The reading from chapter five in the TCT this week discussed 3 different types of ethics which are: Personal ethics, social ethics, and conservation ethics. Personal ethics to me means the ethics you were taught by your family or learned through religion, that is what is right and what is wrong. Social ethics to me means that ethics you learned from the outside world, such as from laws, or other caring sources, and conservation ethics to me means ethics learned from the world that are in necessary to protect our ecosystem. Before reading chapter 5 I thought I had a very good understanding of what I felt was ethical and unethical, but after reading chapter five I realized that ethics is broken down into different types of ethics, making me realize that some things I might have thought were ethical, might actually seem unethical to other types of people.
Relating ethics to my white paper project seemed hard before doing the reading of chapter 5, but once I did the reading I realized that my group and I might have some ethical issues that we didn’t even know about. Our white paper is about alternative sources for energy, in order to create energy out of other things/processes besides coal. I can now see where I personally might have a personal ethical issue with this project because I am from southern Indiana where coal mining is the major source of employment for people, so I am not against burning coal for energy. I however do understand its harmful effects, but am still supportive of it, and so far not as supportive of alternative energy. It is very important for me to remain unbiased in my research though and do sound research on alternative energy sources. It is very important when doing my research that I do not have any social ethical issues, such as copyrighting, sometimes one can copyright on accident, so I will pay very close attention to where I am getting my information and will document it.
Conflicting ethics: The Grey
I think your example, concerning your possible personal issue with your project, is a great illustration of the grey area in ethics, and how often things are never as black and white as you think they might be. Often there are both positive and negative aspects, and a difficult comparison needs to be made between the two, based on not only how these issues affect you, but, maybe more importantly, how they affect other people around you. In your case, you would be forced between weighing the positive aspects of alternative energy usage with the negative aspects of a local increase in unemployement that could occur. I think this emphasizes the importance of also taking similar issues into account for your audience, even if they may not be personal ethical issues that you may have.
Grey Areas: Competing Goods
As I have discussed elsewhere, ethics, as nmhess here argues, is often more complicated than choosing between good and bad. It is more often than not about competing goods, as ck86's post indicates: economic potential and health versus environmental consequences. As ck86 points out, there is merit in alternative energy as there is merit in already existing industries. These are the ethical dilemmas we are most often confronted by.
Who's right?
Ck86 makes some very strong valid points about the grey area that’s around ethics. The ethical dilemma that is base around ck86 situation happens all the time. You have a company that is producing a competing good that’s harmful to the environment, but at the same time that company is a major source for employment in surrounding areas. This example is a really good one in my opinion because, it actually covers all three general ethic topics (personal, social, and conservation). It’s hard to understand how these types of ethical dilemmas can be solve due to everyone’s difference in opinion.