First, present an ethical problem confronted by Starbucks. You can choose one such ethical problem from the video.

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Write: Start your initial post by identifying two characteristics of utilitarianism, two characteristics of virtue ethics, and two characteristics of deontology. Organize this part of your post so that it is clear which characteristics belong to which ethical theory. You can do this by means of subtitles, or by presenting a table. You should aim to write one complete and clear sentence for each characteristic rather than just one or a few words.

Then, take the position that Starbucks is guided by utilitarianism and analyze how the notion of the moral good in utilitarianism leads to a unique approach to ethical problems. The way to do this is as follows:

  • First, present an ethical problem confronted by Starbucks. You can choose one such ethical problem from the video.
  • Then, apply the characteristics of utilitarianism that you identified for this discussion in the attempt to solve this problem.
  • After this, analyze how the notion of the moral good present in utilitarianism, and the characteristics that you identified in particular, shape the approach to solving this problem.

Requirements for Your Initial Post:

  • Your initial post should be at least 400 words in length and have citations and references in APA notation. It should address the prompt in its entirety. This means that you should not split your response to the prompt in multiple posts. Your examination should be both thorough and succinct. This is a combination that demands time and thought, so give yourself sufficient time to draft and revise.
  • Please be advised that until you post, you will not see what your fellow students are posting. Once you submit your post, you will be able to view the posts from your other classmates. You can then proceed to reply to at least two different threads based on the required material for this discussion on virtue ethics and deontology.
  • Your list of references for your initial post should include the video and the other required material for this discussion, including Section 1.3 of the textbook on Starbucks, as well as the Instructor Guidance and any other announcements presented to you by your professor. Use all of the material presented to you in the course and by your professor, in addition to any other sources that you consulted to inform yourself about Starbucks (but not Wikipedia or similar sources).

