Why you think you are ethical but really are not
The cognitive fallacies we face around ethics
Have you ever made a decision about a product, good, service, or personal goal after much thought, consideration, and inquiry? Now, how often have you followed that same method of evaluation for your daily activities?
Brief overview
Like most people, this frustration is normal and likely means that you do not not revisit most decisions once they are made. Out of the research of Daniel Kahneman and other, we find that as humans we are relatively poor self-regulators and that once decisions are made, we rarely revisit them to review the outcome or consequence. I believe this knowledge follows for ethical decisions we make.
Beyond ethical frameworks and questions, I explore the definition of ethics and what I call the “ethical complex.” While every philosopher has their favorite ethical stance whether it be Stoic, Aristotelian, Platonian, Ciceroian, Machiavellian, Aquinanian, or business ethical — or anything in between. The ethical debate around what approach to ethics is correct such as the rights approach, the fairness and justice approach, the common good approach, the virtue approach, or the personal need approach has raged throughout most of human history.
As highlighted by these google word use insights, academic, business, and public discussions of ethical behavior are on the rise in literature and business conversations while “ethics” as a search term has leveled out. The Facebook-Cambridge analytics scandal may be the most public organization-centric discussion on ethics and values in recent memory, but they are not the only organizations facing these challenges.
My goal is to explore the difficulties around ethical debates and to propose two new design frameworks — or ethical design processes — for approaching ethical decision making and informing design decisions that move beyond using only ethical frameworks.
Lenses for evaluating ethics
In order to do so, I have created a conversational-based model of ethics. The articles in this series are intended to be read sequentially but can be read independently. The articles are:
- Why most discussions about ethics are really a debate about values
- How your daily conversations may be eroding your ethical sensitivity
- Why your ethical framework won’t work
- Designing cognitive speed bumps for durable ethical design processes
My intention is to begin a conversation about design and ethics as well as explore ways to maintain cognitive engagement with the ethical process over time.
One of the turning points in my consideration of the ethical war of ideas was during a theoretical design seminar at Carnegie Mellon University in 2018. During this course we discussed ethics and, in particular, the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). These conversations led to my first article on the topic titled “Ethics: Designing for Dichotomies.”
Thank you
While the conclusions of this study around the need for cognitive speed bumps int he face of ethical fading is primarily of my own conception, I could not have made it to this point without their expert help and feedback.
