Ehics.1-Ehics.2+Ehics.3=Ehics.X

In the Individual Ethics vs Society Ethics article I compared ethics of “one” to ethics of “many”. A more general question is actually whether ethics can be compared at all. This would be similar to asking a moral question: “Does one have a right to lie (thy shalln’t lie) to not harm another human being (thy shalln’t harm),” or, in other words, whether there are different levels of moral values (i.e. protection is level 4, while truth is level 2).

So do ethics have various weight categories? Say person A does some cryptic research and eventually comes up with results that would be of great benefit for the society. Nevertheless, he is afraid to publish his findings as the country of his citizenship has laws that prohibit such actions. To circumvent this and to let the society know of his finding, person A covertly transmits all the data to person B who resides outside of the country. Person B publishes all of the A”s data and results under his own name to protect A”s life. In doing so, B simply plagiarizes A, even though his intent is beneficial. It is unethical to plagiarize, but it is ethical to try to protect other people and to release information of benefit to the society. If we say that ethics have categories, than we can make plagiarizing=-3, life protection=5, information release=3, which would lead to total being positive 5 and mean that the actions of person B were completely ethical. I tend to disagree and say that while person B behaved ethically for the most part he also behaved unethically by plagiarizing A, even though he might’ve not had another choice. Person B should be happy for doing what is right, but his conscience shouldn’t let him sleep well until he undoes what he did wrong.

Comments