Ethical Theory And Business 10th Edition Pdf Free

[Albertina Drybread]

Beneficentactions and motives have traditionally occupied a centralplace in morality. Common examples today are found in social welfareprograms, scholarships for needy and meritorious students, communalsupport of health-related research, policies to improve the welfare ofanimals, philanthropy, disaster relief, programs to benefit childrenand the incompetent, and preferential hiring and admission policies.What makes these diverse acts beneficent? Are such beneficent acts andpolicies obligatory or merely the pursuit of optional moral ideals?

These questions have generated a substantial literature onbeneficence in both theoretical ethics and applied ethics. Intheoretical ethics, the dominant issue in recent years has been how toplace limits on the scope of beneficence. In applied and professionalethics, a number of issues have been treated in the fields ofbiomedical ethics and business ethics.

Kant here anticipates, without developing, what would later becomeone of the most difficult areas of the theory of beneficence: How,exactly, are we to specify the limits of beneficence as an obligation?Neither Kant, Hume, nor Mill has a precise answer to this question.

Those who defend such a beneficence-negating conclusion (regardingobligation) do not hold the extreme view that there are no obligationsof beneficence in contexts of role-assigned duties such as those inprofessional ethics and in specific communities. They acknowledge thatprofessional and other roles carry obligations (or duties, as Gertprefers) that do not bind persons who do not occupy the relevant roles.They claim that the actions one is obligated to perform within theroles are merely moral ideals for any person who is not in the specificrole. That is, these philosophers present beneficence not as a generalobligation, but as a role-specific duty and as institutionally orculturally assigned.

However, the mainstream of moral philosophy makes both not-harmingand helping to be obligations, while preserving the distinction betweenthe two. This literature can be confusing, because some writers treatobligations of nonmaleficence as a species of obligations ofbeneficence, although the two notions are very different. Rules ofbeneficence are typically more demanding than rules of nonmaleficence,and rules of nonmaleficence are negative prohibitions of action thatmust be followed impartially and that provide moral reasons for legalprohibitions of certain forms of conduct. By contrast, rules ofbeneficence state positive requirements of action, need not always befollowed impartially, and rarely, if ever, provide moral reasons thatsupport legal punishment when agents fail to abide by the rules.

Since the late 1970s, principles of beneficence have been a mainstayof the literature of biomedical ethics. Persons engaged in medicalpractice, research, and public health appreciate that risks of harmpresented by interventions must often be weighed against possiblebenefits for patients, subjects, and the public. Their professionalobligations are deeply informed by their commitments to prevent orreduce harm and to produce a positive balance of goods over inflictedharms.

The three basic principles are (1) respect for persons, (2)beneficence, and (3) justice. In this context, the principle ofbeneficence is understood as an abstract norm that includes derivativerules such as "Do no harm," "Balance benefits against risks," and"Maximize possible benefits and minimize possible harms." Thisprinciple is satisfied in the research context by intentionallyrefraining from causing injury and by assuring that risks stand inreasonable relation to probable benefits. As one major demand ofbeneficence, the National Commission required that during the course ofthe ethical review of research protocols there be arrayals of datapertaining to benefits and risks and of alternative ways of obtainingthe benefits (if any) sought in the research. It also demanded thatsystematic and nonarbitrary presentations of risks and benefits be madeto subjects, as part of the informed consent process, and thatassessments of risks and safeguards be considered by ethics committeeswhen they evaluate whether research protocols are justified.

Beneficence has played a major role in a central conceptual issueabout the nature and goals of medicine as a social practice. If the endof clinical medicine is healing, which is a goal of beneficence, thenarguably medicine is fundamentally a beneficent undertaking, andbeneficence grounds and determines the professional obligations andvirtues of the physician. Authors such as Edmund Pellegrino write as ifbeneficence is the sole foundational principle of professional medicalethics. In this theory, medical beneficence is oriented exclusively tothe end of healing and not to any other form of benefit. The categoryof medical benefits does not, for Pellegrino, include items such asproviding fertility controls (unless for the prevention and maintenanceof health and bodily integrity), performing purely cosmetic surgery, oractively helping a patient to effect a merciful death by the activehastening of death.

