class notes
May 8, 2014
Common Sense Morality (CSM) – these are the moral ideas and values that we all learn from are family, friends, teachers and coaches while growing up.
What is CSM? – It contains all the moral no brainers: don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t inflict needless pain and anguish on people, don’t manipulate or coerce, don’t cheat, etc. CSM is what we all are brought up to believe, even thou most of us don’t understand why it is so.
There is obviously some variance in CSM: what people believe to be right and wrong values. There may be some items on some peoples list of CSM intuitions that aren’t on everyone’s else’s list.
For most of us CSM requires us to be honest and forbids lying.
It is tempting to think: end of story. We don’t need moral theory, we don’t need business ethics. We know this.
But it is pretty clear that while we believe it, we don’t really have a great grasp on why honesty and trustworthiness is important.
The problem is in pary the CSM morality is pretty random grab-bag of moral commitments. To quote a poet: weve got values but we don’t know how or why.
Why is this a problem?
Received wisdom is sometimes wrong
Even the no brainers can be pretty tough in tight corners
These tight corners, we are going to need to be sure that our moral beliefs are right, since doing the right thing is going to cost us dearly
This is ture of honesty and trustworthiness – in many cases it is obviously right to be honest and trustworthy. But it isn’t obviously true in all cases
What are you going to do as a new employee? Even if you think the idea is weak, or the core missions and values of the company are in some respect faulty or uninspiring, you are going to be at pains to be completely honest.
Carr, Private Morality, Business morality
Important claims
That lying sits on a continuum of deception: on one end, you have out and out bald-faced lies on the other you have less obvious kinds of lack of truthfulness: being sparing
Common Sense Morality (CSM) – these are the moral ideas and values that we all learn from are family, friends, teachers and coaches while growing up.
What is CSM? – It contains all the moral no brainers: don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t inflict needless pain and anguish on people, don’t manipulate or coerce, don’t cheat, etc. CSM is what we all are brought up to believe, even thou most of us don’t understand why it is so.
There is obviously some variance in CSM: what people believe to be right and wrong values. There may be some items on some peoples list of CSM intuitions that aren’t on everyone’s else’s list.
For most of us CSM requires us to be honest and forbids lying.
It is tempting to think: end of story. We don’t need moral theory, we don’t need business ethics. We know this.
But it is pretty clear that while we believe it, we don’t really have a great grasp on why honesty and trustworthiness is important.
The problem is in pary the CSM morality is pretty random grab-bag of moral commitments. To quote a poet: weve got values but we don’t know how or why.
Why is this a problem?
Received wisdom is sometimes wrong
Even the no brainers can be pretty tough in tight corners
These tight corners, we are going to need to be sure that our moral beliefs are right, since doing the right thing is going to cost us dearly
This is ture of honesty and trustworthiness – in many cases it is obviously right to be honest and trustworthy. But it isn’t obviously true in all cases
What are you going to do as a new employee? Even if you think the idea is weak, or the core missions and values of the company are in some respect faulty or uninspiring, you are going to be at pains to be completely honest.
Carr, Private Morality, Business morality
Important claims
That lying sits on a continuum of deception: on one end, you have out and out bald-faced lies on the other you have less obvious kinds of lack of truthfulness: being sparing