Dombrowski p. 1-37

Chapter 1: Nature of Ethics

broad new awareness among technical communicators of the ethical implications of their work.

• due in part to the recognition of many important ethical lapses in recent years involving communications about technology.
• rising concern among the general public about ethics in nearly every facet of our lives.

ethics involves making judgments about values.

increasingly the public is unwilling to allow scientists to decide unilaterally the desirability of scientific programs and activities.

values shape communication technology itself.

in information communication, ethical concerns are raised about issues of privacy, ownership of information, copyright, access, freedom of speech, personal and national security, and access to markets in other countries.

the previous view of ethics in technical communication involved relaying faithfully information between transmitter and receiver.

• now the situation is less cut-and-dry
• we have the responsibility to be familiar with and use the latest technologies of communication as well as with the technologies about which we communicate.
• the uses to which our information will likely be put, the range of possible readings of our documents, and the consequences of our communications at all levels of society beyond the immediate audience.

we need to consider systematically what guidelines can help us to satisfy our ethical responsibilities to ourselves and to others.

each of us is an ethical decision maker because the ethical burden falls on and must be borne by individual person.

• but one should not make ethical decisions alone as a radical individual accountable only to oneself. they should be made on the basis of some principle of responsibility that connects us all as human beings and as a society.

only when our deliberations are freely open to different voices can we legitimately say that we have arrived at truly ethical decisions.

assumptions in this text:

• ethics is problematic in several senses.
• ethics is both individual and social
• ethics is neither an entirely absolute nor an entirely relative matter.
• it would be irresponsible either to blindly accept or reject the authority of others in ethical matters.
• due to the social, situation-specific nature of ethical judgments, no single ethical theory or approach will always be best for all situations.

terminology:

• values refers to the intentions or ends that guide an action, which need not involve the same sense of careful responsibility that is connoted by ethics
• ethics usually involves values, but values need not always involve ethics.
• absolute: definite, unchanging, and inflexible, applying to any and all situations in exactly the same way.
• relative: changing in relation to circumstances.

Chapter 2: Survey of Ethics in Communication and Rhetoric

rhetoric means the use of reasoned arguments based on socially accepted values and presented to inform and persuade in order to accomplish some socially desirable action such as a policy decision.

persuasion means the willing, informed collective agreement of a critically thinking audience.

many contemporary thinkers consider science and technology to be value systems because they have not only criteria for establishing knowledge but also play important roles in society in settling disputes and because they are pursued for their own sakes.

Plato: ethical values come before any communication.

• because ethics is a matter of pleasing god, who can only be immortal and unchangeable, ethics must also be unchangeable and not subject to contingencies.
• ethics were authoritarian because only the brightest, most sensitive, and most conscientious people could have a clear perception of the will of god. these people should lead while the rest follow. communication is therefore a largely one-way affair.
• good communication first and foremost must be ethical and deal only with what is true, good and right. we should learn what is right before we begin communicating to ensure that we say only what is right.

Socrates: the communication between competing sides on a controversial matter reveals the proper values and the right course of action

• our innate burden is to continually reflect on and critically examine all aspects of our lives because only through this conscientious reflection can we determine what is right for us to do.
• insisted on doing the right thing no matter what the consequences.
• ethics is a matter of pleasing god-insisted on following his conscience as led by the will of god, regardless of what any of the falliable people around him happened to think he should do.
• ethical behavior requires active social involvement

Aristotle: ethics ultimately stemmed from the essential order of things, in practical affairs the ethical course of action had to be determined in a debate.

• two categories of knowledge: certain and uncertain. rhetoric deals with uncertain knowledge and science deals with certain knowledge.

Sophists: the communication act can alter our ethical values because there is no absolute basis for ethics.

• claimed to have the power through their rhetorical craft to make the weaker case appear the stronger, or the worse case seem the better.
• there are no absolutes and that communication is immensely powerful precisely because it shapes minds, hearts, values and decisions.
• values are relative because they depend on circumstances-because cultures differ as to what is true, right, and good, we must take any and all of these values as equally valid.
• social constructionism is the point of view that all knowledge is only a construct deriving from its social context.
• all we have is communication among ourselves about what to think, believe, and do, and we should make the most of this.
• many of the famous philosophical notions attributed to Plato and Aristotle derived from intellectual investigations begun by sophists.
• perhaps the most important activity attributed to the sophists is debate itself.
• the learning of rhetorical skills is in no way connected with the learning of ethical values.

recently rhetoric has received a negative connotation.

Hegel:

• values were arrived at socially, often by forces that were working to preserve only their own self-interest in what amounted to power plays.
• asserted the powerful role of communication itself in the overall social process whereby values are proposed, endorsed, and propagated.
• famous as a modern "rehabilitator" of the sophists.

Perelman:

• explored the social contingency of values and the fundamental role of rhetoric in establishing values.
• our language is our values

Burke:

• showed the fundamentally social nature of all language use and the power of langugae to negotiate knowledge and value judgments through rhetoric.
• also known as a symbolic interactionist.

Weaver:

• all language use inescapably involves expressing some values, whether implicitly or explicitly.
• values serve as the foundation for rhetoric, giving it the substance toward which the audience is persuaded.
• concerned about the scientific and technological mindset b/c it specifically distances itself from values. encourages passivity and obscures the necessity for social discourse about topics such as opinions and goals.

Recent Developments:

• notion that science and technology represent value systems has flowered into an entire subfield within rhetoric studies, known as rhetoric of science, with a parallel rhetoric of technology just now emerging.
• values and rhetoric are related to power and social dominance within a culture-the language of the privileged class perpetuates itself while it discounts anything different. it values what it chooses to recognize while ignoring anything different.
• the question of what should count as knowledge figures prominently in the thinking of many critical theorists in both the US and Europe-when we think of knowledge we assume that it must be technical or scientific. there are simply no absolute, independent criteria for deciding such knowledge other than rational argumentation among earnest, well-intentioned participants. consensus is our only standard on such matters, and language is the medium that makes consensus possible.