Chapter 1-2, Dombrowski

The introduction to ethics in this book first highlights why ethics are important in business and technical writing. I appreciated that the general idea was that ethics have always been present in some regard, but recent times and expanding communications have made the study of ethics even more necessary. Although industries like law, politics, and medicine are highly specialized, the public is no longer ok with only knowing bits and pieces of the big picture. Ethical issues in technical communication manifest in everything from the Chernobyl disaster to issues of privacy and NASA research to politics. Perhaps one of the most well-known issues in recent years is President Obama’s presidency and his goal to make government more transparent. The study of ethics is important also because it is not always easy to determine what is right in any given situation. Ethics is a philosophical idea but most definitely has a practical application, and often times “what is right” is lost in the transition. Because it is not a cut-and-dried practice like science, a student needs to understand what others have thought and studied before him or her to make thoughtful decisions.

I liked that Dombrowski used a set of guidelines for the study of ethics in this book. However, I’m not completely comfortable with the word “Assumptions” to describe what his guiding posts were. Of the six, I thought the ideas that ethics is an application of personal values and that flexibility is key were very interesting.

For the purpose of this class and the book, the word rhetoric is not meant to have a bad connotation. Dombrowski’s definition was useful: “Rhetoric means the use of reasoned arguments based on socially accepted values and presented to inform in order to accomplish some socially desireable action such as policy decision” (13). The definition has ties to the classical studies of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, which is the focus of chapter 2. Since Plato was a reverent student of Socrates, their views on ethics align in many ways. A line of similarity runs through their schools of thought in the pursuit of truth and importance of honesty. Dombrowski reminds us here that it is important to recognize the limitations of history on ethics, which I took to mean that we should consider the political, religious, and social constraints of ancient Greece and Rome.

Socrates is given importance for his beliefs, three important tenets that hold his theory together:
1. He insisted on doing the right thing regardless of the consequences
2. Ethics is a matter of pleasing god
3. Ethical behavior requires active social involvement.

I am fairly positive that these three things could be applied to a lot of ethical situations today with positive results. Dombrowski also talks about the Sophists, a group that I think had very radical thoughts even compared to Plato and Socrates. The Sophists believed that there were no absolutes precisely because communication has the power to change minds/hearts, values, and decisions. Although it was not an organized movement, the thought prescribed to them is that values depend on circumstances. I’m not sure how I feel about this and I look forward to discussing more in class.

19th century
Hegel
Perelman
Burke
Weaver