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1.3 Moral Standards So far we have looked at where morality may come from and how it may be shaped by human psychology. Although these theories are important for telling us about the nature of morality, they do not necessarily tell us how we should behave and what the moral standards are that we should follow. We turn next to that issue and explore three approaches to moral standards: virtue theory, duty theory, and utilitarianism. Virtues One of the strangest business stories in recent years is that of Bernard Madoff, who scammed investors out of $65 billion in a Ponzi scheme. He started out as a small-time investment manager, but by courting wealthy investors from around the globe, he eventually built his roster of clients up to 4,800. Offering a steady return of about 10% per year, he covered these payouts with money coming in from new investors. However, when his clients rushed to withdraw $7 billion during a major stock-market decline, he could not cover those expenses and he confessed to the fraud. The humiliation for Madoff’s whole family was so great that he and his wife attempted suicide, and shortly afterward their son did kill himself. When we look at Madoff as a human being, we see that his immoral business conduct was a consequence of his flawed character. His desire for money, power, and a lavish lifestyle became so excessive that it created a trap for him from which he could not break free. He had what moral philosophers call vices: bad habits of character that result in a serious moral failing. He was unjust, deceitful, intemperate, overambitious, and immodest. What Madoff lacked were virtues—the opposite of vices—which are good habits of character that result in morally proper behavior. He did not have the virtues of justice, truthfulness, temperance, restraint, and modesty. Virtue theory is the view that morality is grounded in the virtuous character traits that people acquire. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE) developed the most influential analysis of virtues, which even today is considered the standard view of the subject. It all begins with our natural urges. Jeff Daly/ Picture Group/ASSOCIATED PRESS These shoes, once owned by Bernie Madoff, were put up for auction by U.S. Marshals along with many of his other belongings to help repay the victims of his crimes. For example, we all have natural desires for pleasure, and we automatically gravitate towards pleasurable activities such as entertainment, romance, eating, and even social drinking. With each of these pleasurable activities, though, there are three distinct habits that we can develop. On the one hand, we might eat too much, drink too much, and become addicted to all sorts of pleasurable activities. This is the vice of overindulgence. At the opposite extreme, we might reject every form of pleasure that comes our way, and live like monks locked in their monastery cells. This is the vice of insensibility, insofar as we have become desensitized to the happiness that pleasures can bring us. There is, though, a third habitual response to pleasure that stands midway between these two extremes: We can enjoy a wide range of pleasures in moderate amounts, and this is the virtue of temperance. In Madoff’s case, we can say that he was driven by the desire for wealth, habitually overindulged in the acquisition of it, and completely lacked the virtue of temperance. According to Aristotle, most virtues and vices match this scheme: • • • • There is a natural urge (such as the desire for pleasure), there is a vice of excess (such as overindulgence), there is a vice of deficiency (such as insensibility), and there is a virtue at the middle position between the two extremes (such as temperance). Virture Ethics Take the virtue of courage, which is driven by our natural fear of danger. If we take courage to excess, we develop the vice of rashness, where we lose all fear of danger and rush into hazardous situations that might kill us. If we are deficient in courage, we become timid and develop the vice of cowardliness. The virtuous middle ground of courage is one in which we respect the dangers before us but, when the circumstances are right, we rise above our fears. A large part of our childhood involves cultivating virtuous habits and avoiding vicious ones, and during our formative years our parents bear much of the responsibility to shape us in virtuous directions. As I become older, though, the responsibility becomes mine alone, and I must think carefully about exactly where that virtuous middle ground is. How much habitual eating can I do before I become overindulgent? How much can I habitually hide from danger before I become a coward? Finding that perfect middle ground, Aristotle says, is not easy, but it is something that the moral person must figure out nonetheless. Madoff did not even come close. His desires for wealth, power, and fame were so allconsuming that the virtue of temperance became out of reach for him. Duties A small computer software company named Plurk accused the software giant Microsoft® of computer code theft. The product in question was blogging software that Microsoft developed for its market in China and which it hoped would catch hold in that country the way Facebook has in the United States. Around 80% of the computer code for Microsoft’s product was lifted directly from blogging software created by Plurk. Microsoft apologized for the episode and said that the fault rested with an outside company it had hired to develop the blogging software. It was that outside company that copied Plurk’s computer code (Nystedt, 2009). The irony is that Microsoft zealously guards against software piracy and code theft of its own products, but here it did that very thing, even if only indirectly. In this situation, there was no moral gray area: Theft is wrong, the evidence for code theft was incontestable, and Microsoft had no choice but to immediately admit to it and apologize. Critical Thinking Questions • According to the video, virtues are habits of good behavior that we acquire through practice, just as we develop other skills. Pick a skill, such as playing an instrument or a sport, explain the technique for learning it, and discuss how a similar technique could be used for acquiring the virtue of charity. • Aristotle argues that, when acquiring virtues, we should aim at the mean—or middle ground of a behavior—rather than an extreme of excess or deficiency. Describe how the virtue of courage falls at a mean between extremes. • Proper virtues involve displaying them at the right times, on the right