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Exercise Three: Solution Testing

26 July, 2019 - 12:01
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In this section, you will test the solutions on the refined list your group produced in the previous exercise. Three ethics tests, described below, will help you to integrate ethical considerations in the problem-solving process. A global feasibility test will help to identify solutions with serious practical problems. Finally, a Solution Evaluation Matrix summarizes the results for class debriefings.

Setting up for the test.

  • Identify the agent perspective from which the decision will be made
  • Describe the action as concisely and clearly as possible.
  • Identify the stakeholders surrounding the decision, i.e., those who will suffer strong impacts (positively or negatively) from the implementation of your decision. Stakeholders have a vital or essential interest (right, good, money, etc) in play with this decision.
  • In the harm/beneficence test, identify the likely results of the action and sort these into harms and benefits.
  • For the reversibility test, identify the stakeholders with whom you will reverse positions.
  • For the public identification test, identify the values, virtues, or vices your action embodies. Associate these with the character of the agent.

Harm/Beneficence Test

  1. What are the harms your solution is likely to produce? What are its benefits? Does this solution produce the least harms and the most benefits when compared to the available alternatives?
  2. Pitfall-Too much. In this "Paralysis of Analysis" one factor in too many consequences. To avoid the fallacy restrict the analysis to the most likely consequences with the greatest magnitude (Magnitude indicates the range and severity of impact).
  3. Pitfall-Too Little. A biased or incomplete analysis results when significant impacts are overlooked. Take time to uncover all the significant impacts, both in terms of likelihood and in terms of magnitude.
  4. Pitfall-Distribution of Impacts. Consider, not only the overall balance of harms and benefits but also how harms and benefits are distributed among the stakeholders. If they are equally or fairly distributed, then this counts in the solution's favor. If they are unequally or unfairly distributed, then this counts against the solution. Be ready to redesign the solution to distribute better (=more equitably or fairly) the harmful and beneficial results.

Reversibility Test

  1. Would this solution alternative be acceptable to those who stand to be most affected by it? To answer this question, change places with those who are targeted by the action and ask if from this new perspective whether the action is still acceptable?
  2. Pitfall-Too much. When reversing with Hitler, a moral action appears immoral and an immoral action appears moral. The problem here is that the agent who projects into the immoral standpoint loses his or her moral bearings. The reversibility test requires viewing the action from the standpoint of its different targets. But understanding the action from different stakeholder views does not require that one abandon himself or herself to these views.
  3. Pitfall-Too little. In this pitfall, moral imagination falls short, and the agent fails to view the action from another stakeholder standpoint. The key in the reversibility test is to find the middle ground between too much immersion in the viewpoint of another and too little.
  4. Pitfall-Reducing Reversibility to Harm/Beneficence. The reversibility test requires that one assess the impacts of the action under consideration on others. But it is more than a simple listing of the consequences of the action. These are viewed from the standpoint of different stakeholders. The reversibility test also goes beyond considering impacts to considering whether the action treats different stakeholders respectfully. This especially holds when the agent disagrees with a stakeholder. In these disagreements, it is important to work out what it means to disagree with another respectfully.
  5. Pitfall-Incomplete survey of stakeholders. Leaving out significant stakeholder perspectives skews the results of the reversibility test. Building an excellent death chamber works when one considers the action from the standpoint of Hitler; after all, it's what he wants. But treating an individual with respect does not require capitulating to his or her desires, especially when these are immoral. And considering the action from the standpoint of other stakeholders (say the possible victims of newer, more efficient gas chambers) brings out new and radically different information.
  6. Pitfall-Not Weighing and Balancing Stakeholder Positions. This pitfall is continuous with the previous one. Different stakeholders have different interests and view events from unique perspectives. The reversibility test requires reviewing these interests and perspectives, weighing them against one another, and balancing out their differences and conflicts in an overall, global assessment.

Publicity (or Public Identification) Test

  1. Would you want to be publicly associated or identified with this action? In other words, assume that you will be judged as a person by others in terms of the moral values expressed in the action under consideration. Does this accord with how you would want to or aspire to be judged?
  2. Pitfall-Failure to association action with character of agent. In the publicity test, the spotlight of analysis moves from the action to the agent. Successfully carrying out this test requires identifying the agent, describing the action, and associating the agent with the action. The moral qualities exhibited in the action are seen as expressing the moral character of the agent. The publicity test, thus, rests on the idea that an agent's responsible actions arise from and express his or her character.
  3. Pitfall-Failure to appreciate the moral color of the action. The publicity test assumes that actions are colored by the ends or goods they pursue. This means that actions are morally colored. They can express responsibility or irresponsibility, courage or cowardice, reasonableness or unreasonableness, honesty or dishonesty, integrity or corrpution, loyalty or betrayal, and so forth. An analysis can go astray by failing to bring out the moral quality (or qualities) that an action expresses.
  4. Pitfall-Reducing Publicity to Harm/Beneficence Test. Instead of asking what the action says about the agent, many reduce this test to considering the consequences of publicizing the action. So one might argue that an action is wrong because it damages the reputation of the agent or some other stakeholder. But this doesn't go deep enough. The publicity test requires, not that one calculate the consequences of wide-spread knowledge of the action under consideration, but that one draws from the action the information it reveals about the character of the agent. The consequences of bad publicity are covered by the harm/beneficence test and do not need to be repeated in the public identification test. The publicity test provides new information by turning from the action to the agent. It focuses on what the action (its moral qualities and the goods it seeks) says about the agent.

Comparing the Test Results: Meta-Tests

  1. The ethics tests will not always converge on the same solution because each test (and the ethical theories it encapsulates) covers a different dimension of the action: (1) harm/beneficence looks at the outcomes or consequences of the action, (2) reversibility focuses on the formal characteristics of the action, and (3) publicity zeros in on the moral character of the agent.
  2. The meta-tests turn this surface disagreement into an advantage. The convergence or divergence between the ethics tests become indicators of solution strength and weakness.
  3. Convergence. When the ethics tests converge on a given solution, this indicates solution strength and robustness.
  4. Divergence. When tests diverge on a solution a solution does well under one test but poorly under another this signifies that it needs further development and revision. Test divergence is not a sign that one test is relevant while the others are not. Divergence indicates solution weakness and is a call to modify the solution to make it stronger.

Exercise 3: Summarize your results in a Solution Evaluation Matrix

  1. Place test results in the appropriate cell.
  2. Add a verbal explanation to the SEM table.
  3. Conclude with a global feasibility test that asks, simply, whether or not there exist significant obstacles to the implementation of the solution in the real world.
  4. Finish by looking at how the tests converge on a given solution. Convergence indicates solution strength; divergence signals solution weakness.
Table 5.5 Solution Evaluation Matrix

Solution/Test

Harm/Beneficence

Reversibility

Publicity (public identification)

Feasibility

First Solution

       

Second Solution

       

Third Solution

       

Fourth Solution

       

Fifth Solution

       
 

The ethics tests are discussed in Cruz and Davis. See references below. Wike and Brincat also discuss value based approaches in the two references below.

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