Conjoined Twins: A Utilitarian Analysis
From the Utilitarian ethical perspective, the troubling case of separating conjoined twins (either against the parents' wishes or as a result of the parents' wishes) presents the following problems: 1) the high cost to perform the surgery ($1.5 million), 2) the fact that it is impossible to quantify the common good in such a personal, emotional, psychological, economical, life-and-death type of situation, and 3) the highly subjective nature of "the greatest good" in such a case. This paper will examine each of these three points to show how, from the Utilitarian perspective, the decision to operate in both cases, is immoral.

The first issue of cost is one that goes against the Utilitarian ethical system purely on the basis of a cost-benefit ratio. $1.5 million to perform a surgery that will kill one of the babies, leave the other impaired for life, and perhaps scar the…...

Ethics: Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is one of the most common forms of moral reasoning. ooted in normative ethics, the notion of utilitarianism essentially asserts that an action is morally right if it maximizes utility or happiness for everyone (West, 2004). In other words, as long as a course of action generates the greatest benefit for everyone affected, then the means utilized to generate the benefits (such as coercion, manipulation, or lies) do not matter -- what matters is the end, not the means. This moral principle is commonly applied in various spheres including personal decisions, business, and public policy.

The notion of utility ethics can be ideally applicable in the case of Airxyz. Choosing Opting to voluntarily ground its fleet would be the most appropriate course of action for not only the airline, but also the general publicpublic. The public uses airlines to move quickly and conveniently move from one location to another,…...

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Reference

West, H. R. (2003). An Introduction to Mill's Utilitarian Ethics. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press.

West, H. (2004). An introduction to Mill's utilitarian ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ethics
Utilitarianism is one of the most useful ethical theories. It can frame decisions made in almost every aspect of daily life, and also large-scale decisions made by organizations, enterprises, and governments. The basic principles of utilitarianism, as they were developed first by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, are all based in the essential notion of utility. Utility means usefulness, but it is also related to net benefit.

Utility is defined in terms of the question, "Is this action beneficial? If so, who is it beneficial for, and how beneficial is it?" Utilitarian theory suggests that an ethical decision should weigh the greatest good for the greatest number of people. If an action is beneficial, it should be beneficial to the greatest number of stakeholders. It should be the decision that most maximizes the target population's happiness, or however success is being measured. This end result can be profit,…...

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References

"Ethics 5: Utilitarianism." [video]. Retrieved online:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdtWu4Cqx1Y 

"John Stuart Mill's Essay On Liberty." Retrieved online:  http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm 

Santa Clara University (n.d.). A framework for thinking ethically. Retrieved online:  http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html

Ethics
The ole of Ethics in My Life

Ethics refers to the systematic and logical study of right and wrong behavior. The challenge with ethics is that ethical decisions are often subjective. Variables like personality, culture, and upbringing can all affect one's ethical character. Age and gender can also impact one's ethical decision-making process. The study of ethics has been an ongoing one in the field of philosophy, but it also has direct applications in fields ranging from law to medicine.

Almost all decisions have an ethical component. Even deciding what food to eat is an ethical decision, because the consumer chooses things like fair trade and organic over factory farmed and exploitative. Therefore, ethics can help me to create a more ethical and just society, by making choices that are congruent with core ethical principles. Ethical principles may include such things as fairness and the refrain from harm. Generally, there are two…...

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Reference

Hill, Kate. "The bystander effect: keeping silent on family violence." ABC. Retrieved online:  http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/05/07/3999663.htm

Ethics
The nineteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant presented an ethical code that assigned a strict "right" or "wrong" to every action. Called the categorical imperative, Kant believed that it does not matter what the consequences or outcome of actions are; there are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. These ethical categories of right and wrong are not negotiable. It can never be "sometimes" ok to tell a white lie, or to steal. Instead, Kant created easy to understand categories that apply theoretically to all cultures and all people at all times. Human beings are always morally obliged to do the right thing in any given situation, even if doing so leads to suffering. Therefore, it would be considered right to tell the truth to a murderer and subsequently die rather than to lie to the murderer and survive. Davis (n.d.). uses the example of a…...

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References

Davis, S.P. (n.d.). Three-minute philosophy: Immanuel Kant. [video] Retrieved online:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw 

"Ethics." Retrieved online:  http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/kant.html 

Johnson, R. "Kant's Moral Philosophy," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved online: .

