|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Professional obligation Vs Beliefs
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
No-one has a 'right' to do the job of their choosing. You get paid to do a job. And while you should have plenty of freedom to choose which job you want to do out of the ones the market offers, you don't then get the further right to tailor the job to yourself.
I am not sure that maternity rights could be justified under that principle. Nor rights for people with disabilities.
I've never heard of a case of an individual being able to negotiate maternity leave (if that's what you're referring to) into an employment contract that didn't have it already. But that's probably because in this country maternity leave is a given.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
LucyP
Shipmate
# 10476
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by LucyP:
Even when something conforms to the law, that doesn't make it right. Torture is legal in many countries, and doctors may be coerced into assessing victims of torture to state whether they are fit for more interrogation. Saying that “doctors must subject their consciences to the law in all circumstances” (as ISTM the academic ethicist Julian Savulescu and his colleagues advocate) ignores the fact that law makers are fallible.
No. Bad analysis. You've just leapt from a law that torture is legal to a law that coercing a doctor to say that a torture victim is okay is also legal.
I doubt such a law exists. Why bother having a law requiring a doctor's opinion if it's legal to ignore the doctor's actual opinion?
I didn't say there was a law to coerce the doctor. Savulescu et al propose a moral (or work-ethical) obligation for the doctor to subject his or her conscience to the law while at work. On the whole, this should be what most upstanding citizens do most of the time, and as a general principle it is helpful. However, if it becomes a new moral absolute it is inadequate to deal with a (work or legal) culture that has gone terribly wrong, for reasons of financial or other gain.
To return to the torture example, in a regime allowing torture, a doctor might be told it was expected as part of their job description as a local medical officer,(which may in turn be a compulsory postgraduate requirement prior to achieving full registration), police medical officer or army medic. If the torture is legal, the doctor has a moral decision to make about whether they "just do their job that they are being paid for", resign and emigrate (if that is even an option), or whistleblow at the risk of their own life and that of their family.
The reason for involving the doctor is not to make the torture process legal, but to ensure the prisoner does not die before maximum information has been obtained. The doctor is being asked for an opinion on whether the patient is close to death, not whether the torturers are doing a morally-right act.
A relatively recent regime in which this was an issue was South Africa. Current regimes may include the Middle East, where amputation can be prescribed as a legal punishment for certain crimes.
Posts: 235 | From: my sanctuary | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
Yes. And if the doctor takes on the job of assessing how someone is doing, it is part of their job to say when the torture has to stop.
That's the LAW part.
But then you keep throwing in the WORK CULTURE part. If the culture is either to pressure the doctor to say the torture can keep going, or to ignore the doctor when the doctor says the torture has to stop, that is not the law. The doctor has every right, even under the notions of 'just do your job', to insist on his independent assessment and that the assessment is listened to.
The principle of making your conscience subservient to the law has precisely nothing, in my view, to do with making your conscience subservient to a work culture.
The fact that you bring up whistleblowing as an option just shows you're confusing the two things. If the law allows torture, and torture is going on in accordance with the law, what is there to whistleblow? Nothing. There's only something to whistleblow if the law expects an independent medical assessment and torture is going on without the independent medical assessment.
(I'm sure I've had this exact same conversation on the Ship around 3 years ago.)
[ 10. October 2013, 22:56: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
If you want a concrete, explicit example, try capital punishment in the USA. You can't 'whistleblow' it. It's on the books. Everybody knows about it. I find it morally abhorrent myself, but if I choose to take on a job that involves me in the execution process I can't then take some kind of moral stand on principle against the entire process.
You can, by contrast, whistleblow a particular aspect of the way in which the death penalty is being carried out that is not authorised by the capital punishment laws.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
LucyP
Shipmate
# 10476
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
No, I am not saying 'just do your job'. I am saying you have a choice. EITHER get paid for doing a job, or don't do the job.
What I have little time for is someone who decides they're NOT going to do the job, but still expects their employer to provide them with financial support.
As for being required to do something that is illegal, well that's obvious. Refuse. Otherwise you yourself are committing a crime. Well, actually, I suppose you CAN agree to do it but then you have to face the consequences of your choice. Exactly the same as you have to face the consequences of your choice if you refuse: there's a 'negative' consequence of not getting paid by the criminal who tried to get you to be a criminal.
