1. Lecture 5.3
Moral philosophy and social care

3. Ethics as moral philosophy
A branch of philosophy concerned with the study of ‘morality, moral problems and moral judgments’ (Frankena, 1963: 3)
3 types of ethics:
Metaethics: comprises critical and analytical thinking about the meaning and use of moral terms (e.g. ‘good’, ‘right’), about whether moral judgments can be justified
Normative ethics: attempts to give answers to moral questions and problems (e.g. what the morally right course of action in a particular case is, whether lying is always wrong)
Descriptive ethics: studies what people’s opinions and beliefs are and how they act in relation to these

4. Ethics as moral norms or standards
The norms or standards of behaviour people follow concerning what is regarded as good or bad, right or wrong
Ethics: derived from the Greek (Ethos), meaning habits or customs
Code of ethics: a set of principles, standards or rules of conduct for ethical practice

5. Ethics and social care

6. Social care is a moral endeavour
What we believe influences what we do
Ethical issues pervade the social care task:
social work frequently takes place in the context of state systems of welfare premised on principles of social justice and public good and the social worker has professional power in the relationship with service users.

7. Ethical problems arise when the worker sees the situation as involving a difficult moral decision, but is clear what is the right course of action.
Ethical dilemmas occur when the worker must choose between two equally unwelcome alternatives, which may involve a conflict of moral values, and it is not clear which choice will be the right one.

8. 1. Ethical Issues in Social Care
Issues around individual rights and welfare
E.g. A service user’s right to make his / her own decisions
Issues around public welfare
E.g. the rights and interests of parties other than the service user
Issues around equality, difference and structural oppression
E.g. a social worker’s responsibility to challenge oppression
Issues around professional roles, boundaries and relationships
E.g. deciding what role the social worker should take in particular situations

9. Discussion Discuss the following ethical questions in social care:
When is it morally justified to remove a child from a parent?
When is it appropriate to override the wishes of a service user?
Whom should we give a service to when we can’t give a service to everyone who needs it?

10. 2. Ethical problems and dilemmas
Inherent in the practice of social work
Reasons:
Its role as a public service profession dealing with vulnerable service users who need to be able to trust the worker and be protected from exploitation
Its position as part of state welfare provision based on contradictory aims and values (e.g. care and control, protection of individual rights and promotion of public welfare) that cause tensions, dilemmas and conflicts

11. Social work values
A set of moral principles to which social workers should be committed
Can be summarised as
Respect for person
Promotion of welfare
Equality of treatment, opportunity and result
Distributive justice

12. Moral philosophy

13. Different philosophical approaches
Different approaches to thinking about ethical questions:
Principle-based approaches
Kantian principles
Utilitarian principles
Kantian-Utilitarian-Radical principles
Virtue ethics

14. Principle-based approaches

15. Principle-based approaches to SW ethics
A principle:
A fundamental standard of conduct on which many other standards and judgments depend
An essential norm in a system of thought or belief, forming a basis of moral reasoning in that system.

16. Kant

17. 1. Kantian principles
Proponent: the German philosopher Immanuel Kant ( )
Kant believed that there are higher principles that are good in every time, every culture, and every situation
When faced with an ethical dilemma, he believed we should ask ourselves: “What duties do I owe to myself and to others?”
‘Deontological’ ethics: the Greek word ‘deon’ means duty or obligation
Rational duty must be the basis of all moral decisions: The only good action is that which is done from a sense of duty. We work out what is our duty through a process of logical reasoning.

18. Kantian categorical imperatives
Two categorical imperatives (commands that must be adhered to) that would guide all our actions:
Respectful of others
‘So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of any other, never solely as a means but always also as an end’ (Kant, 1964; 96)
We should treat others as beings who have ends (i.e. choices and desires), not just as objects or a means to our own ends
The principle of respect for persons in Kantian moral philosophy: the most influential in social work ethics

19. Kantian categorical imperatives (cont’d)
Universal applicability
‘Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law’ (Kant, 1964: 88)
We should not act one way in some situations or with some people and another way in others. Our actions should be consistent across the board.

