Richard Degeorge's The Case Of The Collapsed Mine

Examine Your Response: Synthesis With ethics providing the base framework for the way we conduct ourselves on every level from individually to globally, it’s important to study them for a host of reasons. First and foremost, it allows us to analyze our behaviors and determine what criteria is valuable in our decision making processes. Studying ethics gives us different outlooks and perspectives on problems we may not consider when looking at it from our individually engrained default approach. It also allows us to look for shifts and changes in mindsets, attitudes, and values, so we can see how we’re progressing as a society. We’re also given the opportunity to compare and contrast our personal governing philosophies with those of others around us to see where we fit in with our society and measure how well we’re meeting the standards we set for ourselves.

Richard T. DeGeorge’s “The Case of the Collapsed Mine” was my favorite because it packed so many dilemmas into one essay that trying to solve one aspect only complicated another. I found it interesting that every character in the story could be considered both ethical and unethical depending on both the perspective of others and also which ethical guidelines we’re following. The mine manager, for example, is clearly wrong from the vantage of the miners or their families, but the company shareholders may have a different view. The miners, faced with their own dilemma, may be in the right when we examine them from the utilitarian approach, but the rights approach tells another story. The multidimensional structure of this essay was very challenging and really highlighted the complexity of applying ethical standards to a realistic