ETHICS &

GOVERNANCE

U1

BROACHING ETHICS
AND GOVERNANCE
Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.2
Study organiser
Before you begin this unit, please check through your study organiser. It shows the
topics that we’ll be covering, the skills you need to acquire (the learning outcomes),
and the activities you’ll do to help you acquire these skills.

Topics Learning outcomes Activities

1.0 Introduction At the end of unit 1, you Activity 1.1

should be able to:
1.1 What is ethics?
1.2 Ethical dilemmas  define ethics;

1.3 Ethics and values  provide examples of

ethical dilemmas and
1.4 Ethical suggest ways of solving
interconnectedness these;
1.5 Ethics and everyday  explain how ethics and
life values are related;
1.6 Outcomes of ethics  discuss ‘ethical
study interconnectedness’; and
 identify some possible
outcomes of ethics study.

Study time
You should be able to complete this section by the end of week 1.
To finish this unit you will need to complete the recommended reading
and activity 1.1.

Note: This course has an eLearning component. This means that along with
your print materials (this Study guide and I&A), and your textbook, you also
have access to an online learning space for UU200. Please refer to your I&A
booklet for instructions on how to login to the UU200 Moodle page. Your
print materials contain all the resources and information you need to
complete this course. However, you will find it useful to regularly login to
your online course page to:
 access additional online resources, including short films;
 contact your course coordinator to ask questions;
 clarify your understanding of the ideas and concepts we cover in the
course; and
 discuss matters relating to this course with other students.

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.3

 Readings/ Resources

Textbook: Preston, Noel. (2007) ‘Chapter One: The Ethical Challenge’ in

Understanding Ethics (3rd edition), Sydney: Federation Press, p. 6-15.

Pre-Recorded Lecture: View the pre-recorded lecture for unit 1. This lecture has
already been uploaded onto your Moodle page.

You need to complete the prescribed readings and view the pre-recorded lecture
before you attend the fortnightly face-to-face tutorial.

1.0 Introduction
We often encounter ethical challenges or dilemmas in our everyday lives. Consider
the following:

a) You have an assignment due tomorrow at 10am. It is now midnight the night
before. You have not started working on the assignment. Do you attempt to
research and write the assignment or do you simply lift an essay from the
internet, re-format it and submit it as your own?
b) You find out that the manufacturers of your favourite face cream have been
cruelly using mice and rats for many years to test this product. Do you
continue to buy this cream or chose another (more expensive) one that has not
been tested on animals?
c) You are waiting at the market for a bus when you notice two fifty dollar notes
by your right shoe. Do you pick up the notes and put them in your pocket,
attempt to find the owner, take them to the police station or do nothing?

We are also faced with ethical dilemmas in our professional lives. What would you
do in each of the situations below?

a) You know that a product your company is manufacturing can make people
who consume it quite sick. Should you speak to someone in your company
about this, go to the media or remain quite because you are scared you may
lose your job as a junior employee?
b) Your colleague makes calls to her boyfriend in Australia everyday from the
phone at work. Should you tell her this is wrong or let her face the
consequences of her own actions?
c) Your son asks you for some coloured paper. There are reams of red paper at
your workplace. Do you take a ream from work at lunch time when nobody is
around or do you go to town and buy the paper from a shop?

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.4

At the national level, important decisions have to be made in response to a range of
ethical challenges. Consider these difficult questions leaders of a government or state
may pose:

a) Should capital punishment be legalised in our country?

b) Should same sex marriages be legalised in our country?
c) Should we improve our Gross Domestic Product by exploiting our natural
resources?

Larger questions at the global level may include:

a) What can be done to alleviate poverty?
b) How can we protect the environment from further damage?
c) Is war ever right or justified?

All the challenges above, whether they are personal, professional, national or global
concerns, involve ethical decision-making. These challenges are also intricately
related to self, community, family, national, corporate and global approaches to
governance. We will closely examine the relationship between ethics and governance
in unit 4.
Before we enter more complex debates, we need to address an important question:
what is ethics?