20. Kantian principles and Respect for persons
E.g. street sleepers, drug addicts
A social worker should show them the respect that is due to them as persons in their own right (‘respect for persons’) and to support them in demanding that respect from others
If we stop respecting our service users as people, then we are not only going against the entire ethical basis for our profession, but against the basis of morality itself

21. Discussion
Can Kantian principles be applied to the types of ethical principles which are concerned with utility (promoting the greatest good) and justice (distributing the good(s) as widely and / or fairly as possible)?
Are there any conflicts between the rights or interests of different people?
e.g. a parent and a child, a confused older man and his carer

22. Bentham & Mill

23. 2. Utilitarian Principles
Consequentialism: moral judgements are based on outcomes
Utilitarianism
the most well known consequentialist approach
Its name comes from the Greek word ‘telos’ which means ‘end’
formulated by Jeremy Bentham ( ) and then further elaborated by John Stuart Mill ( )
Utilitarians facing an ethical dilemma ask, “What is my goal? What outcome should I aim for?”
Humans should seek happiness and avoid suffering

24. The principle of utility
The right action is that which produces ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ or ‘the greatest balance of good over evil’

25. ‘Utilitarianism’ means …
Hedonistic utilitarianism
equates the good with happiness (the sum of pleasures) and the bad with unhappiness (the sum of pains)
Ideal utilitarianism
the good consists of other things besides happiness (e.g. virtue, knowledge, truth, beauty)

26. ‘Utilitarianism’ means …

27. Utilitarianism helps …
‘Utilitarianism’ allows us to weigh up different courses of action in a situation, thus helping us make responsible decision making in social work
E.g. We need to look at the likely consequences of an intervention to know whether it is justified.
E.g. Is an intervention considered ethical if all the evidence suggested that it would make things worse for everyone involved?
E.g. Can you justify doing something in a costly and time-consuming way, if it could be done just as well in a cheaper way that could save resources for use on other services?

28. However,
A purely utilitarian approach is that the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number also carries with it the implication that it is acceptable to sacrifice the well-being of one person for the sake of the well-being of many
E.g. To help a single very troubled young person may require the provision of very costly services. The money used might be able to help large numbers of families.

29. Moving from ‘act utilitarianism’ to ‘rule utilitarianism’
In practice, it is often difficult to know what the consequences of an individual action will be and what the wider long-term consequences will be
Therefore, moving from ‘act utilitarianism’ to ‘rule utilitarianism’

30. Moving from ‘act utilitarianism’ to ‘rule utilitarianism’
deciding the rightness of each action with reference directly to the principle of utility
Rule utilitarianism
we use rules which are tested and justified with reference to the principle of utility to speed up the process of moral reasoning and decision-making (Downie, 1971)

31. Discussion
If you could choose between an action that produced a large amount of good (e.g. happiness) for two people and nothing for eight people and another action that produced slightly less total happiness, but distributed it equally between 10 people, would you choose the former?

32. Conflicts between utility and justice
Two principles which themselves may conflict:
utility (urging us to produce as much good as possible) and
justice (equality of treatment, urging us to distribute it as widely as possible)
Whether the government should give large grants to engineering students in the national interest (utility) or the same amount to each student for the sake of fairness (justice) (Raphael, 1981)

33. 3. Kantian-Utilitarian-Radical principles
Limitations of Kantian-utilitarian principles approaches
both fail to take account of certain aspects of our ordinary moral thinking
Kantian
Emphasizes the individual person and their rights and duties, particularly the principles of liberty and justice
Advocates rigidly following what is thought to be one’s duty for its own sake
Taking its extreme, it was morally right to keep a promise even if this resulted in many people suffering (Because the consequences or general utility would not be taken into account)

34. Kantian
Emphasizes the individual person and their rights and duties, particularly the principles of liberty and justice
Advocates rigidly following what is thought to be one’s duty for its own sake
Taking its extreme, it was morally right to keep a promise even if this resulted in many people suffering (Because the consequences or general utility would not be taken into account)

35. Utilitarian
Stresses the notion of the public good, looking to the consequences of actions with respect to the principles of utility and justice (as equal treatment)
Focuses on amounts of good and evil in the abstract as opposed to the people who will experience the pleasure or whatever
Taking its extreme, it was right to kill an innocent person for the good of society (because individual liberty would not be taken into account).

