The Ethics Meetup – When should you confront vs. ignore others' wrongdoing?
Details
Hello Ethics & Philosophy Fans!
UPDATE: we have a topic for the Meetup, which is this Sunday, Aug. 23 at 5 PM – 7 PM Pacific Time.
We're meeting on zoom this month; shortly before the meeting starts, I'll send a Zoom invitation with the link and some discussion notes.
If your plans to attend have changed, please update your RSVP.
The winner of the email vote and the topic for Sunday is:
WHEN ARE YOU MORALLY OBLIGED TO CONFRONT THE WRONGDOING OF OTHERS? And when is it okay to ignore wrongdoing? When should you take action, and when does taking action do more harm than good? When does another person's wrongdoing become my moral responsibility? Is morality and ethics primarily about what we ourselves do, or does it also include what we allow other people to do? Is ignoring an immoral act ethically equivalent to tacitly approving it? If so, then isn't it a moral error to fail to speak up or act against the wrongdoer? Does ignoring the issue make you "part of the problem rather than part of the solution?"
Many political or personal injustices are ignored or winked at for a long time before being given serious consideration – this gives us a compelling reason to confront wrongdoing. Then again, do we want to scold (and be scolded by) one another on a near daily basis for ignoring wrongdoings small and large? How many issues can a person or a society successfully examine and change at a time? Does constant confrontation of wrongdoing lead to constant conflict and a normalization of conflict? Consider the problem of moral overreach: confronting every wrongdoing may undermine the ability to confront the most serious cases of wrongdoing effectively. So, is it better to focus on a few, important failings, setting aside the lesser ones for a more opportune time? Or, is it better to address all personal or social misdeeds, since we don't know ahead of time which wrongful actions might yield to rapid change if brought to attention?
---------------------------
READINGS for the topic – I have two very short readings for you this time; they approach from different angles the question of when to confront the wrongdoings of others. I've also included a few paragraphs of an article. Inspire and clarify your thinking on the issues by reading these and writing down your ideas!
https://iep.utm.edu/tolerati/#H1 and https://iep.utm.edu/tolerati/#H4
Read portions of the Toleration entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, written by philosopher Andrew Fiala. No need to read the entire article, just the most relevant parts. That would be section 1, Conceptual Analysis (https://iep.utm.edu/tolerati/#H1), under two pages long. And section 4, Moral Toleration (https://iep.utm.edu/tolerati/#H4), three pages long. The concept of Toleration is the flipside of the question of when to confront wrongdoing. These two sections deal with the dilemma of when and if we should tolerate actions or words we think are wrong, bad, or objectionable, in both an interpersonal and a political context. In the language of these articles, then, confronting individuals or groups with their wrongdoing is a way of refusing to tolerate what they say or do.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/loyalty/#WhisBlow
Read one portion of the Loyalty entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, written by philosopher John Kleinig. No need to read the entire article, just section 6.1 Whistle blowing, 1.5-pages long. This section looks at the conflict between the moral demands of exposing wrongdoing and the moral demands of loyalty. Though whistleblowing covers one specific case of our broad topic, the points made here apply generally to the broader question of when to confront versus ignore wrongdoing. The author asks several questions. Is whistleblowing obligatory or merely permissible? When does remaining silent constitute mere noninterference, and when does it become tacit cooperation, complicity, or endorsement? Is confronting wrongdoing justifiable or courageous if it predictably makes the situation worse? Does loyalty to a friend, organization, employer, profession, or institution justify remaining silent about wrongdoing? The author argues, among other things, that whistleblowing should generally involve sufficiently serious wrongdoing, well-grounded evidence, consideration of whether intervention will be effective, and consideration of one's particular role with respect to the wrongdoing (e.g., employee, manager, parent, teacher, physician, citizen).
-----------
Finally, to start off the conversation, I have three paragraphs on the nature of the toleration of wrongdoing. These are excerpted from the Toleration entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/
The term “toleration” — from the Latin tolerare: to put up with, countenance or suffer — generally refers to the conditional acceptance of or non-interference with beliefs, actions or practices that one considers to be wrong but still “tolerable,” such that they should not be prohibited or constrained. There are many contexts in which we speak of a person or an institution as being tolerant: parents tolerate certain behavior of their children, a friend tolerates the weaknesses of another, a monarch tolerates dissent, a church tolerates homosexuality, a state tolerates a minority religion, a society tolerates deviant behavior. …
First, it is essential for the concept of toleration that the tolerated beliefs or practices are considered to be objectionable and in an important sense wrong or bad. If this objection component (cf. King 1976, 44-54) is missing, we do not speak of “toleration” but of “indifference” or “affirmation.” Second, the objection component needs to be balanced by an acceptance component, which does not remove the negative judgment but gives certain positive reasons that trump the negative ones in the relevant context. In light of these reasons, it would be wrong not to tolerate what is wrong … The said practices or beliefs are wrong, but not intolerably wrong. Third, the limits of toleration need to be specified. They lie at the point where there are reasons for rejection that are stronger than the reasons for acceptance … call this the rejection component. …
Furthermore, it needs to be stressed that there are two boundaries involved: the first one lies between (1) the normative realm of those practices and beliefs one agrees with and (2) the realm of the practices and beliefs that one finds wrong but can still tolerate; the second boundary lies between this latter realm and (3) the realm of the intolerable that is strictly rejected. There are thus three, not just two normative realms in a context of toleration.
-------------------