1.1 What is ethics?

Put simply, ethics is the study of justice, life choices, values, actions, consequences
(or outcomes) and duties. Two critical questions that ethicists like to ask are: ‘how
ought I to live?’ and ‘how do I know what is right?’ The word ‘ought’ is often used
in ethics and refers to our moral duty or obligation to the society we live in and the
world at large. For example, ethicists ask more specifically: ‘how are we expected to
live’ or ‘what are our duties or moral obligation in society?’ Of course, there is
sometimes a gap between how we ought to live and the reality of how we actually
live.

Noel Preston defines ethics as ‘the study of what is right, fair, just or good’ (2007,
17). Ethics also involves ‘systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of
right and wrong behavior’ (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). As there are no
clear right and wrong answers in ethics, you will see how important it is for you to
defend a particular position or stance (especially when we enter the field of applied
ethics and discuss controversial issues). The development of what we call ‘critical
reasoning’ or a ‘critical mind’ does not take place overnight or just in the fourteen
weeks that you study ethics. Ethics education is life-long and continuous. This is
reflected in the following quotation: ‘ethics refers to the continuous effort of studying
our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the
institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-
based’ (Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics).

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.5

1.2 Ethical dilemmas
Let us now consider ‘The Trolley Problem’ posed by Philippa Foot in 1967:

A trolley (or train) is out of control and speeding down the track. The breaks have
failed. There is an innocent person on the track ahead of the trolley and he will be
killed if the trolley continues going straight ahead. There is a track leading to the
right. Unfortunately, five people are on that track. You are strolling by and see that
you can press a button that would cause the trolley to go on the right track. If you do
this, you will save one person, but cause five to die, or you can do nothing, allowing
the one to die. You are an ‘innocent bystander,’ in the sense that you are not an
employee of the railroad or a member of any public safety agency.

What should you do?

A. Press the button and save 1 person
B. Do nothing: 5 people will live
C. Other options?

Judith Jarvis Thomson revised this scenario which she called ‘The Trolley and the Fat
Man’:

You are standing on a bridge, watching a trolley hurtling down the tracks below you
toward five innocent persons. The brakes have failed, and the only way you can stop
the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. There is a fat man standing on the
bridge next to you, and you could push him over the railing and onto the tracks below.
If you do, the fat man will die, but the five will be saved

What should you do?

A. Push the fat man
B. Do nothing: 5 people will die
C. Other options?

‘The Trolley Problem’ and ‘The Trolley and the Fat Man’ are examples of moral
paradoxes or ethical dilemmas. When we are faced with an ethical dilemma, we
have to choose between two or more morally acceptable courses of action (Hamric,
Spross, and Hanson, 2000). This will involve closely examining the situation and
coming up with what we think is the ethical or right solution. When both courses of
action result in a negative outcome or end result, this is when the situation becomes
very complicated. Sometimes, we have no option but to choose between equally
unacceptable alternatives.

For example, in ‘The Trolley Problem’ and ‘The Trolley and the Fat Man’ someone
will die and you cannot prevent this. But you may be able to lessen the number of
deaths that take place from five to one. In this situation, should you think about what
is best for the most number of people? Or, should you do nothing and hope or pray
that something miraculous happens and there is some divine intervention? Would you
be able to live with yourself if you failed to make a decision and all five people are
killed?

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.6

Both these dilemmas deal with the question of human morality and a philosophical
approach called consequentialism. Consequentialists argue that morality is defined by
the outcomes of our actions. The consequences or end results for ‘The Trolley
Problem’ and ‘The Trolley and the Fat Man’ are the same: if one person lives, five
will die and if five live, one will die.

However, some people argue that allowing one person to die is more
permissible than pushing the fat man over the bridge. Why do you think
they would reason in this way? Do you agree with this view?

The reasoning behind this argument is that if you let one person die (as in ‘The
Trolley Problem’) this is a side effect of your decision or your inaction. On the other
hand, when you kill the fat man by pushing him over the bridge, you cause
intentional harm to him. What is your response to this?

Indeed killing one or five people is unethical in itself. But consequentialists argue that
an action that leads to serious harm is permissible if it promotes a good end. This is
called the Doctrine of Double Effect. Non-consequentialists would disagree with this
and insist that murder is always absolutely wrong regardless of the consequences. We
will discuss these theoretical approaches in detail in unit 3.

