Transcript Ethical Responsibility in Human Communication

Ethical Responsibility in Human
Communication
Johannesen, Valde, & Whedbee
P. 1
• Ethical judgments focus more precisely on
degrees of rightness and wrongness, virtue
and vice, and obligation.
• The importance of choice
• The difference of coercion
• The distinction between morals and ethics.
P.2 - Relativism
• Everyone knows that this particular
communication technique is unethical, so there is
nothing to discuss
• Since only success matters in communication,
ethicality is irrelevant
• After all ethical judgments are simply matters of
individual personal opinion; so there are no final
answers;
• It is presumptuous, perhaps unethical, to judge
the ethics of others.
P.3
• All communication has ethical ramifications –
my interpretation of what is said.
P. 4
• An ethical system does not solve all one’s
practical problems, but one cannot choose and
act rationally without some explicit or implicit
ethical system. An ethical theory does not tell a
person what to do in any given situation, but
neither is it completely silent; it tells one what to
consider in making up one’s mind what to do.
The practical function of an ethical system is
primarily to direct our attention to the relevant
considerations, the reasons that determine the
rightness or wrongness of any act. Carl Wellman
P.6-8
• Freedom and Responsibility
– While we do have First Amendment protection of
freedom of speech and press, each of us also has the
responsibility to exercise that freedom in an ethical
manner.
– Respect for the word – to employ it with scrupulous
care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth – is
essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in
the human race. To misuse the word is to show
contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and
poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the
long path of his evolution. Dag Hammarskjold.
Moral development p. 9
• Rest
– Moral sensitivity
– Moral judgment
– Moral motivation
– Moral Character
Character and ethics p. 10 - 11
• Ethicists describe virtues variously as deeprooted dispositions, habits, skills, or traits of
character that incline persons to perceive, fell,
and act in ethically right and sensitive ways.
• Also, they describe virtues as learned,
acquired, cultivated, reinforced, capable of
modification, capable of confliction, and
ideally coalesced into a harmonious cluster.
DeGeorge, p. 11
• As human beings develop, they tend to adopt patterns
of actions, and dispositions to act in certain ways.
These dispositions, when viewed collectively, are
sometimes called character A person who habitually
tends to act as he morally should has a good character.
If he resists strong temptation, he has a strong
character. If he habitually acts immorally, he has a
morally bad character. If despite good intentions he
frequently succumbs to temptations, he has a weak
character. Because character is formed by conscious
actions, in general people are morally responsible for
their characters as well as for their individual actions.
Richard DeGeorge