What are the moral issues in this case? What ideals, obligations, and consequenc

Question

What are the moral issues in this case? What ideals, obligations, and consequences must Carla Lombard consider? What rights, if any, are at stake? Will it make a difference whether Carla adopts a Kantian approach or a utilitarian approach to this situation? (At least 500 word reply)

Please use the below case to answer this question:

“AIDS in the Workplace”

Carla Lombard always worked well with people. So when she opened her Better Bagels bagel shop seven years ago, she anticipated that managing her employees would be the easy part. She had worked for enough different bosses that she thought she knew what it took to be a good employer. Whether she was up to the financial side of running a business was her worry. As it turned out, however, Better Bagels flourished. Not only did Carla go on to open three smaller branches of Better Bagels, but her bakery also made daily wholesale deliveries to dozens of coffee shops and restaurants around the city. No, the business was prospering. It was just that the personnel issues turned out to be more difficult than she had ever expected. Take this week, for example.

On Tuesday, Carla was in the main bagel shop when around noon Tom Walters’s ex-wife, Frances, came in. Tom oversaw a lot of the early-morning baking at that shop and like most of Carla’s employees put in his share of time working the sales counter. He was a good worker, and Carla had been considering promoting him next month to manager of one of the branch shops. After ordering a bagel, Frances took Carla aside. She beat around the bush for a few minutes before she got to her point, because she was there to tell Carla that Tom had AIDS. Frances said she was telling Carla because she “always liked her and thought she was entitled to know because she was Tom’s employer.” Carla barely knew Frances, and she was so taken aback that she was at a loss for words. She was shocked and embarrassed and didn’t know whether she should even discuss Tom with Frances. While Carla was still trying to recover herself, Frances took her bagel and left.

Carla was still concerned and upset when she saw Tom the next day. Perhaps he had been thinner and looked tired more often the last few months, Carla thought to herself. But she couldn’t be sure, and Tom seemed to be his usual upbeat self. Carla wanted to discuss Frances’s visit with Tom, but she couldn’t bring herself to mention it. She had always liked Tom, but—face it, she thought—he’s my employee, not my friend.

And it’s his business. If I were an employee, I wouldn’t want my boss asking me about my health.

Later, however, she began to wonder if it wasn’t her business after all. She overheard some customers saying that people were staying away from the local Denny’s franchise because one of its cooks was reported to have AIDS. The rumor was that some of his fellow employees had even circulated a petition saying that the cook should go, but a local AIDS support group had intervened, threatening legal action. So the cook was staying, but the customers weren’t. Carla knew something about AIDS and thought some of what her customers were saying was bigoted and ill informed. She was pretty sure that you couldn’t transmit HIV through food—including bagel—preparation, but she thought that maybe she should double-check her information. But what was really beginning to worry her were the business implications. She didn’t want a Denny’s-like situation at Better Bagels, but in her customers’ comments she could see the possibility of something like that happening once the word got out about Tom, especially if she made him a manager. Carla was running a business, and even if her customers’ fears might be irrational or exaggerated, she couldn’t force them to visit her shops or eat her bagels.

Carla knew it was illegal to fire Tom for having AIDS, and in any case that’s not the kind of person she was. But she couldn’t afford to skirt the whole problem, she realized, as some large companies do, by simply sending the employee home at full pay. Doing that deprives the employee of meaningful work, to be sure, but it removes any difficulties in the workplace, and the employee has no legal grounds for complaint if he or she is left on the payroll. And then, of course, there was always the question of Tom’s future work performance. Putting the question of promotion aside, if he really was ill, as Frances had said, his work performance would probably decline, she thought. Shouldn’t she begin developing some plan for dealing with that?

Update

Frances was misinformed. Tom didn’t have AIDS. He had developed multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. It’s not fatal, but the course of the disease is unpredictable. Attacks can occur at any time and then fade away. A person can feel fine one day, only to have an attack the next day that causes blurred vision, slurred speech, numbness, or even blindness and paralysis. Tom was never worried about losing his job, and he was pretty sure he could continue to per- form well at it, maybe even move higher in the business either with Carla or with another employer. But he kept his condition to himself, hiding his symptoms and covering up occasional absences and trips to the doctor, because he was worried that customers and colleagues would perceive him differently. He didn’t want looks of pity if he stumbled or constant questions about how he was feeling.

