So What?

Throughout the past few weeks, I have learned so many different aspects of normative ethics. This was done by watching a movie, reading a novel, and interpreting several different biblical passages. These different forms of information have allowed me to see many different viewpoints of each type of normative ethics. Personally, it has allowed me to recognize my mental process of making decisions. It also has allowed me to analyze others people ways of making decisions, and how they view that decision as being right. I have continued to recognize that I make my decisions based on duty-based ethics.

Duty-based ethics is basically when you obey all the rules or laws presented to you because you feel that it is your responsibility to do so. These rules or laws that are followed can really be anything. They can be the laws from our government, the Ten Commandments, the rules at a workplace, or even the rules your parents make. For me, I typically follow all the rules presented to me just because that’s what I do. But until this course, I really did not think much about this. Now that I have, I am beginning to understand why I make these decisions, which has allowed me to understand myself better.

One of the aspects of my life that I have analyzed to better understand my decision making is how I grew up. I am the oldest child in my family. I have a younger brother and a younger sister, and I think they are part of the reason that I follow duty based ethics. Growing up, my parents always told me to be an example for them. If I followed the rules that they set for us, then my siblings would also follow because they saw me doing it. I believe that this is partially why I do what’s right. Since I got in the habit of always following the rules, I still do that to this to this day. In this analysis of why I follow duty-based ethics, it can be broken down further into following John Locke’s Right Theory. This theory is about following the rules or laws in order for someone else to benefit from them. In other words, I followed the rules of my household when I was growing up so that my siblings could benefit from seeing the correct decision being made. This theory can also interpreted as by saying that I followed the rules so that my siblings could benefit from my parents not making harsher rules because their original rules were being followed.

I have began to recognize the times that I follow duty-based ethics over the past few weeks as well. For example, at my work I really do not have people coming in an hour or so before I close; therefore, I am the only one there. I could leave a few minutes early, but since I always follow the rules, I do not turn off the lights and leave until 7:00 pm exactly. This example is just one of the many times that I follow duty-based ethics in my day to day life. After learning about the different ways of making decisions, I will hopefully continue to realize how I am using this in my own life and others as well.

So what

Morality is an important aspect of our decision-making and therefore, in many ways directs the path of our lives. While some of us form our morality through a system of religions others form it through their families and through personal experience. In this way morality is a key part in our development as a human being and defining where we end up. Morality is what defines the aspects of the world that are sourced in evil and in good. Its what will define whether each of us live out a virtuous life. For this reason morality is important in defining the path of our lives, which encompasses the first question that was presented in this course.

I personally choose to follow a method of virtue ethics throughout my daily life and the broader spectrum of my life plan. I use it on smaller issues in the way that I must always decide whether what I’m doing is in balance with what I assume to be the most virtuous way of living and thinking. For example, even on smaller issues of deciding whether to give homeless man money on my way to class. While I can’t always give him money, I believe that I stay true to my morality just by giving what I can when I can. The golden mean is an important rule that I often follow in order to keep in check on my moral decision-making, However, it interesting consider the idea that I have applied this moral theory in my life even before I knew the name or definition. I grew up going to Sunday school and was often influenced by more rule-based morals that are more typical for organized religion. Given my influence I still often times followed my own internal more code and applied in and compared with a more rule based approach of morals. Often times I found that the two moral codes lined up in their application for deciding what is right and what is wrong which is why I still fell a connection to my younger religious teachings, even if I don’t still practice my religion in the typical way of going to services and reading the Bible my morality is still imprinted with aspects of Christianity. For this reason it can be very confusing to evaluate whether my version of morality is a true projection of my true personal morality. Which also causes me to question whether there is a true inner morality or whether it is developed through influence. For this question alone, I must question the relation between who is defining my path and my moral code.

Morality is a primary form for decision-making; therefore, it’s an important aspect of defining our path. While my ideas on morality continue to change, my decision-making will change as well. Morality is a key aspect of defining our lives and the way that we look at the world. It is what makes us decide what the best way to live our lives is.

So What?

Our focus on who decides what is morally right this semester has changed the way I view my own life and the world around me.  I have a wider view of honesty in culture and the way I understand my life because of the articles and book we've read, the movie we've seen, and the group discussions we've had.

It's changed how I view honesty in culture by challenging whether truthfulness is best for the situations at hand.  When looking at a situation from a perspective of virtue ethics, I would need to decide whether honesty, or preservation of a situation or someone's feelings is more important.  It brings to mind the situation from our classic categories reading about the angry men looking for the man's friend.  In a duty-based state of mind, I would make my decisions on the moral basis of following set rules.  While I do tend to be a rule-follower, I think I stick to my original statement that I more often decide based on my personal virtues.  Finally, from a consequentialist standpoint, I would need to take into account possible outcomes of each action.  While this makes logical sense to me, it's probably the most difficult.  Instead of staying true to who I know I am, or following clear guidelines, this mindset requires me to make assumptions about possible outcomes.  With all situations, one never knows whether the decision they've made is one they can consider moral themselves, until they see its outcome.

