Ethical Analysis Toolkit: Definitions, Principles and Concepts

A large percentage of ethics discussions break down over disputes over definitions and the lack of common terms and concepts. This section contains some useful tools to permit analysis, discussion, and argument to go forward, and to provide a quick reference for readers when one or more of these appear in the Ethics Scoreboard.

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From Jack Marshall, President, ProEthics

The Ethics Scoreboard exists because, to be blunt, national media, academia, law, the arts, government, and the church have been timid, garbled, and worst of all, boring in their efforts (such as they are) to apply our society's ethical standards and principles to the daily events that bombard us. The results of this failure are apparent: a proliferation of ethics-related incidents, a lack of coherent discussion regarding them, and in too many cases, public apathy.

The Ethics Scoreboard intends to counter this environment by doing four things:

• Providing some simple tools for ethical analysis.
  
• Identifying current events and issues that raise important ethical issues
  
• Using those tools to make a straight-forward assessment of these
  
• Talking about them.

This site will not attempt to be exhaustive, but will focus on raising ethical issues and observations that are not appearing elsewhere.

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• More about the Ethics Scoreboard »

Shielded in San Francisco

The problem with shield laws is that they excuse an entire profession, journalism, from ethical obligations that govern the rest of us.

» Read this commentary »

Also new this week: Liar of the Month, 2 Dunces, an Ethics Hero, and an Unethical Website

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Suggest an item for the Scoreboard

Please send suggestions regarding issues, news stories, unethical web sites and other topics for discussion on The Ethics Scoreboard to ProEthics President

The Ethics Scoreboard tries not spend a lot of time discussing the obvious, or the issues that are already receiving solid ethical analysis from broadcast, print, and web-based media. But the ongoing debate about the Bush administration’s use of torture on some captive terrorists is getting less enlightening and more misleading the longer and more heated it becomes. Because I have the happy circumstance of being consistent on this issue, and before the political posturing, rationalizations, euphemisms, hypocrisy and spin melts my brain, the Ethics Scoreboard will now attempt to blow the prevailing fog away, and clarify some controversies, many of which really shouldn’t be controversial.

» Read this commentary »

• Global Warming Ethics: Part One of Three. Convenient Misrepresentations
  
  
• Global Warming Ethics, Part Two of Three: The Offset Illusion
  
  
• Global Warming Ethics, Part Three of Three: Ideology and Bias
  

The fictional David Manning, a film critic invented by the Sony Corporation, stands for the dubious proposition that as long as your self-serving lie is in a trivial arena (usually entertainment) where dishonesty and misrepresentation are commonplace, or is a lie that nobody believes, it isn't reprehensible. All intentional public deceptions do harm, however, so The Ethics Scoreboard regularly recognizes The David Manning Liars of the Month, and urges the public to make them come clean…

"The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow"

Edited and with an Introduction by Edward J.Larson and Jack Marshall

The courtroom oratory, essays and speeches of America's greatest lawyer raise fascinating ethical and social issues, while giving us a window into one of the most provocative minds the nation ever produced.

Buy "The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow" book at:

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Random House
• Find an independent bookstore that carries this book at Booksense