Jacob Dearing
Dec. 16th, 2015
Critical Abstract #13
Article author: Richard McNeil
Article title: Ethics Primer
Within every sought after purpose available in any part of the world there is a foundation in conscious and unapparent ethical considerations. Richard McNeil describes an ethical primer because “ethical questions are fundamental to our work”. However, the purpose of the article is not to give a starting point, or primer, of ethical inquiry but to show that everyone has the ability and responsibility to develop their ethical decision-making.
Through out the article McNeil offers several examples of contradictory ethical dilemmas in order to make apparent that in the field, and in life, logical ethical positions are not always on the same side. For this reason it is important to grow ethically in order to improve, as McNeil lists, confidence in abilities to “deal with ethical dilemmas, explore ethical questions, recognize ethical perimeters of others, and improve cognation to articulate thoughts to others”.
Noticeably, two of these improvements involve how we convey and understand ethics to and from others. This can sometimes be difficult as McNeil shows a handful of ethical approaches that are often used interchangeably depending on the situation. These approaches can consider consequences, rules, and rights but can also range from intuition and virtues that guide how we deal with issues such as those with the environment.
These approaches are not the only obstacle as we all have different opinions as to how far our “moral considerations” should reach from ourselves to abiotic factors in the environment. This point is important to me as I consider my own ethical range of protection for forests and their ecosystems and those that value their existence or extraction.