Lecture 8 - Ethics

Ethics was the topic for this week's lecture and was taken by guest speaker John Harrison. I found this week's lecture particularly fun as it was interactive and involved looking at a lot of different advertisements, both pictures and videos. We were asked to decide on each advertisement whether we thought it was ethical or unethical and whether it was tasteful or tacky. Here were my opinions:

Outdoor 1 - Tasteful, Ethical
Outdoor 2 - Tacky, Unethical - Gender stereotyping
Outdoor 3 - Tacky, Ethical
Outdoor 4 - Tasteful, Ethical
Outdoor 5 - Tacky, Unethical - Not about shoes, very sexual

TV 1 - Tasteful, Ethical - Word 'bloody' made it banned in UK
TV 2 - Tasteful, Ethical
TV 3 - Tacky, Ethical - Banned in NZ because of the word 'bugger'
TV 4 - Tacky, Unethical - Racial stereotypes
TV 5 - Tasteful, Ethical

Overall I would say the advertisement that I had the most problem with was actually TV 4. The comments made by Sam Kekovich stereotyped Australian's in a very offensive way and I find the advertisement both tacky and unethical. Get out of Australia if you're a vegetarian hippy? I am not a vegetarian or hippy but I found those words in particular very unethical.

John Harrison talked about what makes something good or bad? When and how is that decided? There are three ethical theories.

1. Deontology
Judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules

2. Consequentialism
Doesn't matter what you do as long as the outcome is 'right'
The end may justify the means
The greatest good for the greatest number

I personally could not agree with this second theory as I believe the way something is done matters a lot. The end does not always justify the means nor is the greatest good for the greatest number make something right. The last theory is the one I agree most with as does John Harrison.

3. Virtue - HIS CHOICE
'Goodness' comes from good habits of character
These habits are virtues eg, courage, justice, temperance, prudence
These are the 'golden means' of behaviour

By using virtues to decide if something is right or wrong I believe we get closest to an outcome that is both ethical and achieved in a good manner. It relies on individual's character to know what is right and wrong, not a set of rules put down. If journalist's and the media use courage, justice, temperance prudence in their judgement the content is most likely to be ethical. Of course the only problem with this is that individual's will have their own opinion as to what 'justice' and other virtues might be but on the whole I thin this is the best of the three theories.