Hopefully, it is now clear that the line between right and wrong is often blurry and
subjective. In other words, your answers to both these scenarios may be quite
different from someone else’s answers. This does not mean that your view is wrong
and the other person’s view is right. Such is the nature of ethical debates. The trick is
to demonstrate ethical reasoning in your answers. The role of ethical reasoning is to
highlight two kinds of acts: those which contribute to the well-being of others and
those that harm others. When we are able to weigh up the options in a given situation
in relation to how it may impact on other people around us, we are demonstrating
ethical reasoning. Asking ‘why’ questions are also crucial in such situations.

1.3 Ethics and values

Now that we have defined ethics, the next step is to understand how ethics and values
are intricately related or connected. Preston states that ethics is ‘the study which
arises from the human capacity to choose among values’ (2007: 7).

What do you think values are?

Values are principles or beliefs to which we attribute worth. ‘They are

abstract concepts of worth – what we think is good or important’ (Kansas State
University). These principles guide our decisions and actions and our ethical
approach. Values are often instilled through socialisation and formed through
experiences over a period of time. They may be passed down among people in a
community or through the teachings of religious leaders or holy books. Other sources
of values include parents, siblings, friends, teachers, organizations and the media.

While ethics focuses on how a person should behave, values are concerned with
beliefs and attitudes that determine how a person actually behaves. Values can be
Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.7
divided into two main types: ethical and unethical values. Ethical values relate to
principles or beliefs about what is right and good (virtues) while unethical values
concern what is wrong or bad (vices). Some examples of ethical values that are
common or shared among most communities are trustworthiness, respect, caring,
responsibility, fairness, and Citizenship. These values form what is called the six
pillars of character (Kansas State University). We will discuss these pillars in more
depth in unit 3.

To illustrate this discussion on values, please view the two short films below. You
will need to type the following URL links into Google or click on unit 1 of your
Moodle page to view these short films.

Short Film 1: ‘So Cute’ (51 seconds)

URL link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcVZr7Z7RdE

Short Film 2: ‘The Black Hole’ (2.49 minutes)

URL link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk

What are some ethical values (virtues) in film 1?

What are some unethical values (vices) in film 2?
Do you think there are universal or common ethical values that all people
share?

There are two ways to answer this question. If you are a relativist, you would argue
that each culture or society has its own set of values or moral code that it follows. This
differs from society to society. If you believe in Ethical Universalism you would say
that there is a core set of values that most people share in the world regardless of their
religion or culture. These may be truth, love, citizenship and so forth. Human Rights
are based on universal or core values. We will consider these two opposing points of
view in more depth later in the course.

1.4 Ethical interconnectedness

English Poet, John Donne, famously said: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself, every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’. This quotation is relevant to our
discussion here because when we consider the topic of ethics, we must first
understand that we live in association with other people. As we need and depend on
other human beings, our actions and behavior will have an impact on those around us.
One act of kindness can bring happiness to many people. Similarly, one act of malice
(for example, murder) can cause sorrow and pain to a whole community of people.
Our daily newspapers provide us with examples of how our actions benefit others and
also how they harm or affect others.

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.8

Mahatma Gandhi emphasises this idea of ethical interconnectedness when he says:
‘There is no single virtue which aims at, or is content with, the welfare of the
individual alone. Conversely, there is no moral offence which does not, directly or
indirectly, affect many others besides the actual offender. Hence, whether an
individual is good or bad is not merely his own concern, but really the concern of the
whole community, nay, of the whole world’. Throughout this course we will explore
this idea of ethical interconnectedness through a wide range of issues.

Short Film 3: ‘Oktapodi’ (2.29 minutes)

URL link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=badHUNl2HXU

How does ‘Oktapodi’ illustrate the notion of ethical interconnectedness?

1.5 Ethics and everyday life

In this unit, you have been exposed to a range of ethical dilemmas at the personal,
professional, national and global levels.

