Ethical comes from the Greek ethos, which is a persons "moral character". This "moral character" is part of a persons or groups ideologies that answer the question, what is right and wrong. As of today, their is no universal answer to this question, since many different groups around the world have their own ideas of what is considered ethical behavior. This in part comes from the many religious beliefs individuals possess. Religion has always played a large role in deciding whether or not a certain behavior or practice is considered ethical or not. Religion is not necessary in labeling something as ethical. It is also a way of protecting yourself from the people around you.
By agreeing that killing someone is unethical, we are safe to walk outside without having to constantly worry about being shot or hit by a car. Whether or not killing is actually ethical or not does not matter in this context because it keeps everyone safe. The only problem with considering this act unethical is some people may think otherwise and not care about the punishment that comes with commiting this "crime". This turns our safe net into a potential hazard because it causes us to lower our guard. Carry items such as guns or knives, which we could use to protect ourselves from a "criminal", become unethical as well. Now when someone decides to disagree with our code of ethical behavior, we are in more danger than we would have if we never decided to make killing unethical. Another problem with this scenario is what if you are capable of defending yourself against the killer, but you accidentally kill that person. You did not have to kill that person, but you had to if you wanted to live. Therefore, is there a difference between ethical and unethical killing? This is a type of ethical law that lawyers and judges have to decide on daily. There is no one answer that could justify either cases and is left to the ideologies of the people deciding.
My group came to the issue of ethical research while working on a project. We had to decide if it is ethical to talk to someone on a dating website for research purposes. Before we started the research, we did not of any morality in using the internet for research, even if the research is on a dating website. The website is simply a virtual space for people to meet, so it is not really there. Once we started our research, we realized that even though the medium itself does not exist, the people on it do. They are real people communicating on their computer looking for a relationship and even though they could never know who we are or what our intentions are, we still felt we were violating the rules of ethical research. Each of these rules were different for everyone in the group, but they ended our research sooner than we expected all the same. This showed how each person in our group could have a different concept of ethical research, yet it led to the same outcome, the end of our research.
When trying to decide how ethical a certain idea is, we come to find that there is no clear answer. Choosing a certain side as ethical can also be contradictory at times since both sides may seem ethically sound. This is a subject people have to face in their everyday life and what is ethical to one person is not necessarily the same for another. Even when people respond the same to a certain problem this is not always due to the same ethical beliefs, but instead the whole of their ideological beliefs.
1 comment:
I am not sure I understand your point that “Religion is not necessary in labeling something as ethical. It is also a way of protecting yourself from the people around you.” Ask yourself, too, what kind of work your second paragraph is doing. Perhaps you needed to lead the reader into your examples of murder and killing a little more slowly; your hypothetical situations are a bit confusing as they stand. To help your reader here, you could have put these examples into context—how does the ambiguity present dilemmas for what is considered “ethical” or not? In order words, your examples point to the complexities of “ethical” but you do not tell us that and, therefore, the writing seems like it is wandering around the point.
Also, there are many mistakes throughout this post, such as “Before we started the research, we did not of any morality in using the internet for research, even if the research is on a dating website.” The missing word is an important one that could change the meaning of the sentence. Your examples do not go far enough, “Each of these rules were different for everyone in the group, but they ended our research sooner than we expected all the same. This showed how each person in our group could have a different concept of ethical research, yet it led to the same outcome, the end of our research.” What rules? Why did it end the research sooner than you expected? How does this term relate to others we discussed in the course?
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