Topics Ethics

Question Where is the line between behavior subject to ethics and behavior subject to "common sense"? For example, the question of whether to hold the door open for people behind you hardly seems an ethical one, and while we might call a person who doesn't hold the door open names, we won't call them unethical. Yet there are other cases which clearly are ethical. So how can we distinguish between being a nice person, and acting ethically?

Accepted:
January 26, 2011

Comments

I'd suggest that the line isn't really very sharp. Here's a case: you are at the door. you see someone who's struggling under a burden of carried boxes. You aren't the worst person in the world if you don't hold the door, but you really should - and not just in some conventional sense. Why? One reason: you'd hope others would do the same for you in similar circumstances. That's an ethical consideration.

Still, there are some things that really are matters of custom. It's said (can't say for sure if it's true) that in some cultures, belching at the end of a meal is a way to compliment the host. That's not so in other societies (US society, for example.) There's obviously no general answer to the question "To belch or not to belch?"

However... Here in the USA, if I deliberately belch at the end of a meal and embarrass my host, I can't plead that it's a compliment in some countries, and I also can't plead that my act is a mere violation of custom, hence not really wrong. Customs are part of what give meaning to our actions. Having a basic grip on American customs, I know full well that I risk embarrassing my host by acting that way. If I do it nonetheless, I'm being inconsiderate -- not taking account of my host's feelings. That would be wrong.

Once again, it wouldn't be the worst thing I could do. But once again the wrong isn't merely conventional. Rather, the convention is what makes it possible for the gesture, made deliberately, to be wrong, full stop.