2020), 'Ethics' 

https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_ethics.html

Academy of Ideas (2013), 'Introduction to Ethics'  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_t4obUc51A