Overall, I think these arguments have made me more aware of the fact that even if I disagree with a decision someone else makes on moral grounds, I now remind myself that they have reasoning for why they're doing something they believe is right.  Just because we all have different motivations and ways of reaching moral decisions, doesn't mean one is necessarily better than any other.  We each decide things differently because we as people are different, and we choose based on the method that works best for who we are and how we operate within our daily lives.

I think my new understanding is also going to change the way I understand my own life and how I make decisions, because I now analyze what the motivation is behind my major decisions.  I think that knowing what motivates me to act a certain way - whether it's who I am, authority, or end results - will help me not only to know myself better, but to convict myself in doing the right thing more often.  For example, in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll refused to admit to himself the real motivation behind his reasoning in creating the potion.  He claimed it was a noble cause, but it was really for selfish intent, so that he could keep his private life and public reputation both intact.  Perhaps if he'd considered why he chose to do this, he would've realized it wasn't exactly a great idea.  The same can be said for Source Code, which took an in-depth look into how our perspective on a situation can change our actions, even though we still have morally good intentions either way.  I think the analysis of this movie also helped me understand that I need to look at points of view other than my own and remember that none of us sees ourselves as the villains of our own stories.

All in all, this has been a really interesting topic of discussion and analysis.  Looking into how we each make our moral decisions in different ways, as well as the motivations behind said decisions, has changed the way I look at my own life as well as the world around me.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was read this week to evaluate moral decision making. In this text, a theme of duality by the main characters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde heavily influenced their decision making skills. There was also another character in this text named Mr. Utterson who also displayed another way of making moral decisions.

To start off, Mr. Utterson was a lawyer who became very curious about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s increasing strange behaviors. He first noticed this when he saw Mr. Hyde trample over a young girl in the street. Mr. Utterson also becomes suspicious of the changes that are made to Dr. Jekyll’s will were it says that all of his possessions will belong to Mr. Hyde. This is when Mr. Utterson really starts to investigate what is going on. Because of the ways that Mr. Utterson handled each situation that was presented to him, I would describe his decision making at duty-based ethics. He is a lawyer, so he upholds the law and is as level headed as he could possibly be. Mr. Utterson stayed calm and collected throughout all these situations, and always honored the promises that he made.

The other main character(s) in this text is/ are Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll used his medical background to create a mixture of chemicals that will allow him to separate his bad feelings from his good character. He begins taking this mixture and is transforms into another person, My. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll, at first, is able to control his changes, but then he cannot do that as easily any more. He begins to fall asleep as Dr. Jekyll, and then awaken as Mr. Hyde. This conversion starts occurring more and more frequently without using the chemical mixture. Dr. Jekyll realizes that he wasn’t going to be able to control the conversions, and to add to that Mr. Hyde’s behavior was getting worse and worse! These two people that make up one person express the theme of duality. It displays the good and bad of human nature by taking one person and splitting him into his good character and his bad character. Dr. Jekyll represents the good character, and of course Mr. Hyde represents the bad. Dr. Jekyll’s behaviors were good, so he is the one who was in the public eye, but his inner thoughts were bad. I found this very interesting because it is just like how most people are. There are always dark inner secrets that people have, but you would never know that based on what you see.

The moral decision making of Dr. Jekyll can also be interpreted in two ways. First, you can see him as being selfish and only taking this mixture to suppress his bad thoughts, so that no one will ever know about them. He was only taking the drug to keep allow his reputation to remain pure. This interpretation can be viewed as ethical egoism. Dr. Jekyll was only thinking of himself in the decisions he made and how they would best benefit himself. On the other hand, Dr. Jekyll’s decisions can be viewed as he’s potentially sacrificing himself and using his own body as an experimental object so that later on others would benefit. Dr. Jekyll in this sense was displaying ethical altruism because he sacrificed himself for the good of others. For Mr. Hyde’s moral decision making, I really don’t think he had a ‘moral compass.’ He seemed to just act out in whatever way he chose no matter the consequences for himself, Dr. Jekyll, or the other people surrounding him.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Response by Thomas Luminoso

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde provides a unique and original story that is centered on the character of Mr. Hyde. His character is an extremely violent but secluded individual. In the end of the book Dr. Jekyll describes himself as having more than the fathers interest, while Mr. Hyde had more of the “son’s indifference” (40, Stevenson). This to me displays not only the differences between the two characters and the role they play in the development of the two, but also the differentiating moral standards. The two chiropractors can be seen as two extremes of human natures way of looking at morals. Stevenson see’s the human moral code as two separate kinds, there is the evil and there is the good. This can also be seen as the moral code that we choose to show to the public and the one that we all have within ourselves. We are in a constant battle of fighting our, “inner Hyde”.

