Assignment: Ethical Argument Case

Assignment: Ethical Argument Case
Assignment: Ethical Argument Case
Assignment: Ethical Argument Case
Week 3 Contemporary Issue Position Essay Choose a case from the AMA Journal of Ethics Case Index and take a position. For this assignment you will evaluate the ethical arguments for or against the issue. Identify the potential legal arguments (consider current federal guidelines), indicate any potential professional code conflicts you foresee, and support your position with an explanation of your own ethical/moral foundation. In your 2-3 page paper: Identify the issue and state your ethical position. How might this scenario play out or impact you in your role as a nurse practitioner? Defend your position with legal, ethical, and professional evidence. As part of your position, propose strategies and solutions for addressing the issues. What other ethical issues does this case bring to light, if any? Support your position with at least one scholarly source (it may be your text). Be sure to cite the article you choose, use APA format, and include a title page and reference page. Review the rubric for further information on how your assignment will be graded.
What is an Ethical Argument?
Generally, an ethical argument tries to show that certain actions or policies are either ethical or unethical. In other words, an ethical argument tries to show that a specific thing is either morally right or wrong.
2. Defining the Word “Ethical”
The most important thing to do when writing an ethical argument is to define the word “ethical”. This is easier said than done. The reason for this is that people often have different ideas of what the word means. By the previous statement, I do not mean simply that people disagree over which actions are ethical actions, but that people also disagree over what it even means to say that something is ethical.
For this reason, it is very important that you clearly define what you mean by the word “ethical”. When choosing a definition, keep in mind that there are several kinds of ethical arguments and that the way you argue for your particular claim depends in large part on how you define your terms.
While there may be several nuanced definitions of the word “ethical”, there are three major ways that ethical philosophers have defined it:
A. Mind-Independent/Objective Obligations
Several philosophers, when they say that a certain action is ethical, mean that there is a mind-independent reason for any person to do that action. Likewise, to say that a certain action is unethical would be equivalent to saying that there is a mind-independent reason for any person to refrain from doing that action.
A mind-independent reason is some kind of reason that exists independently of human thought. For example, if action X is unethical in the mind-independent sense, then that action would be ethically wrong regardless of what anyone thought about it. That is, there is a fact of the matter.
Mind-independent obligations are often referred to as objective obligations.
B. Requirement of reason.
Many ethical philosophers have conceived of the ethical not as some kind of mind-independent entity, but as things we are obligated to do in order to be rational. By this definition, saying that an action is ethical means that we have a reason to do that action simply because we are rational human beings.
C. Obligations Arising From Sentiments.
Ethical philosophers have often defined the word ethical as a word used to describe an action that we have a reason to do because we care about and sympathize with other people. He or she would start with the premise that, for whatever reason, as humans we tend to value the lives and happiness of other humans. From there, he or she would argue that we have reason to perform a certain action because it promotes human happiness, or that we should not perform a certain action because it impedes happiness or promotes suffering.