Spend a few minutes looking at the headlines in one of your local newspapers and try
to establish a link between these issues and ethics. News stories about murder,
suicide, violence, rape, prostitution, abortion, the environment and animals all concern
ethics. In fact, most news stories have an ethical dimension. Even stories concerning
drug use in sports can be analysed using ethical theories. A story about a celebrity
who has committed adultery raises ethical concerns. Corporal punishment in schools
and arranged marriages may be discussed using a rights-based approach to ethics.

Can you now see how broad the field of ethics is?

By the end of the course, we hope you will be able to easily analyse these applied
ethical issues using theories and principles related to ethics and governance.

The film below demonstrates a very common ethical issue that students are often
confronted with.

Short Film 4: ‘Ace Ethics in Plagiarism Panic’ (2.40 minutes)

URL link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00YuA0hNJnI

This short film deals with the issue of plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as: ‘stealing
and passing off the ideas or words of another person as one's own; using (another's
production) without crediting the source; committing literary theft; and ‘presenting as

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.9

new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source’ (Merriam
Webster Online Dictionary).

Also see USP’s policy on plagiarism and dishonest practice available online at:
http://www.usp.ac.fj/.

Plagiarism is a form of cheating and is an unethical practice. The question whether to

cheat or not to cheat is a common ethical dilemma faced by students under pressure.
Dilemmas of this sort should be thought through carefully. The consequences or end
result of cheating can be quite severe. You may get zero in the assignment or face
disciplinary action if you plagiarise.

1.6 Outcomes of ethics study

You are probably wondering: why do I need to study ethics? What is the importance
of studying ethics? Ethics study can: encourage or cultivate self-awareness on a wide
range of issues; give you practice in identifying ethical issues in real-life situations;
and make you more self-aware, self-disciplined and morally responsible for the
decisions you make in life. Students of ethics often say that they see the world quite
differently after being exposed to such a critical discipline. One begins to analyse
songs, news stories, films and poems in a different way.

However, it is necessary to stress that UU200 does not force students to adopt or
follow one ‘correct’ ethical standpoint. Rather, this course aims to provide you with
the tools to make your own decisions. To illustrate this point, consider the following
quotation by Italian physicist and astronomer, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): ‘You
cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to discover it in himself’ (Value
quotes). UU200 will provide you with the tools or the framework for ethical thought
and responsible decision-making. However, it is ultimately up to you to put this
knowledge into practice and to make your own decisions.

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.10

References
Gandhi, Mahatma, ‘Ethics,’ retrieved from:
www.anantanand.org/uploads/Download_the_original_attachment.doc)
Hanson, C, Spross, J, Carr, D: Collaboration. In Hamric, A, Spross, J,
Hanson, C. Advanced Nursing Practice: An Integrative Approach, ed 2. St. Louis:
WB Saunders, 2000, pp 315-347
King, Martin Luther Jnr., cited in ‘Ethics,’ retrieved from:
www.anantanand.org/uploads/Download_the_original_attachment.doc
Kansas State University, ‘Values,’ retrieved from:
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/p.aspx?tabid=85
Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics, ‘Everyday Ethics,’ retrieved from:
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v8n1/everydayethics.html
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, ‘Plagiarism,’ retrieved from:
http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.htm
Preston, N. “Chapter One: The Ethical Challenge” in Understanding Ethics, Sydney:
The Federation Press, 2007, pp. 6-15.
‘Some Moral Dilemmas,’ retrieved from:
http://www.friesian.com/valley/dilemmas.htm
‘The Generalized Structure of Moral/Ethical Dilemmas,’ retrieved from:
http://www.friesian.com/dilemma.htm
The University of the South Pacific, ‘Policy on Plagiarism and Dishonest Practice,’
retrieved from: http://www.usp.ac.fj/

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.11

 Try to answer the questions
below. Remember there is no
face-to-face tutorial this week.

Activity 1.1

1. What is ethics?
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2. Provide a definition and an example of an ethical dilemma.

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3. What is the relationship between ethics and values? (Include some discussion of
vices and virtues in your response).
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Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.12

 ____________________________________________________________________
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4. Give an example of an ethical dilemma you have been faced with. How did you
resolve this dilemma?
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5. Select one story from a newspaper in your country. Explain how this news story is
related to ethics.
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6. Why is it important to study ethics?

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Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.13

Unit 1: Broaching Ethics and Governance 1.14