¶ … Ethical Decision
What would you do?
In the first place, lives are more valuable -- far more valuable -- than jobs. True, without a job many adult individuals would suffer, but given the possibility that the bug in the prototype that Occidental Engineering was producing could cause an accident in the skies and a resulting loss of many lives, the best course for the project manager is to listen to engineer Wayne Jones and take the ethical course of action. This paper reviews three ethical theories, one of which will be determined to be the most appropriate for this dilemma: Virtue Ethics, Deontology, and Utilitarianism.
Virtue Ethics
According to author Barbara MacKinnon, Virtue Ethics asks "How we ought to be" rather than "What we ought to do" (MacKinnon, et al. 2015). Virtue Ethics deals with the traits of personal character (habits, tendencies, and disposition) that make a person "good"; in fact the author asserts that when an individual has "unusually well-developed" traits (that are mentioned earlier in this sentence) that person is likely to be thought of as a "hero or even as a saint" (MacKinnon, 91).
MacKinnon quotes from an article by Susan Wolf which explains that a "moral saint" is a person whose "every action is as good as possible" and that person is as "morally worthy as can be" (91). That morally worthy individual may not be happy, though, because happiness and pleasure are two different things; but notwithstanding that a virtuous person may not be blessed with constant happiness, virtues like "courage, loyalty, honesty, and fairness" matter more at the end of the day than pleasure and happiness. Aristotle wrote that there are two virtues: intellectual virtues (virtues of the mind -- understanding and reasoning) and moral virtues (practicing honesty, courageousness brings moral virtues) (MacKinnon, 92).
Professor Charles D. Kay echoes what MacKinnon wrote about virtue ethics: it relates to honesty, loyalty,...
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