2-3-89 . . . Coincidentally, I wrote the other day about the way ordinary people understand and view morality. Tonight there was an hour-long program on PBS [the Public Broadcasting Service] entitled “Ethics in America”. A Harvard Law School professor, Charles Ogletree, served as the moderator, asking questions of a large panel of professors, politicians, journalists, and religious leaders. Among them were Willard Gaylin of the Hastings Center (a bioethics think tank), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Linda Ellerbee, a print and television journalist. The questions stemmed from hypothetical moral dilemmas such as this: One of your colleagues, who is married to X, is having an affair with Y. Should you confront the colleague, trying to get him to stop? Should you tell X? What if X is your daughter? Ogletree did a masterful job of raising the issues and playing roles. He skipped from one panelist to another, sometimes putting them on the spot and always making them think hard. I wonder what area of law he works in. He’s undoubtedly a popular and successful teacher.
The problems with the program were many. Simple distinctions never got made, such as that between “What do you have a right to do?” and “What should you do, all things considered?”. Also disturbing was the shift from “What should you do?” to “What would you do?”, as if the respondent would automatically do the right thing. But perhaps that’s understood. Perhaps the question “What would you do?” is elliptical for “If you acted rightly, what would you do?”. So I shouldn’t be too critical of that point. In general, the panelists were slow afoot and presumptuous. Nobody questioned the “duty” to tell the truth. They simply assumed that lying is wrong and set about trying to explain it. Some gave consequentialist answers (“If you lie, it’ll eventually catch up to you”), while others struck nonconsequentialist notes (“If you wouldn’t want to be lied to, don’t lie”). I got the feeling that, if a panelist did back up to explore the basis for the prohibition on lying, he or she would have been hooted down by the audience. The brightest person on the panel was Scalia, though I don’t agree with his ethical position in all of its detail. He has a quick mind, makes relevant distinctions, and brings relevant information to bear on the problem. I was least impressed with Ellerbee and some of the other journalists, who spouted liberal dogma about the right to know and the right to be taken care of by others. All in all, it was a stimulating show.