occasions and towards the right people. Describe what this would involve with the virtue of courage. This Microsoft case highlights the fact that there are at least some principles of morality that we all clearly recognize and endorse. One moral theory in particular emphasizes the obvious and intuitive nature of moral principles. Duty theory is the position that moral standards are grounded in instinctive rational obligations—or duties—that we have. It is also called deontological theory, from the Greek word for duty. The idea behind duty theory is that we are all born with basic moral principles or guidelines embedded in us, and we use these to judge the morality of people’s actions. There are two approaches to duty theory. First, some moral theorists hold that we have a long catalog of instinctive obligations. The list of the Ten Commandments is a classic example. Among those listed are obligations not to kill, steal, bear false witness, or covet your neighbor’s things. These are all basic moral principles that cultures around the world have endorsed from the earliest times. If you are thinking about stealing computer code, these principles tell you that it would be wrong to do so. With enough principles like these, we will have some standard for judging a wide range of human actions. Many moral philosophers have developed and expanded the list of our intuitive duties beyond the Ten Commandments to include a few dozen of them. Copyright Bettmann/Corbis/ASSOCIATED PRESS Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) developed the categorical imperative, which is a moral principle that we should treat each person as an end, and never merely as a means to an end. The second approach is that there is a single instinctive principle of duty that we all should follow; the Golden Rule is the best example of this. That is, I should do to others what I would want them to do to me. If I am thinking about stealing someone’s computer code, I should consider whether I would want someone to steal my code. So too with good actions: When considering whether I should donate to charity, I should consider how I would feel if I were a needy person dependent on the charity of others. Like those in the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule is a time-honored moral principle that we find in cultural traditions around the world, dating back thousands of years. In more recent times, one of the most influential theories of duty is that developed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Inspired by the Golden Rule, Kant offered a single principle of moral duty, which he called the “categorical imperative”— a term which simply means “absolute command” (1785/1996). Kant offers four versions of the categorical imperative, but the most straightforward one is this: Treat people as an end, and never merely as a means to an end. His point was that we should treat all people as beings that have value in and of themselves, and not treat anyone as a mere instrument for our own advantage. There are two parts to his point. The first involves treating people as ends that have value in and of themselves. We value many things in life, such as our cars, our homes, and a good job. Most of the things we value, though, have only instrumental value—that is, value as a means for achieving something else. Our cars are instruments of transportation. Our homes are instruments of shelter. Our jobs are instruments of obtaining money. Other times, though, we appreciate things because they have intrinsic value: We value them for the special qualities that they have in and of themselves, and not because of any instrumental value that they have. The experience of human happiness has intrinsic value, and so too do experiences of beauty and friendship. The first part of the categorical imperative, then, says that we should treat all people as beings with intrinsic value and regard them as highly as we would our own happiness. If I steal someone’s computer code, I am not respecting the owner the way I value my own happiness. The second part of the categorical imperative is that we should not treat people as things that have mere instrumental value. People are not tools or objects that we should manipulate for our own gratification. If I steal someone’s computer code, I am using the owner for my own gain. Like the Golden Rule, the categorical imperative provides a litmus test for determining whether any action is right or wrong. It not only detects immoral actions such as lying and stealing, but it also tells us when actions are moral. When I donate to charity, for example, I am thinking of the value of the needy people who will benefit from my contribution; I am not merely thinking of any benefit that I may receive through my charity. In the business world, there are occasionally times when an action is so obviously wrong that there is no point in defending it. That was true of Microsoft and also of Madoff, who immediately admitted to his crime once his company became insolvent. In cases like these, duty theory is at its best. In other cases, though, morality is a little blurry. Napster is a good example. A decade before BitTorrent, Napster was the first widely used peer-to-peer file-sharing program, and it enabled users to easily pirate MP3 music files, directly violating the copyrights of record companies. While this at first appears to be a clear case of a software product that intentionally enabled users to steal, many people within the music industry itself defended Napster. Record companies had become stuck in their old ways of selling records and CDs and had not developed a good mechanism for consumers to purchase MP3 files at a reasonable price. Napster entered the music market as a rogue competitor and forced record companies to be more responsive to the needs of their consumers. As a consequence, Napster helped jumpstart legal methods of purchasing MP3 files on websites such as iTunes and Amazon.com; in that way, it provided a new and innovative business model for the music industry. Duty theory may not be well suited for making moral pronouncements in complex cases like Napster’s; other moral theories discussed in this chapter may need to be drawn upon. However, duty theory is sufficient to make moral pronouncements against illegally file-sharing music and movies on BitTorrent. Mechanisms are now in place to purchase these digital products legally, and obtaining them on BitTorrent is blatant theft. Utilitarianism CVS Health recently stopped the lucrative business of selling cigarettes in its 7,600 U.S. stores. The reason, it said, is that it “is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company. The sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose—helping people on their path to better health” (CVS Health, 2014). Tobacco use is certainly unhealthy, and the Center for Disease Control says that it is responsible for nearly half a million deaths in the United States per year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). But with regards to CVS’s decision, is there more going on than simply doing the right thing? All businesses make decisions based on a cost­benefit analysis: They research both the costs and the benefits of a particular decision, then determine whether the costs outweigh the benefits or vice versa. We do not know the confidential details of CVS’s cost-benefit analysis of its tobacco decision, but the public relations advantages are clear, and if other pharmacy companies feel pressure to do the same thing, this would level the playing field for CVS. Ultimately, CVS is gambling that the long-term economic advantages of its decision will outweigh the shortterm losses. Cost-benefit analysis is the distinguishing feature of the moral theory of utilitarianism: An action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone. When determining the morality of any given action, we should list all of the good and bad consequences that would result, determine which side is weightier, and judge the action to be right if the good outweighs the bad. There are three components to this theory. First, it emphasizes consequences. One Nmg/ASSOCIATED PRESS of the founders of classical utilitarianism was the British philosopher Jeremy Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) Bentham (1748–1832), who argued that by focusing on consequences of actions developed the moral principle we make our moral judgments more scientific (1789/1907). To ground morality in that we now call the utilitarian the will of God requires that we have a special ability to know God’s thoughts. To calculus, which determines ground morality in conscience or instinctive duties requires that we have special morality by numerically tallying mental faculties and know how to use them properly. None of this is precise, and it the degree of pleasure and pain all relies too much on hunches. According to Bentham, a more scientific approach that arises from our actions. to morality would look only at the facts that everyone can plainly see, and consequences of actions are those facts. If I steal a car, there are very clear consequences: I gain a vehicle, but I cause financial harm and distress to the victim and put myself at risk of a long stay in prison. We all can see these consequences and assess their weights. Bentham held that we can even give numerical values to the various consequences and mathematically calculate whether the good outweighs the bad, a practice that we now call the utilitarian calculus. Not all utilitarians go this far, but it does highlight the central role that publicly observed consequences play in the utilitarian conception of morality. The second component of utilitarianism is that it focuses on the consequences of happiness and unhappiness. While businesses assess costs and benefits in terms of financial gains and losses, utilitarianism focuses instead on how our actions affect human happiness. Some utilitarians, like Bentham, emphasize pleasure and pain; others emphasize goodness and badness; and still others emphasize overall benefit and disbenefit. What they have in common, though, is that moral conduct is in some way linked with human happiness and immoral conduct with unhappiness. The third component of utilitarianism is that we need to assess the beneficial consequences of actions as everyone is affected. If I am thinking about stealing a car, I need to consider the consequences of my conduct for myself, my family, the victim, the victim’s family, and anyone else who might be affected by my action. This is reflected in utilitarianism’s famous motto that we should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism does not necessarily aim to benefit the majority of people, but rather to maximize the overall amount of happiness resulting from a decision. For example, abolishing racial segregation in the U.S. South may have been unpleasant for the White majority as a whole, but that was counter-balanced by a much greater degree of unhappiness that segregation created for the Black minority as a whole. There is an important down side to utilitarianism, though, which its critics frequently point out. What if, for example, retaining racial segregation had created more total happiness for the White majority than the total unhappiness for the Black minority? Retaining segregation, then, would have been morally justifiable on utilitarian grounds. More generally, the problem is that sometimes a recognizably evil course of action will produce the greatest amount of happiness. Utilitarians have proposed different strategies for working around this problem, but the problem is nevertheless a lingering one. This does not mean that utilitarianism should be discarded as a moral guideline, and, in fact, utilitarian thinking is so embedded in human moral reasoning that it would be impossible to do so. What it does mean is that utilitarian decisions should sometimes be supplemented with other moral standards, such as duties or virtues. Because businesspeople are so familiar with financial cost-benefit analysis, utilitarianism is a natural way to make moral assessments for business decisions. If CVS’s decision to stop selling tobacco allows it to better position itself and its stakeholders in the healthcare industry, then its move will be justified on utilitarian grounds. If, on the other hand, the company and its stakeholders reap no future benefits but only incur disbenefits from the decision, then it was not justified. CVS clearly believed that it was worth the gamble, and only time will tell.
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Running Head: ETHICAL THEORIES

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Topic: Ethical theories.

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ETHICAL THEORIES

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Two characteristics of utilitarianism
1. Each act is judged to be moral or immoral built on the significances of the individual act.
2. There are particular rules which are absolute in nature such as do not kill.
Two characteristics of virtue ethics
1. The virtues or moral personality of the individual performing an act is judged as opposed
to the significances of the ac...


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