But if something is legal, but you don't want to do it... okay fine, follow your moral conscience. But it's a mystery to me why anyone thinks they are still entitled to be paid at the same time.
Again, I don't think it's that simple in the real world. Most people who baulk at an issue in their work are not expecting to do no work at all, but do their job in accordance with standards which they believe are morally right, which are compatible with 99.9% of their job requirements, and which may in fact be legally correct -but that also may depend on the skills of the lawyer and the mood of the judge, should the issue ever make it to courts. And many of these issues, in isolation, do not seem important enough to legally challenge, especially for workers who are not legally trained.
To go back to the accountant example from Dan Ariely's book, an accountant is instructed to rewrite a report that she has already written. Many junior accountants I know take work home with them and do it in their own time, and are not paid overtime. If the accountant recognises that she has not done a good job of the report for a valid reason, she will rewrite the report as instructed. The moral issue comes up when she is asked to write it in a way that she believes deliberately misleads shareholders, so that other people can gain financially from her deception.
Many people have a morality which says "I have an obligation to do my job well, and that includes doing what the boss says." Most of the time this works. When it doesn't, the issues need to be looked at more carefully, not by repeating "You're paid to do your job, so just follow this instruction to the letter, or leave."
Now I can't resist a tangent from William Goldman:
quote:
Fezzik: I just don't think it's right, killing an innocent girl.
Vizzini: Am I going MAD, or did the word "think" escape your lips? You were not hired for your brains, you hippopotamic land mass
Posts: 235 | From: my sanctuary | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If you want a concrete, explicit example, try capital punishment in the USA...I find it morally abhorrent myself, but if I choose to take on a job that involves me in the execution process I can't then take some kind of moral stand on principle against the entire process.
Trouble is, jobs and even careers change as businesses or society changes. You take a job focused on chemical safety and the bosses decide to expand into a related field - using chemicals to kill sick or injured animals "humanely," then expands to human executions. That isn't the job you choose, it's the one you are newly finding yourself in.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
LucyP
Shipmate
# 10476
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Yes. And if the doctor takes on the job of assessing how someone is doing, it is part of their job to say when the torture has to stop.
That's the LAW part.
But then you keep throwing in the WORK CULTURE part. If the culture is either to pressure the doctor to say the torture can keep going, or to ignore the doctor when the doctor says the torture has to stop, that is not the law. The doctor has every right, even under the notions of 'just do your job', to insist on his independent assessment and that the assessment is listened to.
The principle of making your conscience subservient to the law has precisely nothing, in my view, to do with making your conscience subservient to a work culture.
The OP title refers to professional obligations. These obligations encompass both legal requirements, and the need to conform to work culture to achieve the company's aims. I thought we were discussing both, though specific examples may refer to one or the other.
quote:
The fact that you bring up whistleblowing as an option just shows you're confusing the two things. If the law allows torture, and torture is going on in accordance with the law, what is there to whistleblow? Nothing. There's only something to whistleblow if the law expects an independent medical assessment and torture is going on without the independent medical assessment.
I can think of 3 possible reasons to whistleblow.
(1) In a democracy with detailed laws - the whistleblower considers that the law needs to be changed, as most people would be horrified if they knew what it entailed.
(2) In a democracy with vague laws - the whistleblower considers that the law needs to be defined to exclude specific tortures, as most people would be horrified if they knew how the police/military are exploiting loopholes
(3) In any country - if the laws of the current regime are grossly out of step with international standards, and the whistleblower wants international pressure (eg through Amnesty) applied to the regime.
Posts: 235 | From: my sanctuary | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LucyP:
(1) In a democracy with detailed laws - the whistleblower considers that the law needs to be changed, as most people would be horrified if they knew what it entailed.
No. Suggesting that people actually read the laws that their elected representatives are passing is not 'whistleblowing'.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If you want a concrete, explicit example, try capital punishment in the USA...I find it morally abhorrent myself, but if I choose to take on a job that involves me in the execution process I can't then take some kind of moral stand on principle against the entire process.