However, this problem has been replaced by another: Is it harmful orbeneficial to help a competent patient who has requested help incausing a hastened death? In addition to vexed questions aboutthe purported distinction between killing and letting die, this issuepresses the question of what counts as a benefit and what counts as aharm. Is requested death in the face of miserable suffering a benefitfor some patients while a harm caused to other patients? When is it abenefit, and when a harm? Is the answer to this question determined bythe method used to bring about death--for example, withdrawal oftreatment by contrast to use of lethal medication?

A number of controversial issues in biomedical ethics concern howpublic policy could, and should, change if obligations of socialbeneficence were given more strength in policy formulation than theyhave traditionally been afforded. The foundations of public policyregarding organ procurement provide an instructive example. Establishedlegal and policy precedents in many countries require express consentby a decedent before death or by the family after death. A nearabsolute right of autonomy to decide about the disposition of organsand tissues has been the prevailing norm. However, this approachimpairs the efficient collection of needed tissues and organs, and manypeople die as a result of the shortage of organs. The scarcity oforgans and tissues and the inefficiency of the system have prompted aspate of proposals for reform of the current system of procurement,with the goal of creating more space for social beneficence.

One policy proposal with a notably strong social-beneficencecommitment is the routine retrieval of organs and tissues. Inthis system of procurement, a community is permitted to, and encouragedto, routinely collect organs and tissues from the deceased, unless thedead person had previously registered his or her objection to thesystem with the state. The routine retrieval of tissues and organs fromthe deceased is regarded by many as unjustified on traditional groundsof respect for autonomy. However, advocates of the policy of routineretrieval argue that members of a community have an obligation toprovide other persons with objects of lifesaving value when no cost tothemselves is required. That is, the justification is based onbeneficence, not respect for autonomy.

The debate is likely to continue for many years about whetherbeneficence or respect for autonomy should prevail in public policygoverning organ retrieval. Advocates of the current system argue thatindividual and family rights of consent should retain dominance.Advocates of routine retrieval argue that traditional social prioritiesinvolving beneficence in conflict with autonomy have been wronglystructured. Meanwhile, most contributors to the literature on thesubject agree that the present situation of low-level organ-procurementis morally unsatisfactory and in need of some significant measure ofreform.

Some of the most important issues in the ethics of health and healthcare today are widely classified as issues of social justice. However,at the hands of many writers, social justice is notably similar tosocial beneficence. For example, perhaps the most important moralproblem in global ethics is how to structure both the global order andnational systems that affect health so that burdens are avoided,benefits are provided, and then both are fairly distributed using athreshold condition of equitable levels of health and access to healthcare. Globalization has brought a realization that problems ofprotecting health and providing beneficial services are internationalin nature and that their alleviation will require a restructuring ofthe global system.

In this theory the justice and beneficence of societies and of theglobal order are to be judged by how well they effect these well-beingdimensions in their political structures and social practices. The jobof global justice and beneficence is to secure a sufficient level ofeach dimension for persons and to alleviate the social structures thatcause the corresponding forms of ill-being. This theory of well-beingand its place in moral theory and social policy can be expressed interms of the roles of both social beneficence and social justice.

Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. The main branches of ethics include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.

Normative ethics aims to find general principles that govern how people should act. Applied ethics examines concrete ethical problems in real-life situations, such as abortion, treatment of animals, and business practices. Metaethics examines the underlying assumptions and concepts of ethics. It asks whether there are objective moral facts, how moral knowledge is possible, and how moral judgments motivate people. Influential normative theories are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. According to consequentialists, an act is right if it leads to the best consequences. Deontologists focus on acts themselves, saying that they must adhere to duties, like telling the truth and keeping promises. Virtue ethics sees the manifestation of virtues, like courage and compassion, as the fundamental principle of morality.

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