36. ‘Common morality’ approaches
Developed by Beauchamp and Childress (2001)
Is both pluralistic (based on two or more non-absolute moral principles) and relies on ‘ordinary shared moral beliefs’ for its starting content (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001: 403)

37. Four principles 1. Autonomy
The moral obligation to respect the autonomy of each individual insofar as that is compatible with respecting the autonomy of others
One of Kant's formulations of his "categorical imperative”: treating others as ends in themselves and never merely as means
It predicts the security of informed consent, preserving confidentiality and a prohibition on wilful deceit.

38. Four principles (Cont’d)
2. Non-maleficence
The moral obligation of not doing harm
3. Beneficence
The moral obligation of doing good
4. Justice
The moral obligation to act on the basis of fair adjudication between competing claims
E.g. In health care ethics, three categories of obligations of justice:
fair distribution of scarce resources (distributive justice)
respect for people's rights (rights based justice)
respect for morally acceptable laws (legal justice)

39. ‘Moral thinking is analogous to hypotheses in science that we test, modify, or reject through experience and experimental thinking’ (Beauchamp and Childress, 2001: 399)
The four principles are prima facie principles: We have a duty to uphold each of these principles unless it conflicts with or is overborne by another
When we face conflicts, e.g. respecting a person’s request for confidentiality (autonomy) and saving that person’s life (beneficence), we have to make a judgement which involves interpreting the principles in the light of this situation, specifying how and why they apply and balancing them against each other.

40. Kantian-utilitarian-radical principles in social work
Beauchamp and Childress (2001)’s ‘common morality’ approach + anti-oppressive approaches
A set of key principles might comprise
respecting the dignity, worth and self-determination of human beings (particularly service users);
promoting the welfare of service users and in society generally; and
promoting social justice for service users and in society generally.

41. Virtue ethics

42. Virtue ethics
The rightness or wrongness of an action is about what kind of behaviour is likely to make us grow and thrive as human beings
Based on the idea of virtues or human qualities
E.g. courage, integrity and respectfulness
The framework dates back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 B.C.–322 B.C.)
We can achieve happiness—or the “good life”—by developing virtue.

43. Some quotes from Aristotle

44. Virtues: habits of behaviour that struck a happy medium between extremes
Aristotle emphasized seeking “the golden mean” in each virtue.
E.g. Courage is a virtue, but too little courage becomes cowardice and too much becomes recklessness. In between these two extremes is the golden mean of courage.
We use our rationality to find the golden mean in every virtue and then to practice and live it until it becomes a habit.

45. Virtue concepts consist of complex sets of dispositions to think, feel and act in certain ways in certain situations’ (Banks and Gallagher, 2009: 40)
‘Consideration of the moral qualities of individual practitioners is a central part of any study of ethics’ (Banks and Gallagher, 2009: 39)

46. Principles? Virtues?

47. Moral pluralism and decision making
Ethical principles are one element of that decision making process alongside virtues, relationships, rights and rules - how these combine is your responsibility.
The important point is to act with moral integrity.
Workers in social care have to decide between competing claims, exercising moral judgement or Aristotle's “practical wisdom”.

48. Moral integrity
To act with moral integrity is to think through the issues of a dilemma and act to avoid the worst outcome.
The nature of ethical judgments that fits with the general context of the work of the welfare professions:
Ethical judgements are about human welfare.
Ethical judgements entail action.
Ethical judgements take into account the context of the situation.
An ethical judgement should exhibit consistency with previous and future judgements in the sense that it should apply to other people in similar circumstances.
Ethical judgements should be justifiable.
(Banks, 2006: )

49. THE END