Question

Table: A Comparison of the Philosophies Used in Business Decisions

Teleology	Stipulates are morally right or acceptable if they produce some desired result, such as realization of self-interest or utility
Egoism	Defines right or acceptable actions as those that maximaze a particular person's self-interest are defined by the individual
Utilitarianism	Defines right or acceptable actions as those that maximize total utility or the greatest good for the greatest number of people
Denotology	Focuses on the preservation of individual rights and on the intentions associated with a particular behavior rather than on its consequences
Relativist	Evaluates ethicalness subjectively on the basis of individual and group experiences
Virtue ethics	Assumes what is moral in a given situation is not only what conventional morality requires but also what the mature person with a "good" moral character deems appropriate
Justice	Evaluate ethicalness on the basis of fairness: distributive procedural and interactional

After reading the table, discuss for me the challenges of applying moral philosophy to decision making. USE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES this time to apply the concepts. Do not use the book's examples. Minimum word count: 150 words.

Answer 1

From our friendships, personal relations to our professional lives, to our conduct in public, seemingly small decisions often pose tough moral dilemmas and we have to deal with them to navigate through life.

Moral misconduct is a sizeable portion of the news: Management cheating shareholders for filling their personal coffers, CEOs raiding corporate coffers, widespread auditing fraud, unbridled cheating in school, reporters lying about sources, politicians making a fool of our sentiments—the incidence and variety of transgressions seem interminable.

Immoral conduct is a very common trait in people nowadays. It's like mingling with the flow by being immoral and not be sidelined by the baseless theory of morality, ethics, honesty, humanity etc. But should these findings surprise us? Isn’t wrongdoing just part of “the human condition”? Can we really teach our children to be more moral and still continue our acts of immorality? Or improve ourselves when we are adults? Moreover, when it comes to our personal interactions, who decides—and how—what is or isn’t moral. These are real questions as this is life.

With do much unethical trends around, morality in decision making is tough since our decisions are result of our neural coordination of brain and heart generally finding similarity in other events of life and thus is full of challenges.

Daily morality

• The ATM spits out an extra $100 by error. Keep the money and your mouth shut rather consider it a treat?

• At a restaurant you notice your friend’s wife engaged in some serious flirting with another man. Tell your friend—and possibly ruin his marriage—or mind your own business?

• You can avail yourself of a free wireless connection by accessing the account of your next-door neighbor. Silly not to?

• Your colleague is forever taking credit for your and other people’s work. Is it okay to exact a little revenge and for once take credit for her labors?

• Your friend is on her way out the door for a significant date and asks whether you like her blouse. Do you tell her the truth: It’s hideous?

We deal with these moral questions daily in negligible to significant to life changing decision making and we decide.

The dilemma:

How should we act and what kind of people should we strive to be? As we’ve seen, we cannot rely on rarified moral theories to help us deal with the pressing demands of everyday decisions. Nor can we rely on our biological dispositions to point us toward the best moral judgments. Rather, we have to confront the integrity of our character, our honed intuitions, our developed sense of fairness and honesty. And to see how these traits are exhibited, we need to see how they work in action. This is how ethics gets played in the classroom, at work, at the supermarket, over the dinner table. While the usual moral evaluations of societies tend to focus on such broad issues as crime, economic equity, and foreign policy, just as important to consider is the moral health of our everyday interactions. For after all, this is how our lives are lived: day by day, one “small” moral judgment after another