October 14th, 2008

The readings for this week marked a sudden change from what we have been reading this semester. Rather than focusing on the historical background of the field of special education, these readings focused more on ethical and philosophical dilemmas.  The piece by Dr. Paul, which focused on the different definitions of morality (choice versus character) really made me think about my perspective on morality.  

I strongly believe that many of the problems in our society are closely tied to the fact that choice morality (in which individuals are judged based on their conscious actions) is the predominant way of thinking among the members of our society.  The problem with choice morality, in my mind, is that it is extremely difficult to connect the combined individual choices of individual members of our society to those of the society as a whole. Thus it becomes easy for someone to say that they are not responsible for the actions of the society as a whole because those actions were not their choices to begin with.  An invisible "it" is then given the power of action, which removes responsibility from the individual. This kind of mentality is dangerous because it can lead to situations in which atrocities are committed by rational people who think they are acting ethically (the same reason that was used to make the choice in the first place can then be used to justify it after the fact).

In contrast to choice morality, character morality judges the actor not based on their choice, but on the consequences of that choice.  Because consequences are more tangible (and visible) and character morality is a merit based system in which not all choices are equal (some bring about bigger consequences than others), this kind of morality has a better chance of holding the person who is acting accountable for his or her actions.  I think our society, which is obsessed with promoting the rights of the individual, tends to favor choice morality at the expense of character morality.  Unfortunately, as we mentioned in class, someone can act in a moral and ethical way and his or her actions can still have unintended unethical consequences.  This is why sometimes "good" people do "bad" things.  While a person's intentions in making an ethical or moral choice may have been good, there may be other things influencing that choice that are not entirely within that person's control, such as the social and political context.  

The Quakers have a simple saying that I think captures a different mindset on matters of morality: "live simply so that others may simply live."  I think the understanding expressed in this phrase is that yes, we do have choices, but each choice we make in turn affects the choices other people can make and thus has consequences for their lives and for the ability of the system as a whole to function.  The choices we make should not be only judged at the level of the individual and his or her rational process, but also at a global level in terms of how they affect the ecology of the system.  I think this kind of thinking is what we need to solve a lot of problems we face today (from how to fix the environment to how to educate diverse children). We need to focus more on what the consequences of our actions are and have a better awareness of the context in which we are acting.