Trouble is, jobs and even careers change as businesses or society changes. You take a job focused on chemical safety and the bosses decide to expand into a related field - using chemicals to kill sick or injured animals "humanely," then expands to human executions. That isn't the job you choose, it's the one you are newly finding yourself in.
Yes. But again, employment is not some kind of continuing right in the sense that the employer is not obliged, having hired you for a given job, to make a promise that the same job will remain available for the rest of your working life.
There are often are rules about notifying you of significant changes to the role, but that's about as far as it goes.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LucyP:
(1) In a democracy with detailed laws - the whistleblower considers that the law needs to be changed, as most people would be horrified if they knew what it entailed.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
No. Suggesting that people actually read the laws that their elected representatives are passing is not 'whistleblowing'.
Is this an argument about semantics? I think it is true that such activity wouldn't be protected under statutes designed to protect whistleblowers, but it seems to me to come into the category of something that might be a genuine moral issue.
To take the capital punishment argument, I could imagine an instance where a doctor works as a psychiatrist, usually has nothing to do with capital punishment, but then is asked to write a report on a convict which will contribute to the legal process leading towards execution. The doctor does not believe it is write to cooperate. This might be quite unforeseen and occur once in a career. Should the doctor resign as a result of this? Or be berated for not anticipating this and go through with it?
--------------------
mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
I think it's partly semantics but partly substance. The point is that the laws of the land are a matter of public record. Whistle blowing has to do with revealing secret practices. You simply can't blow the whistle on a law that everybody could know about of they chose to pay attention to publicly available information. You CAN blow the whistle on the particular ways that a law is being applied.
But similarly, I think that the range of responses that are appropriate to back room practices or work culture are completely different to the range of responses that are appropriate to laws and policies that are a matter of public record.
And I also think its fundamentally misconceived to throw examples of individual cases and examples of continuing practices into the pot as if they're all the same thing. They are not.
[ 11. October 2013, 06:34: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spiffy:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl Kroenen:
1. A Christian fireman who believes that homosexuality is a sin is ordered to staff a stand at a gay pride event.
Do you mean like an information stand? Because in the US they'd ask for volunteers, usually first from the LGBTQ Firefighters of [City] group.
If you meant like a safety stand, suck it up buttercup, I'm sure a LGBTQ fire fighter's had to work the safety stand at the KKK Rally and Bonfire Night. You are a public servant even if you don't like those kind of public, it's their taxes what are paying your salary.
I agree.. suck it up..
Tangentially there are worse problems. I had a friend who ran a gay bookstore in Boston that was burnt down. They caught and convicted the arsonists who turned out to be firemen who were unhappy that the arson investigation squad budget had gotten cut so they decided to prove it was needed.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl Kroenen:
1. A Christian fireman who believes that homosexuality is a sin is ordered to staff a stand at a gay pride event.
Your job is to prevent everybody from burning - not just people who you approve of. You will also be expected to rescue adulterers, murderers and blasphemers from burning buildings, advise them to have a home emergency plan and so on.
Is the stand trying to recruit new firefighters, and presenting the fire brigade as a gay-friendly employer? Again, this is your job, just as you will be expected to work alongside a gay colleague without subjecting him to harassment.
Are you expected to march, wave flags, or take actions that would imply your personal endorsement of homosexuality rather than your employer's corporate support? You should be able to opt out, and assuming you hold the "gay sex is sinful" point of view, you should opt out.
There are certainly combinations of jobs and religious opinion that are just not compatible. Suppose you are a Muslim who refuses to handle pork products on religious grounds. You are not suitable for a job in the (pork-selling) butcher's shop or as short-order cook in a diner. It is not reasonable for you to expect to call someone else over to fry some bacon or sell some pork chops.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
| IP: Logged
|
|
la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
|
Posted
I think there's a sliding scale of things that you personally disagree with but can reasonably be asked to up to things that so gravely violate your conscience that it's an infringement of your rights to be forced to engage in them. In the first category, for example, I would place preparing and serving food that you personally wouldn't eat. For example, if a vegetarian waiter doesn't feel able to serve meat to customers, I think they should leave the job and find another one. It's not up the employer to accommodate them IMO.