There are several ways that BP could have chosen to respond, all of which were "open" to them (i.e. they had free will), yet those chose to take paths that were less moral. Kant's universal law would have them put their responsibility to humanity as the motivator, however, their motives have not proven to be driven by doing what is genuinely good for humanity.
Blackburn (2009) states that it is tricky to apply the categorical imperative and that the most persuasive examples of it being effective are in cases where there is an institution whose existence depends on sufficient performance by a sufficient number of individuals.

Suppose, as is plausible, that our ability to give and receive promises depends upon general compliance with the principle of keeping promises. Were we to break them sufficiently often, or were promise-breaking to become a 'law of nature,' then there would be no such thing…...

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References:

Blackburn, S. (2009). Ethics: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kant, I. (2010). Groundwork of the metaphysic morals. Trans H.J. Paton. Introduction philosophy: Classical and contemporary readings. Eds. John Perry, Michael Bratman,

and John Martin Fischer. (5th edition). New York: Oxford. 504-20.

Lyon, Susan. (2010). Climate Progress. Retrieved on August 24, 2010, from the Web site:

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with what areas of human interest?
life after death b-god c-morality

The answer is c. Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with moral questions, or the question of what actions are considered to be right or wrong. Moral rightness and moral wrongness are philosophical areas of inquiry, requiring analysis and debate. The ethics of an action can be debated on the intentions of the actor, the consequences of the actions, or on other factors. There are many different approaches to the study of ethics, which is why there are so many different ethical and moral philosophers.

Ethics depends on the study of religion, or needs to be based on religious knowledge, true or false.

False. Although some philosophers, like Kant, refer to God in their philosophical treatises, there is no need for a philosophy of ethics to be grounded in religion at all. In…...

.....personal ethics derive from a combination of established codifications of moral conduct, such as those embedded in political documents or in religious scripture, but also from my personality, my upbringing, and my worldview. I tend towards a utilitarian point-of-view, in that I do believe that the consequences of actions are more important than worrying about whether an action is inherently right or wrong. I also believe that there are situational variables that make true deontological ethics almost impossible to apply universally and without hypocrisy. Although I make some decisions based on the principle of doing the maximum amount to good for the maximum number of people, I also recognize the importance of a strong ethical character when making decisions "Six Ethical Theories Rough Overview," n.d.). This is why I believe that there can be no one ethical theory that encompasses all situations. A person who has a strong ethical character,…...

Ethics of Employee Location Monitoring
In the contemporary workplace, workers are usually aware that their computer activity, email, and phone conversations may be -- and probably are -- being monitored by their employer. Efforts to limit the consumption of offensive or pornographic material, use of company resources for non-work purposes, and desire to track employee behavior in order to improve efficiency leads managers to install keystroke logs, FID location tags, cell phone software, and "back door" computer tracking programs. Employees complain that they do not feel trusted by employers who use these strategies, and managers may not have clear guidelines for how to use the information they glean from covert employee monitoring. However, some of these techniques can be used to improve workplace safety and ensure, for example, that employees take regular breaks from work in order to reduce eye strain and the health dangers of sedentary work. Below, I…...

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References

Hartman, L.P. (2000). Technology and Ethics: Privacy in the Workplace. Business and Society Review 106:1, 1-27.

Kaupins, G., & Minch, R. (2005). "Legal and Ethical Implications of Employee Location Monitoring," HICSS, vol. 5, pp.133a, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

To ensure the deontological validity of the agreement, the specific requirements of Article VII therefore need to be somewhat modified and restipulated. ather than allowing no other employment, there could for example be some conditions that govern other ventures to supplement the military services income.
Of course it must be understood that the military is a highly confidential entity, and that no information or service should be divulged to other, similar agencies. From the utilitarian viewpoint, the military is served best when the type of service provided by its employees remains exclusive to the company. However, from the deontological viewpoint, it should also be understood that the employee is in a position where his or her finances from exclusive service to the military are insufficient for the rising costs of living.

Hence a provision could be included in Article VII: rather than allowing no other employment, the provision could state that…...

