Business Ethics
A hypothetical imperative tells us to act as we would want everyone to act in that situation.
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According to Adam Smith, if business is left to pursue its self-interest, the good of society will be compromised and harmed.
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According to Immanuel Kant, moral reasoning is based on observation.
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Adam Smith made the point that individual pursuit of self-interest (egoistic conduct), even when subject to rules and constraints, always undermines the utilitarian goal of producing the most good for all.
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All moral rights are legal rights.
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An argument is valid only if all its premises are true.
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An individual does not have to follow the code of one's profession.
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Aristotle argued that living a morally good life is being good at your job.
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Egoists only do what they feel like doing.
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Ethical egoism says that human beings are, as a matter of fact, so constructed that they must behave selfishly.
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Etiquette" designates a special realm of morality.
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If you do the right thing only because you think it will pay off, then you are truly motivated by moral concerns.
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If your conduct is legal, it will also be moral.
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Immanuel Kant believed that it is only when we act out of empathy for others that our actions have moral worth.
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In a broad sense morality is the moral code of an individual or of a society (insofar as the moral codes of the individuals making up that society overlap).
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In business and elsewhere, your only moral obligation is to act within the law.
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Nonconsequentialist theories of ethics never consider the consequences of an action or rule when making a moral judgment.
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Organizational norms always and inevitably lead to groupthink.
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Rules of etiquette are always moral rules.
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The rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are positive rights, not negative rights.
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W. D. Ross denied that we have immediate, intuitive knowledge of the basic prima facie obligations.
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According to one view in divine command theory, if something is wrong, then the only reason it is wrong is that God commands that it is wrong.
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An argument is a group of statements, one of which is claimed to follow from the others.
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An organization is a group of people working together to achieve a common purpose.
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Business ethics is the study of what constitutes right and wrong, or good and bad, human conduct in a business context.
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By "maxim," Immanuel Kant meant the subjective principle of an action, the principle that people in effect formulate in determining their conduct.
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Bystander apathy appears to result in part from diffusion of responsibility.
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Ethical relativism is the theory that what is right is determined by what a culture or society says is right.
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For philosophers, the important question is not how we come to have the particular moral principles we have, but whether we can justify them.
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Immanuel Kant believed that prostitution was immoral because, by selling their sexual services, prostitutes allow themselves to be treated as only a means to an end.
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In theory and practice, law codifies customs, ideals, beliefs, and a society's moral values.
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Most people don't distinguish between a person's "morals" and his or her "ethics."
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Normative theories of ethics propose some principle or principles for distinguishing right actions from wrong actions.
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One feature about utilitarianism that makes it appealing as a standard for moral decisions in business and nonbusiness organizations is that it provides a clear and straightforward basis for formulating and testing policies.
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One of the major characteristics of an organization is the shared acceptance of organizational rules by its members.
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Our conscience evolved as we internalized the moral instructions of the parents or other authority figures who raised us as children.
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Richard Brandt defends a form of act utilitarianism.
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Rule utilitarianism applies the utilitarian standard, not to individual actions, but to moral codes as a whole.
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The connection between rights and duties is that, generally speaking, if you have a right to do something, then someone else has a correlative duty to act in a certain way.
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The paradox of hedonism (or the paradox of selfishness) is that people who are exclusively concerned with their own interests tend to have happier and more satisfying lives than those who are concerned about other people.
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The view that equates morality with self-interest is egoism.
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There are four basic kinds of law: statutes, regulations, common law, and constitutional law.
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When a utilitarian like Jeremy Bentham advocates "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," we must consider unhappiness or pain as well as happiness.
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Jeremy Bentham thought that a community is no more than the individuals who compose it and that the interests of the community are simply the sum of the interests of its members.
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Moral standards concern behavior that can be of serious consequence to human welfare
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A prima facie obligation is an obligation that can be overridden by a more important obligation.
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A supererogatory act is an act that would be good to do, but not doing it is not wrong.
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According to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, pleasure is the one thing that is intrinsically good or worthwhile.
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According to Tom Regan, our considered moral beliefs are those we hold only after we have made a conscientious effort (a) to attain maximum conceptual clarity, (b) to acquire all relevant information, (c) to think about the belief and its implications rationally, (d) impartially, and with the benefit of reflection, (e) coolly.
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According to W. D. Ross, we have immediate intuitive knowledge of the basic prima facie moral obligations/principles.
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