I would abortion at the other end of the scale (I'm talking about performing an abortion, not just referring a patient for one that's going to be carried out by someone else). For a person who believes abortion to be wrong, to be involved in performing one is a very, very grave violation of their conscience. This actually happened to a friend of mine who used to work as an operating theatre nurse. She had told her employer when she was hired that she did not wish to be involved in performing abortions and they had agreed with her that this was ok. One night she was on call and was asked to come into the hospital for what she understood was a miscarriage. When she got there, she discovered that it was in fact an abortion. She refused to do it and told them they would have to find another nurse, which they eventually did, but they weren't happy about it. She found the whole episode very upsetting. FWIW I think she was absolutely right to stick to her guns. (I'm not 100% sure what the law is in France, but I'm fairly confident that if they had tried to discipline her for refusing to take part in the procedure, she could have sued them, especially since the policy "K does not participate in abortions" had been agreed with the management and spelled out in advance.)
I suppose you could argue that my friend shouldn't have entered the job if she couldn't fulfil all its requirements, including performing abortions, but then society would lose out on the contribution of a person who is an excellent nurse for all procedures except abortions. For this sort of question, I'm not sure it's that clear cut.
For me the most important question is not actually the rights and wrongs of abortion per se. It is the seriousness of the violation of the person's conscience. Which I guess is heading me towards the messy question of how you assess how serious different conscience questions are… ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
--------------------
Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I think there's a sliding scale of things that you personally disagree with but can reasonably be asked to up to things that so gravely violate your conscience that it's an infringement of your rights to be forced to engage in them.
Agree.
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I suppose you could argue that my friend shouldn't have entered the job if she couldn't fulfil all its requirements, including performing abortions, but then society would lose out on the contribution of a person who is an excellent nurse for all procedures except abortions.
You could, but since she was up front about it before being appointed and the deal was accepted I don't think you can blame her.
It wouldn't be fine to accept a job then add following completion of the paperwork that you won't be working Friday afternoons, serving customers in the bar or making up beds for unmarried couples.
On the other hand if the interview panel is daft enough to accept your application is hotelier despite these limitations on your input then that is fair enough. (Totally daft, granted, but legitimately daft.)
--------------------
mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I am not sure that maternity rights could be justified under that principle. Nor rights for people with disabilities.
I've never heard of a case of an individual being able to negotiate maternity leave (if that's what you're referring to) into an employment contract that didn't have it already. But that's probably because in this country maternity leave is a given.
Disability rights might be a closer example then, since disabilities differ more between individual and individual.
Many jobs don't come with a precisely specified set of duties. Maybe working on a production line: you come on, you do mind-numbing repetitive work for x number of hours, you leave. But in many jobs the employer will not have some precisely specified set of duties, and the contract will have some suitably vague wording at appropriate points.
This means that negotiating where the boundary falls between reasonable behaviour on the part of the employer and the employee's rights to be free of discrimination or so on is often going to happen on a case by case basis. There are general laws against discrimination on the grounds of race, or sex, or sexual orientation, or religion, etc: but you can't specify all the forms discrimination might take in advance.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
Dafyd: I'd say that still works with Orfeo's principle, if one makes an exception for things that society agrees on. Maternity, disability etc are different because almost all of us agree we want to live in a society where mothers can be with their children, where people with disabilities are part of society, etc. We are not all concerned with living in a society where my particular moral objection to Xing is supported. In fact, some people strongly want to X.
That's rather saying that people who hold views the majority approve of get accommodated. Minorities have to adapt themselves. Perhaps something of the sort is inevitable in some cases where there's no good solution. But that's not the liberal ideal.
The liberal justification for maternity rights is that not granting maternity rights is unfair discrimination against people who want to have children.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The liberal justification for maternity rights is that not granting maternity rights is unfair discrimination against people who want to have children.
But the only way we can enact that ideal is if a majority think it is a good idea. It doesn't need the majority to actually want to have children, but it does need the majority to think it would be unfair to discriminate or it is unlikely to get on the statute books.
