Difficulties with codes
- The following objections lead philosophers to argue that presenting codes of ethics in ethics classes undermines several key moral attitudes and practices.
- Codes can undermine moral autonomy by habituating us to act from motives like deference to external authority and fear of punishment. We get out of the habit of making decisions for ourselves and fall into the habit of deferring to outside authority.
- Codes often fail to guide us through complex situations. Inevitably, gaps arise between general rules and the specific situations to which they are applied; concrete situations often present new and unexpected challenges that rules, because of their generality, cannot anticipate. Arguing that codes should provide action recipes for all situations neglects the fact that effective moral action requires more than just blind obedience to rules.
- Codes of ethics can encourage a legalistic attitude that turns us away from the pursuit of moral excellence and toward just getting by or staying out of trouble. For example, compliance codes habituate us to striving only to maintain minimum standards of conduct. They fail to motivate and direct action toward aspirations. Relying exclusively on compliance codes conveys the idea that morality is nothing but staying above the moral minimum.
This module is designed to steer you through these complex issues by having you draft a
Statement of Values for students at your university. As you work through your Statement of Values, you will learn that codes have strengths and weaknesses, serve different functions, and embody values. To get you started in this process, you will study a defective code, the Pirate Credo. A quick glance is all that is needed to see that codes are "all too human" and need to be approached critically. In a second activity you will identify the values embedded in professional, corporate, and academic codes. Working with these values, you will develop a list upon which your group will build its own Statement of Values in a third activity. Finally, you will construct value profiles that include a general description, sample provisions, value-based challenges, and value principles. These will all contribute to motivating those in your community to commit to and work in concert to realize these values.
A false start
The faculty of the Arts and Sciences College of University X decided to form a committee to write a code of ethics. This committee met several times during the course of an academic semester to prepare the first draft. When they finished, they circulated copies throughout the college. Then they held a series of pubic hearings where interested members of the College could criticize the code draft. These were lightly attended and those attending had only a few suggestions for minor changes. However, when the code was placed before the faculty for approval, considerable opposition emerged. For example, a provision discouraging faculty from gossiping was characteized by opponents as an attempt by a hostile College administration, working through the committee, to eliminate faculty free speech. Several opponents expressed opposition to the very idea of a code of ethics. "Does the administration think that our faculty is so corrupt," they aked, "that the only hope for improvement is to impose upon them a set of rules to be mindlessly followed and ruthlessly enforced?" At the end of this debate, the faculty overwhelmingly rejected the code.
