Notes (1-38) -Ethics in Technical Communication

Ethics in Technical Communication:

Chapter 1 Nature of Ethics:

Introduction
-Some ethical concerns with information technology include privacy, ownership of information, copyright, access, freedom of speech, and personal security.
-Historically technical communication has been viewed solely as a means of relaying information to the recipient. However, technical communication is much more complex and it gives shape to the information that is being relayed.
-Purpose of the book is to help us understand our responsibilities regarding the use of technology for our communication.

Why Study Ethics?
-Ethical decisions are a part of everyday life, and you should be well versed in ethics to make sound ethical decisions.
-Spontaneous, unconsidered impulse is not ethically adequate.
-Help us to understand what we value and why.

What is Ethics?
-How do we know what is right?
-Really no concrete, absolute conclusions.
-We are own ethical expert and authority. However, paradoxically we must weigh our options based on a principle of responsibility that connect us all as human beings.

Our Expectations
-Ethics is problematic.
-Along with personal responsibility we must add the social circumstances as an essential component of ethical deliberations.
-No clear, distinct system for coming up with ethical decisions (not like Newtonian Mechanics).

Assumptions
-Ethics refers to general field of study as well as theories of historical figures. It also refers to value systems of an individual.
-Values underlie all communication.
-Ethics is about problems whose solutions are unclear at first; no easy answers.
-Ethics is both individual and social. Sometimes it means the assertion of individual responsibility over social pressure.
-Ethics is not absolute or relative. (Some choices are better in some cases and more right than other choices, but not absolute.)
-Learn from others ethical theories in order to formulate your own.
-No single theory will always be best for all situations; it depends on the circumstances.

Perspectives
-Can examine all perspectives but some include Aristotle, Kant, etc. Show how we apply ancient theories to modern times.
-Perspectives center on European-American traditions.

Scope
-Focus on how ethics relates to technical communication in ways that are unapparent but no less powerful.

Organization
-Outline ethics and then go into history of ethics followed by applying ethical theories to real cases of major ethical dilemmas in recent times.

Terminology
-Values are the intentions that guide an action.
-Ethics deals with values but involves a sense of careful responsibility.
-Ethics usually involves values, but values don’t always include ethics.
-Absolute is definite and unchanging.
-Relative is changing in relation to circumstances (don’t carry relative to extreme).

Chapter 2 Survey of Ethics in Communication and Rhetoric

Introduction
-Rhetoric is the use of reasoned arguments based on socially accepted values and presented to inform and persuade in order to accomplish some socially desirable action.
-Persuasion is the willing, informed collective agreement of a critically thinking audience.

Limitations of History
-Historical views are relevant only in broad terms.
-No universal solutions; cannot adopt past decisions to present cases.
-Shows us how others have dealt with issue, and we can learn from history and apply knowledge to modern day.

Ethics and Rhetoric Linked
-Ethics is related to technical communication, and communication entails rhetoric.
-Technical communication is rhetorical and always has to do with ethics and values.
-Rhetoric is all manners of persuasion, argumentations, and negotiation in communication regardless of the format.

Classical Greece
-Plato puts ethics before any communication.
-Aristotle communication between competing sides in a controversy reveals the proper values and right course of action.
-Sophists viewed communication as altering non absolute ethical values.

Plato and Socrates
-Plato viewed ethics as means of determining right conduct; it was theologically based.
-Plato thought humans should follow soul, and please god which will please themselves.
-According to Plate ethics is unchangeable and absolute.
-Socrates was Plato’s teacher, and he believed that everyone should critically examine one’s life.
-Socrates viewed ethics as never-ending, and we are socially responsible to others and to god.
-Socrates insisted on doing the right thing regardless of the consequences, following his conscience (absolute because driven by god), and requiring that ethical behavior be connected with social involvement.
-Socrates thought that ethical involvement required Communication because we relate to god through others.
-Plato differed from Socrates in that he viewed communication as a one way process from enlightened to those in need of enlightenment.
-Plato insisted on ethical goodness of communicator, meaning the communicator fully understands and is knowledgeable.
-Socrates, Plato, and Kant believed in the loving relationship between communicator and audience.
-Plato and Socrates emphasized communication as situation specific.

Aristotle
-Right course of action cannot be known clearly.
-He described rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (19).
-Determine ethical course through debate.
-Ethics is virtue according to him.

The Sophists
-Loose category of freethinkers and teachers.
-Plato was a critic.
-Believed there are no absolutes, and that communication is powerful because it shapes minds, hearts, values, and decisions.
-Language does not refer to anything that exists before and separate from our language use. (Language is everything, shapes the way we think and act.)
-Values are relative because depend on culture/circumstance.
-Social Constructionism is the point of view that all knowledge is only a construct derived from its social context (21).
-Protagoras and Gorgias rejected Plato.
-Sophists brought debate to society.
-Gorgias persuaded through communication (Helen of Troy).
-Sophists had the ability to make the greater point seem the lesser, and made repeated claims appear as accepted truths.
-For Plato ethics comes first, but for sophists rhetoric comes first (because allows persuasion that defines values).

Recent Times
-In past ethics was Plato and Aristotle, and it was a religious matter.
-Ability to reason came to forefront and undermined authority figures (rational inquiry also came to forefront).

Hegel
-Values are arrived at socially.
-Communication is key; supporter of sophists.

Perelamn
-Nothing absolute lies behind or beyond rhetorical language.
-Our language is our values.

Burke
-Modern social constructionist.
-Language is a symbol system.
-Words refer to words.

Weaver
-Values come before discourse.
-All language expresses some values.

Rhetoric, Knowledge, and Values
-Rhetoric deals with values (structure of DNA).
-Gates used rhetoric to explain discourse among African-Americans (highly dependent on social circumstance). Therefore, rhetoric depends on cultural context.
-Michael Foucault claims that language speaks through us, and the same time we use language to justify actions and get things accomplished.
-Foucault claims that power, language use, and knowledge are interconnected (law).
-Keller claims that science has pervaded thoughts (gender vs. sex).
-Habermas concern with rise of science and technology because it sheds away from discussion/discourse.
-Ethics is inseparably connected with communication and rhetoric.