--------------------
mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There are general laws against discrimination on the grounds of race, or sex, or sexual orientation, or religion, etc: but you can't specify all the forms discrimination might take in advance.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand where you're trying to go with this. Why are we talking about discrimination?
We started talking about the professional obligations of employees and how they might conflict with morals or beliefs. I can't think of any job where one of the things you have a professional obligation to do is to accept being treated in a discriminatory manner. I can't think of any job where the FUNCTIONS of the job have anything to do with a notion that your employer will treat you differently from other employees with the same function by reason of your race, sex, religion or disability.
[ 11. October 2013, 14:09: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I'm sorry, but I don't understand where you're trying to go with this. Why are we talking about discrimination?
We started talking about the professional obligations of employees and how they might conflict with morals or beliefs.
Because "morals or beliefs" seem to be consistently cited as justifications for discrimination. In other words, that someone's professional obligations not to discriminate conflict with a moral code that says you have to discriminate.
--------------------
Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
|
Posted
Discrimination is a portmanteau word without the attachment of the words unfair or prejudiced. The law sets boundaries re unfairness or prejudice and rightly so. And in the process does something to constrain preferences and choices.
ISTM that we resolve the relationship between professional obligations and beliefs by 'hearing' what each has to say to us and whether they are in conflict.
If they are in conflict for us, we face a further choice.
We may choose what the law or professional code of practice has to say and follow that pro tem, using our membership of a professional body to debate the rights and wrongs of the rules in place. In short we obey and argue.
We may also choose what our beliefs say, act accordingly and take the consequences under law or professional membership. This is simply a different kind of obedience. It may turn us into lawbreakers or outcasts from our profession, but the exercise of conscience can be like that. Best done with our eyes fully open, however.
But we cannot have our cake and eat it, whichever way we go. Personally, when faced with such situations, I have nearly always taken the 'follow the law and argue' line. It's an example of the famous line from 'A Man for All Seasons'. This one.
"A man must serve the Lord wittily, in the tangle of his mind".
There may be limits to that witty following, and those limits may lead you to a gibbet or a cross, but that is the price we may pay for exercise of conscience. As Sir Humphrey observed to Bernard once about conscience. "Conscience? When did you develop this taste for luxury?"
--------------------
Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There are general laws against discrimination on the grounds of race, or sex, or sexual orientation, or religion, etc: but you can't specify all the forms discrimination might take in advance.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand where you're trying to go with this. Why are we talking about discrimination?
We started talking about the professional obligations of employees and how they might conflict with morals or beliefs. I can't think of any job where one of the things you have a professional obligation to do is to accept being treated in a discriminatory manner. I can't think of any job where the FUNCTIONS of the job have anything to do with a notion that your employer will treat you differently from other employees with the same function by reason of your race, sex, religion or disability.
Discrimination doesn't have to take the form of treating people differently. For example - suppose an employer provides only one set of toilets in which one wall is dedicated to urinals. Nobody is being treated differently, but still it's discriminating against women. Equal treatment is discriminatory if that treatment embodies assumptions that all employees are white able-bodied men. It's discriminatory if it assumes that all employees are male breadwinners whose wives are able to look after any children (and therefore doesn't give employees permission to take time off work when children fall ill). It's discriminatory against people with impaired mobility if the only access to important spaces is via steps. And in the same way, it is discriminatory against people with minority religious or ethical codes if it assumes that all employees hold the majority religion or ethical code. For example, if an employer doesn't make allowance for Muslims to pray five times during the day. (Protestants, agnostics, and atheists here need to be aware of the invisibility of privilege.)
[ 12. October 2013, 13:08: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Discrimination doesn't have to take the form of treating people differently...
I've worked in human rights. You don't have to give me a lecture on the difference between formal inequality and the practical discriminatory operation of formal equality.
Which is still completely irrelevant, as far as I can see, as a response. This still has absolutely nothing to do with professional obligations. It is still not the case that putting up with discrimination, in whatever form, is a professional obligation. Nor is INFLICTING discrimination a professional obligation.
In other words I completely understand the points you're making; what I want to know is why you're making them in this thread.
