I’ve started this blog as a meditation on ethics in the context of business. Having suffered through a number of books on the topic, and having found them entirely unsatisfactory, I'm left with the sense that anyone interested in the topic is left to sort things out for themselves. Hence, this blog.

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I expect to focus on fundamentals for a while, possibly several weeks, before generating much material of interest. See the preface for additional detail on the purpose of this blog.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Consequences: Direct and Indirect

Thus far, consequence of action has been considered mostly in a direct manner, but this is an incomplete view of consequences. Often, the consequences that are of greatest interest to ethics are those that are not directly related to the action, but precipitate from the action through a chain of causation.

For example, the action of drawing water from a village well causes there to be less water in the well for others to draw upon. This is a direct consequence. Taken to an extreme, withdrawing all water from a well causes the well to run dry. There being no water in the well may result in other consequences, such as the resource being unavailable to water crops.

This sets up a chain of causation: drawing water from the well causes there to be no water available for crops, causes the crops to die of dehydration, causes those who depend upon those crops to starve. And for that reason, we would assess the act of drawing water from the well to be bad/wrong because the precipitating consequence is harmful.

Having a chain of causation adds complexity to consideration. We might ask if the person who drew the water from the well was aware of the precipitating effect, several links further down the chain. We might also inquire as to whether at any point, action could have been taken by others to avoid the consequences (could the well have been dug deeper, or another water source found to provide for the crops) - and, if so, if it is the responsibility of the actor to have undertaken such an action, for the sake of drawing water.

My sense is that much of this is specific to the situation, and it would be difficult to draw a general conclusion. In a broad sense, ethics applies to indirect consequences, but the length of the chain of causation and the possibility of mitigation may be mitigating factors.

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