Ethics and Knowledge

Although not strictly a business related post ethics are becoming increasingly important today because society expects companies and organisations to act 'ethically.'

How can you or your society decide ethically which knowledge should or should not be pursued.

How can you or your society decide ethically which knowledge should or should not be pursued is a question to be resolved through ethical decision making. I prefer to apply the utilitarian theory in dealing with ethical questions. To understand this question though one must first understand what an ethical decision is, how the individual or society allows or disallows the pursuit of knowledge and examples of what and why certain decisions have been made in the pursuit of knowledge.

Moral Philosophy or ethics are all around us whenever we say something is right, wrong, good, or bad although not all decisions are based on ethical principles we make many ethical decisions every day both consciously and unconsciously. It occurs every time we used the word right or wrong and even good and bad or whenever we make a judgement about the worth of something. There are four parts to making an ethical decision.

The Utilitarian theory of ethical decision making is concerned with the well being of everybody as opposed to a theory based on self-interest or universal laws, which focus on the well being of individuals. It is mainly for this reason that utilitarianism impresses me as a standard because it is concerned with the welfare of the group – in fact, it puts the welfare of the group ahead of the welfare of individuals thus it is of a greater benefit to society ...

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This essay was submitted as part of Theory of Knowledge for International Baccalaureate 2002