[ 12. October 2013, 13:23: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Which is still completely irrelevant, as far as I can see, as a response. This still has absolutely nothing to do with professional obligations. It is still not the case that putting up with discrimination, in whatever form, is a professional obligation. Nor is INFLICTING discrimination a professional obligation.
As mentioned earlier, "INFLICTING discrimination" is often a function of "beliefs", the second item mentioned in the thread title. Hence the connection to this thread.
--------------------
Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Discrimination doesn't have to take the form of treating people differently...
I've worked in human rights. You don't have to give me a lecture on the difference between formal inequality and the practical discriminatory operation of formal equality.
Which is still completely irrelevant, as far as I can see, as a response. This still has absolutely nothing to do with professional obligations. It is still not the case that putting up with discrimination, in whatever form, is a professional obligation. Nor is INFLICTING discrimination a professional obligation.
In other words I completely understand the points you're making; what I want to know is why you're making them in this thread.
Basically, because I think that there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Or coming to the right answer for the wrong reason, which wrong reason can then be used to come to the wrong answer.
You said:
quote:
No-one has a 'right' to do the job of their choosing. You get paid to do a job. And while you should have plenty of freedom to choose which job you want to do out of the ones the market offers, you don't then get the further right to tailor the job to yourself.
Now that seems to me the wrong reasons, even if the conclusion is right. And this is important because it will justify things we do not want justified.
For example, it seemed to me and still seems to me, that if you take that at face value, it implies that the employer has the right to define the professional obligations of a job as they please. And therefore that it gives the employer the absolute right to decide whether or not their job is discriminatory. Which would be bad.
Say the employer decides that not paying for contraception from corporate health insurance is a professional obligation of the job. Logically, if putting up with discrimination cannot be a professional obligation, and accepting the employer's bar on paying for contraception is a professional obligation, then accepting the employer's bar on paying for contraception cannot be putting up with discrimination.
To put the argument another way: Nobody has a right to a job of their choosing. A person gets paid to do a job that doesn't include health insurance for contraception. While they should have plenty of freedom to choose among the jobs the market offers, they don't then have the right to tailor the job to themselves by asking for health insurance that includes contraception.
The conclusion is absurd; therefore at least one of the premises is faulty.
I don't think it's a sufficient counter-argument to say that health insurance is mandated for all companies by law. That would imply legal positivism: the only reason discrimination is wrong is that there's a law against it. That seems to me to get things backwards. We make a law against something because we think it's wrong.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
if you take that at face value, it IMPLIES that the employer has the right to define the professional obligations of a job as they please...
The conclusion is absurd; therefore at least one of the premises is faulty.
Emphasis added.
So in other words, this is based on taking something I said as if it was intended as a complete, nuanced statement of the situation.
Let me just say that it wasn't. It was a single paragraph saying that you don't get to work around your professional obligations of the job simply by deciding that you, as an individual, have conflicting belief. It was NOT focused on the question of how the content of those professional obligations is determined in the first place.
quote:
I don't think it's a sufficient counter-argument to say that health insurance is mandated for all companies by law. That would imply legal positivism: the only reason discrimination is wrong is that there's a law against it. That seems to me to get things backwards. We make a law against something because we think it's wrong.
And then sometimes we don't make a law against something. Or it took decades, if not centuries, for us to make a law against something. There's an entire country, the United States, that has very very different views about healthcare than most of the rest of the western world. Are the content of morals somehow different in the USA to rest of the world?
I am to a large extent a legal positivist because otherwise we are in the realm of opinion. It's fine for people to have opinions, but how exactly do you go about enforcing the opinion of persons A, H and J against the opinion of persons C, F and L?
To me, this is where the whole 'in my (religious) opinion this is wrong so I'm going to stop doing my job' line of thinking comes unstuck. There is nothing wrong with having an opinion that something is wrong despite the law saying nothing about it, or thinking that the content of the law is wrong, but I'm simply not self-centred enough to think that I can take that opinion and unilaterally act on it without suffering some kind of counter-response from my employer.
Legitimate ways of dealing with my personal belief include discussing it with my employer to see if an accommodation is possible, negotiating variations, advocating changes in practices. If the silence of the law is a problem, campaigning for an addition to the law. If the content of the law is a problem, campaigning for a change to the law.