The way in which I saw Dr.Jekyl develop was through tow moral codes. One of which was the perception that Dr.Jekyl was a character that had a strong moral code that mostly resembles Utilitarianism. The reason for this assumption was that he was trying to protect Mr.Hyde from the law because he knew something about him that made him redeeming. Dr. Jekyl would often times make excuses for Mr.Hyde and eventually says that he would not do anything else to anyone. If that were true then he would be looking out for the well being of Mr.Hyde, while also having the assumption that he would prevent anything else from happening to the people of London. However, the violence continues through Mr.Hyde’s character. This is then the point in the story that I started to question the moral code of Dr.Jekyll, especially in his disappearance at the end of the story.

Once reaching the conclusion of the story where we finally find out that Dr.Jekyl and Mr.Hyde are in fact the same person, my perception of their moral code changes in a way that is more self-indulging. You realize that his protection of the character was  just a protection of his secret. For this reason his moral code moves more towards an ethical egoist moral code. Even though Dr.Jekyl was fully aware of what he had become and that he was being taken over by the darker side of his own psyche. He was more worried about the condition of his own life then the fact that he had become a danger to the people around him. Even the will which he had written out that gave all of his assets to Mr.Hyde in the case of his death was self oriented in the way that he was making sure that he was preserving his wealth even if it meant that his violent alternate personality was the one that received it.

As the pieces fell into place it became clear as to what Dr.Jekyl’s moral standards really were. Even though his self can be separated into an evil and good version of himself, Each character shared the selfishness of their actions and their lack of consideration of everyone elses safety. For this reason, his more code was consistent in being ethical egoism.

Jekyll and Hyde

Throughout The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there are many interesting moral cases presented.  Not only is there the debate on whether certain actions were moral, but also the question of which characters presented certain classic categorical positions on making ethical decisions.

Dr. Jekyll, for example, seems to follow a theory of virtue ethics.  Instead of looking at end-results, or what the law said was right and wrong, he followed his own moral compass.  He saw who he was as a person, and instead of accepting the shortcomings of man, he instead couldn't live with what he believed was a moral duality.  So in order to have a good public reputation, and continue his private downfalls, he created his potion.  For Dr. Jekyll, he saw what good virtues and flaws he had, and came up with a way to live with both.  This was his moral decision through virtue ethics.

I feel that as a reader, I'm supposed to have sympathy for Dr. Jekyll, but it seems he brought his downfall on himself.  He claimed to have "noble" intentions in the beginning, but how noble is it really to continue a lifestyle you believe to be wrong, simply under a personality through which you won't be recognized?  To be fair, the mixture didn't work as he'd intended.  It didn't make one purely good and one purely evil person: it simply created the latter.  A second identity through which he could release his ill desires.  His true self was not magically remedied of the evil he believed to rest within him.

I think part of the reason I am so inclined to have very little pity for Dr. Jekyll is because he was aware of his actions, and allowed himself to justify them.  Even if his drinking of the potion was initially for the good of humanity as well as for the good of himself, he eventually started to lose control of the situation.  Once he began to have less control over Hyde's actions, he should've disposed of the ingredients immediately.  By allowing himself to continue, he saw what he believed was morally right, and then ignored it.  That adds an interesting component to the moral decisions in the novel.

In our group meeting, we discussed how Dr. Jekyll's perceived character changed throughout the novel.  At first, he was morally upright and seen to be an ethically good character.  However, his connection with the mysterious Mr. Hyde, particularly the forged letter, added suspicion to his character.  Finally, when it is revealed that he and Mr. Hyde are one and the same, he is proven to be one of the most morally-flawed characters in the novel.

Mr. Utterson seemed to be a bit more of a consequentialist.  As one of the most morally-consistent people in the story, he acts in accordance with what he believes to be best for his friends.  The author shows his thought process throughout the story, and in making decisions whether or not to visit Dr. Jekyll, or on when to read Mr. Lanyon's letter, he considered how each would affect his friends, and made his decisions accordingly.

As far as duty-based ethics goes, it is hard to find a character that perfectly represents this.  Other than the policeman perhaps, there weren't many characters who were purely or strongly motivated by following the law.  Most of the novel's characters were motivated by their own desires or by the people around them.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde certainly had some interesting perspectives on moral decision-making.  Each character was motivated by something different.  As with the film Source Code, I believe that our perspective as an audience changes based on our narrator.  Different points of view can justify different actions, and different motivations behind moral decisions.  I think one argument presented through novel is the author's answer to the question, Who decides what is morally right?  I believe that Stevenson is of the opinion that it is up to each of us to decide for ourselves, and to try to do so selflessly.

Group Meeting #5