Читать книгу Environmental Ethics - Группа авторов - Страница 23

In order to get a handle on how the purely prudential worldview differs from the ethically enhanced worldview, let us consider two cases and evaluate the input of ethics. First, we will consider a general case in social/political ethics and then one from environmental ethics. The reader should note how the decision-making process differs when we add the ethical mode. In most cases in life the decisions we make have no ethical content. It does not matter ethically whether we have the chocolate or vanilla ice cream cone. It does not matter ethically if we buy orchestra seats for the ballet or the nosebleed seats. It does not matter ethically if I wear a red or a blue tie today. The instances in which ethics are important are a small subset of all the decisions that we make. That is why many forgo thought about ethical decision-making: it is important only in a minority of our total daily decisions. In fact, if we are insensitive to what counts as an ethical decision context, then we might believe that we are never confronted with a decision that has ethical consequences.

To get at these relations let us consider a couple of cases in which the ethical features are highly enhanced. Readers are encouraged to participate in creating reactions to these from the worldviews they now possess.