If we look at the branch of philos-
ophy that addresses ethics, we find
multiple methods of ethics, and each
of the primary normative methods
has many nuanced and contested
variations and various overlaps.
Here is a fairly standard textbook
scenario of an ethical conundrum:
Boat A and Boat B are sinking
and you can rescue those in only
one of the boats. Boat A has one
occupant; Boat B has three. What
do you do? Count the people and
decide based upon quantity? Perhaps
there is another competing and
compelling consideration. What if
Boat A contained your brother or
sister or someone who was work-
ing on a cure for cancer? If Boat B
contained three known pedophiles,
without much thought, you would
think it were obvious which boat’s
occupants should be saved. You
have tacit knowledge. You don’t
have to think about what you ought
to do because you have absorbed
this form of knowledge through liv-
ing. You just know. Everybody does.
How, exactly, do you know?
You could develop some explicit
knowledge. Because a large body
of knowledge exists in the form
of methods of ethics, here is the
initial question for us. Upon which
method do you base your decision
about right action? From the many
methods of ethics that constitute philosophical enquiry, a very
abbreviated overview of a few of
the more important ones follows.
Deontology states that right action
is the result of examining duty and
knowing one’s moral obligation.
Eighteenth-century philosopher
Immanuel Kant described it as the
categorical imperative. “Act only
according to that maxim whereby
you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law”
[ 1]. Contemporary Neo-Kantian phi-
losopher Onora O’Neill, using the
airline industry’s handling of crash
incidents, pragmatically urges us to
move from a culture of blame to a
culture of investigation. In essence,
she is requiring us to ask the essen-
tial investigative question (the what-
do-we-have-here question), rather
than ponder whom do we blame (the
take-action-against question) [ 2].