What is not legitimate in any kind of employer-employee relationship is 'I don't like it so I'm not doing it'. That simply denies the whole notion of relationship.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Which is still completely irrelevant, as far as I can see, as a response. This still has absolutely nothing to do with professional obligations. It is still not the case that putting up with discrimination, in whatever form, is a professional obligation. Nor is INFLICTING discrimination a professional obligation.
As mentioned earlier, "INFLICTING discrimination" is often a function of "beliefs", the second item mentioned in the thread title. Hence the connection to this thread.
Croesos, with all due respect, I'd much rather hear what Dafyd thinks about Dafyd's posts than what Croesos thinks about Dafyd's posts. I heard you the first time, but I simply didn't believe that your reasoning was Dafyd's reasoning, and now I'm quite certain that what you've written, twice, wasn't the same reasoning as he was using.
Ta all the same.
[ 12. October 2013, 23:16: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Are you expected to march, wave flags, or take actions that would imply your personal endorsement of homosexuality rather than your employer's corporate support? You should be able to opt out, and assuming you hold the "gay sex is sinful" point of view, you should opt out.
I had a friend who played Tympani in the Minneapolis Gay Marching Band. At the time the band was small enough so that they needed a bigger percussion section. So they came to an arrangement with the Police marching band, where they would fill in the percussion section for each others parades. All voluntary of course, not everyone is comfortable putting on a police uniform.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
if you take that at face value, it IMPLIES that the employer has the right to define the professional obligations of a job as they please...
The conclusion is absurd; therefore at least one of the premises is faulty.
Emphasis added.
So in other words, this is based on taking something I said as if it was intended as a complete, nuanced statement of the situation.
Let me just say that it wasn't. It was a single paragraph saying that you don't get to work around your professional obligations of the job simply by deciding that you, as an individual, have conflicting belief. It was NOT focused on the question of how the content of those professional obligations is determined in the first place.
Fair enough.
quote:
quote:
That would imply legal positivism: the only reason discrimination is wrong is that there's a law against it. That seems to me to get things backwards. We make a law against something because we think it's wrong.
And then sometimes we don't make a law against something. Or it took decades, if not centuries, for us to make a law against something. There's an entire country, the United States, that has very very different views about healthcare than most of the rest of the western world. Are the content of morals somehow different in the USA to rest of the world?
I should have checked wikipedia before I typed. I see I was slightly misusing the phrase legal positivism.
quote:
I am to a large extent a legal positivist because otherwise we are in the realm of opinion. It's fine for people to have opinions, but how exactly do you go about enforcing the opinion of persons A, H and J against the opinion of persons C, F and L?
My reaction here is that no set of laws can possibly determine their application to all possible eventualities. At some point you need to bring in a human interpreter who interprets according to whatever principle of jurisprudence he or she thinks ought to be used.
As such an employee cannot necessarily know with certainty in all cases whether the law will vindicate his or her stand or rule against it until he or she tries to make a case.
quote:
To me, this is where the whole 'in my (religious) opinion this is wrong so I'm going to stop doing my job' line of thinking comes unstuck. There is nothing wrong with having an opinion that something is wrong despite the law saying nothing about it, or thinking that the content of the law is wrong, but I'm simply not self-centred enough to think that I can take that opinion and unilaterally act on it without suffering some kind of counter-response from my employer.
I think this conflates two questions: the prudential question of what my employer is going to do about things, and the moral question of how my employer ought to react. For example, Chelsea Manning should have expected the US government to throw the book at her when she leaked government secrets. That doesn't mean that the US government was right to throw the book at her.
As a parallel case, which although not about employee-employer relations is I think governed by the same general principles: over the past twenty years, various religious and secular protestors have broken into military bases to sabotage military equipment. They should certainly have expected the government to try to prosecute. Some of them were vindicated completely by the courts; others have been given minimal sentences. They defended their activities on the grounds that they had a right to sabotage material that was intended for purposes illegal under international law. I certainly don't see that my admiration for their activities should be affected by their belief that there was a legal defence of their actions, nor by whether or not their defence succeeded.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