Kant’s ethics

Most of us find the ideal of promoting human happiness and well-being an attractive one and, as a result, admire greatly people like Mother Teresa (1910–1997), who devoted her life to working with the poor. Despite the attractiveness of this ideal, many moral philosophers are critical of utilitarianism—particularly because, like egoism, it reduces all morality to a concern with consequences. Although nonconsequentialist normative theories vary significantly, adopting different approaches and stressing different themes, the writings of the preeminent German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) provide an excellent example of a thoroughly nonconsequentialist approach to ethics. perhaps few thinkers today would endorse Kant’s theory on every point, but his work has greatly influenced subsequent philosophers and has helped shape our general moral culture.

Kant sought moral principles that do not rest on contingencies and that define actions as inherently right or wrong apart from any particular circumstances. he believed that moral rules can, in principle, be known as a result of reason alone and are not based on observation (as are, for example, scientific judgments). In contrast to utilitarianism and other consequentialist doctrines, Kant’s ethical theory holds that we do not have to know anything about the likely results of, say, my telling a lie to my boss in order to know that it is immoral. “the basis of obligation,” Kant wrote, “must not be sought in human nature, [nor] in the circumstances of the world.” rather it is a priori, by which he meant that moral reasoning is not based on factual knowledge and that reason by itself can reveal the basic principles of morality.

good will

chapter 1 mentioned Good Samaritan laws, which shield from lawsuits those rendering emergency aid. Such laws, in effect, give legal protection to the humanitarian impulse behind emergency interventions. they formally recognize that the interventionist’s heart was in the right place—that the person’s intention was irreproachable. and because the person acted from right intention, he or she should not be held liable for any inadvertent harm except in cases of extreme negligence. the widely observable human tendency to introduce a person’s intentions in assigning blame or praise is a good springboard for engaging Kant’s ethics.

nothing, said Kant, is good in itself except good will. this does not mean that intel- ligence, courage, self-control, health, happiness, and other things are not good and desir- able. But Kant believed that their goodness depends on the will that makes use of them. Intelligence, for instance, is not good when exercised by an evil person.

By will Kant meant the uniquely human capacity to act from principle. contained in the notion of good will is the concept of duty: only when we act from a sense of duty does our action have moral worth. when we act only out of feeling, inclination, or self- interest, our actions—although they may be otherwise identical with ones that spring from the sense of duty—have no true moral worth.

Suppose that you’re the owner of a small convenience store. Late one night a cus- tomer pays for his five-dollar purchase with a twenty-dollar bill, which you mistake for a ten. only after the customer leaves do you realize you short-changed him. You race out the front door and find him lingering by a vending machine. You give him the ten dollars with your apologies, and he thanks you warmly.

can we say that you acted from good will? not necessarily. You may have acted from a desire to promote future business or to cultivate a reputation for honesty. If so, you would have acted in accordance with, but not from, duty. Your apparently virtuous ges- ture just happened to coincide with what duty requires. according to Kant, if you do not will the action from a sense of your duty to be fair and honest, your action lacks moral worth. actions have true moral worth only when they spring from a recognition of duty and a choice to discharge it.

what determines our duty? how do we know what morality requires of us? Kant answered these questions by formulating what he called the “categorical imperative.” this extraordinarily significant moral concept is the linchpin of Kant’s ethics.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the moral doctrine that we should always act to produce the great- est possible balance of good over bad for everyone affected by our actions. By “good,” utilitarians understand happiness or pleasure. thus, the greatest happiness of all con- stitutes the standard that determines whether an action is right or wrong. although the basic theme of utilitarianism is present in the writings of many earlier thinkers, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) were the first to develop the theory explicitly and in detail. Both Bentham and Mill were philosophers with a strong interest in legal and social reform. they used the utilitarian standard to evaluate and criticize the social and political institutions of their day—for example, the prison system and the disenfranchisement of women. as a result, utilitarianism has long been associated with social improvement.

Bentham viewed a community as no more than the individual persons that it com- prises. the interests of the community are simply the sum of the interests of its members. an action promotes the interests of an individual when it adds to the individual’s plea- sure or diminishes the person’s pain. correspondingly, an action augments the happiness of a community only insofar as it increases the total amount of individual happiness. this is what Bentham had in mind when he argued for the utilitarian principle that actions are right if they promote the greatest human welfare, wrong if they do not.

For Bentham, pleasure and pain are merely types of sensations. he offered a “hedonic calculus” of six criteria for evaluating pleasure and pain exclusively by their quantitative differences—in particular, by their intensity and duration. this calculus, he believed, makes possible an objective determination of the morality of anyone’s conduct, individual or collective, on any occasion.