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References

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2007, Jul. 18). Virtue Ethics.  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ 

State of Maryland Military Department. Personal Services Employment Agreement. http://www.mdmildep.org/forms/upload/Pers%20Svcs%20Emp%20Agreement.pdf

Ethics
While all ethical theories appeal to me in some way, the one I relate to the most is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism suggests that the ethical decision should enhance as much happiness as possible. I appreciate this idea, which is why I believe I make more decisions using a utilitarian ethic than any other. With Kantian duty ethics, I struggle with the absolutism. I do not believe it is possible to have one principle govern every ethical decision that I make. For example, I do believe that sometimes it is acceptable to tell lies. I have told lies to make my parents or girlfriend feel good, and I do not think it hurt them. In fact, I believe that if they knew now which lies I told and when, they would not even be upset. I would never tell a lie that I could later not admit to, however, I relate to…...

Deontological theory might criticize Guido's choice if the initial assumptions included the rule prohibiting lying. However, deontological analysis is only as useful as the underlying rules with respect to which it is applied. Therefore, the solution to the deontological issues raised by the issue presented by the movie is simply to reformulate a less restrictive rule that is incapable of being applied to every situation. Instead of proposing the rule that prohibits lying, the better rule might be to prohibit only lying for immoral purposes.

In fact, the blind adherence to rules under deontological principles often produces distinctly immoral results: it is difficult to imagine the moral purpose of informing a dying patient that a loved one was also killed in the same accident; nor is there a moral purpose for informing a child who is to young to understand the concept that he was adopted. In Guido's case, the sole…...

The utilitarian perspective focuses on the broad impacts of the actions, rather than just how the actions affect specific individuals (Andre & Velasquez, 2010). From the utilitarian perspective, genetic testing has the potential to do great harm to many, and to benefit many. The utilitarian arithmetic points out that the benefits to the companies in utilizing genetic testing is that profits increase. The argument can also be made that wealthier companies provide more jobs and wealthier insurance companies are better able to pay out to those who do receive payments. The counter to the former point is that this employment is theoretical -- not only may it not occur, but it may not occur in the United States. The counter to the latter is that insurance is largely price inelastic, so there is no improvement in coverage likely from handing more profits to insurance companies.
On the harm side, many…...

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Works Cited:

Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (2010). Calculating consequences: The utilitarian approach to ethics. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Retrieved February 20, 2011 from  http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v2n1/calculating.html 

Cline, a. (2011). Deontology and ethics: What is deontology, deontological ethics? About.com. Retrieved February 20, 2011 from  http://atheism.about.com/od/ethicalsystems/a/Deontological.htm 

Miller, P. (2007). Genetic testing and the future of disability insurance: Thinking about discrimination in the genetic age. The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics. Vol. 35 (2) 47-52.

Schafer, S. (2001). Railroad agrees to stop gene-testing workers. Washington Post. In possession of the author.

Ethics Leadership Analysis
One of the biggest advantages of globalization is that many different companies are able to receive cheap labor to produce a wide variety of products that are sold at numerous retail stores in the United States. However, an ugly facet to what has been happening, is that there are a number of different sweat shops in a host of regions around the world and in some cases within the U.S. itself. Evidence of this can be seen with an investigation that was conducted by the Department of Labor. They found that over half of the companies they were looking at, were breaking numerous labor laws by operating 10,000 of these kinds of facilities illegally inside the nation. At the same time, they discovered that a variety of governments around the world were encouraging these kinds of factories. (Elliot, 2009)

In the case of Kathie Lee Gifford, her clothing line…...

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Bibliography

Youth and Labor. (2011). Department of Labor. Retrieved from:  http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/youthlabor/ 

Elliot, J. (2009). Santa's Little Sweat Shop. Albimonitor. Retrieved from:  http://www.albionmonitor.com/sweatshop/ss-intro.html 

Farrell, O. (2009). Business Ethics. Mason, OH: South Western.

National Labor Committee. (2000). Children Found Sewing Clothes for Wal Mart. Harvard Law School. Retrieved from:  http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/NLC_childlabor.html

Ethics
Consider the three purposes of morality treated in Chapter 1. Which of these would it be easier for utilitarianism to fulfill and which could well be more difficult for that system to fully meet?

Of the three purposes of morality treated in Chapter One, perhaps the easiest purpose for the ethical system of utilitarianism, as developed by the Englishman Jeremy Bentham, to meet would be to create a functional system of social ethics, or the ethical schema that holds a society together by its ethical 'glue.' Utilitarianism suggests that society, when pressed on many sides by the competition of different ethical claims, or even simply by different but equally valid claims for personal happiness, should choose the truth claim that allows for the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals within that particular society. For instance, the happiness of the many in my neighborhood to sleep late at night outweighs…...