Is it Ethical? Says who?

Ethics and Persuasion - Nov. 30th Reading Questions

1. “Time concluded, ‘Ethics, often dismissed as a prissy Sunday School word, now is a new national debate’” (Larsen 22). Why, assuming we live in a rather “unethical” world, has unethical behavior progressed over the years? Is the problem, or part of it, that we believed good and honest behavior to be so “prissy” for so long and so we acted as “bad guys” to prove something? I am not referring to ethical behavior around the subjects of abortion, death penalty or adultery, but rather people’s choice to commit fraud, lie on a grand scale or purposely take advantage of others and/or incite them onto wrong-doing. The main question here is not how people should be punished for their actions, if at all, but why they committed those actions. Are we really worse now then we were ten years ago? Think of a current event where such behavior is apparent and relevant. How did the audience perceive the event? Does the reason it was done justify its means; for example, would a lie told by a presidential candidate be justified if its purpose was to win the election?

2. In a recent episode of NPR’s This American Life, host Ira Glass investigates stories of “Bait and Switch” (Episode and its description found here). Each story told here applies to the debate of ethical responsibility presented by Larsen in his chapter “Perspectives on Ethics in Persuasion.” Listen to just the first act about a strategy applied by police departments to catch car thieves. It is argued that just as some police officers dress up as a hooker in attempt to arrest any customer, a car is parked for some time on any given street with the keys in the ignition in attempt to arrest any person who tries to drive away in it. This tactic has been successful in arresting quite a few people. How ethical do you find this practice? Does it really rid us of potential criminals, or is it an unnecessary and manipulative test of people’s behavior?

3. In the school of ethics in Western philosophy, there are three prominent ideas, briefly noted in our textbook, dominant in the discussion on the subject. Aristotle and Plato focus on the benefits to the person delivering the message and the benefits to the receivers based on the given society’s virtues (like justice and generosity). In Kantian terms, moral action is only worth when performed for the sake of duty, so are the intentions innately good? The third idea is utilitarianism, which discusses ethics in terms of whether the greater good is considered in a rhetor’s message, so does it contribute to the benefit and happiness of the greatest number of people. In the composition of a persuasive message, what school of thought do you think should be most closely applied and followed in order to deliver a purely ethical message?