Bentham rejected any distinctions based on the type of pleasure except insofar as they might indicate differences in quantity. thus, if equal amounts of pleasure are involved, throwing darts is as good as writing poetry and baking a cake as good as com- posing a symphony; watching Shakespeare’s Hamlet has no more value than watching Jersey Shore. although he himself was an intelligent, cultivated man, Bentham main- tained that there is nothing intrinsically better about refined and intellectual pleasures than about crude or prosaic ones. the only issue is which yields the greater amount of enjoyment.

John Stuart Mill thought Bentham’s concept of pleasure was too simple. he viewed human beings as having elevated faculties that allow them to pursue various higher kinds of pleasure. the pleasures of the intellect and imagination, in particular, have a higher value than those of mere physical sensation. thus, for Mill the utility principle must take into consideration the relative quality of different pleasures and pains, not just their intensity and duration.

although Bentham and Mill had different conceptions of pleasure, both men equated pleasure and happiness and considered pleasure the ultimate value. In this sense they are hedonists: pleasure, in their view, is the one thing that is intrinsically good or worthwhile. anything that is good is good only because it brings about plea- sure (or happiness), directly or indirectly. take education, for example. the learning process itself might be pleasurable to us; reflecting on or working with what we have learned might bring us satisfaction at some later time; or by making possible a career and life that we could not have had otherwise, education might bring us happiness indirectly. In contrast, critics of Bentham and Mill contend that things other than happiness are also inherently good—for example, knowledge, friendship, and aesthetic satisfaction. the implication is that these things are valuable even if they do not lead to happiness.

Bentham and Mill cared about happiness because they implicitly identified it with well-being, that is, with what is good for people. In their view, our lives go well—we have well-being—just to the extent that our lives are pleasurable or happy. Some moral theorists have modified utilitarianism so that it aims at other consequences in addition to happiness. and some utilitarians, wary of trying to compare one person’s happiness with another’s, have interpreted their theory as requiring us not to maximize happiness but rather to maximize the satisfaction of people’s desires or preferences. the focus here will be utilitarianism in its standard form, in which the good to be aimed at is human happi- ness or well-being, but what will be said about standard or classical utilitarianism applies, with the appropriate modifications, to other versions as well.

although this chapter will later consider another form of utilitarianism, known as “rule utilitarianism,” utilitarianism in its most basic version, often called act utilitarianism, states that we must ask ourselves what the consequences of a particular act in a particular situation will be for all those affected. If its consequences bring more net good than those of any alternative course of action, then this action is the right one and the one we should perform.

Explanation / Answer

1.
This case represents different moral issues to Carla. First is the dilemma between potential loss of business due to exaggerated views of customers and protection of the rights of Tom as an employee even if it is said that he is suffering from AIDS. Here, Carla thinks herself an employee and put herself in place of Tom and thinks. Also, she fears about the loss of business and consumers don’t know much about AIDS and its contagious behavior. The second moral issue is the question of how to communicate with Tom regarding his supposed disease. Third, even if, Tom is removed from the duties, then, does Carla should put him on payroll to prevent any litigation or let him fight his case against the company.
Further, Carla is also in dilemma to follow Kant’s view or Utilitarian views while performing a moral conduct in case of Tom.

2.
Carla should consider the following aspects before she takes any final decision regarding Tom.
a.   Carla should ask Tom regarding the reason for his deteriorating health. Tom should also be sent for the complete diagnosis.
b.   On the basis of diagnosis, Carla should take the views of independent as well as in-house experts regarding the disease, its impact on work performance of Tom and fatal nature.
c.   Accordingly, Carla should include her viewpoints also and discuss it with management.
d.   Finally, Carla should take the decision that will be in the best interest of all the parties involved.
As the updates suggest, Tom does not suffer from AIDS and it can be proved by diagnosis and results. Thus, in this scenario, Tom should not be removed from the job and he can be sent on leave to recover from the disease and come back to work. It neither violates any laws nor does Tom feel to be hurt.

3.
It is the civil rights as prescribed in title VII in Civil rights act, are at stake as far as Tom’s rights are concerned. Employers cannot make discrimination on the basis of health also as long as the employee is performing his duties as per the benchmark.

4.
Yes, it will make a difference. If Carla adopts Kant’ view, then Carla will do what is morally best irrespective of the consequences as part of her own sense of duty and responsibilities. Here, Carla will retain Tom as long as he can discharge his responsibilities.
If Carla adopts the utilitarian’s view, then she will focus upon the good of the majority and she will go with exaggerated views of consumers. In this case, she can remove Tom to protect the mass consumers.

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