The quest for the code of professional ethics has both moral as well as intellectual confusion. These are philosophical sentiments of John Ladd. The confusion is so engraved in people’s heart so much that in the fifth century, one would easily lose his/her life, freedom or be scorned for trying to attack the gods. This paper lays much focus on evaluating Ladd’s argument attempting to create professional codes of ethics.
Ethics is a representation critical, reflective as well as an open-ended intellectual activity. This quest is, in most cases, controversial as well as problematic with the reason being the application as well as the principles of the quest. Ethics has so many issues that are subject to argument, deliberation, discussion, as well as evaluation. It is only through this argumentation and debate that ethical principles can be established. The fiat, authorities or agreement has no moral capacity to settle issues in the ethical principles as they would only be confusing the principles with policy-making, rule-making, law-making, and other kinds of decision-making. As such, moral principles cannot be established through consensus, organizations, or associations of their members. Because of this ambiguity, principles of ethics cannot be codified like in the case of architecture, anthropology, or medicine.
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Sometimes, people can have a substantial agreement through which they can reach agreement on coding ethical principle, but even though, such principles cannot be imposed on others as this would be contradicting with the notion of ethics itself. The reason why the principles cannot be imposed on others is, people are autonomous agents of morals, and thus, the attempts would render ethics heteronomous. Principles of ethics cannot be equated with rules such as code of law because an externally imposed set of standards are heteronomous, but ethical principles are autonomous. In simpler terms, ethics are self-directed by nature and thus, cannot be directed by others in any circumstance. If any person attaches disciplinary procedures, formal or informal sanctions and adjudication methods to the principles dubbed as “ethical,” he or she would be converting the ethical principles into authoritative rules of conduct similar to the rules of etiquette, rules in a club, official promulgated regulations, organizations’ bylaws or other kind of social standards of conduct. By labeling such standards, rules, and conventions “ethical,” it would be reflecting intellectual confusion about the status as well as the function of these standards, rules as well as conventions. In the historical perspective, “ethical” is a term that was introduced indicating the code of the royal college of physicians denoting that the college was not built under the criminal code; thus, non-legal.
Ethics has relevance as well as much importance in projects involving the enforcement, certification as well as the creation and formulation of the rules of conduct for members belonging to a particular group. However, in the logical view ethical principles have a similar relevance held for the law because, with the law, the principles are crafted to defend, criticize, or even give appraisals to the rules, regulations as well as the prescribed procedures. This also applies to the institutions, political, and social goals represented by the principles. Even though ethics can be used in judging or evaluating the code of honor, penal code, disciplinary code or anything going by the term “code of ethics,” it cannot be identified with any of them.
Professionalism and ethics are not identical because one does not automatically become an ethics expert by virtue of being a professional. This is the case even when the person has ethics in the concerned profession. This is because expertise is not the determiner of ethics. These sentiments are in line with Plato’s argument in the Protagoras, whereby a person’s technical knowledge is different from their knowledge of virtue. In a sense, a person can be a teacher of virtue but at no any circumstance that the person can have professional qualifications required to do ethics.
Moreover, professionals do not possess special ethics for their professions. The special thing about the professionals is their expertise as well as special moral status in performing tasks that other people are not able to perform. However, professionals such as doctors have no moral obligation to order people around like children, deceive people, or be rude. Similarly, lawyers cannot bend the law so that they can help their clients in their brutality, cruelty or bullying the witnesses by virtue of thinking that they (lawyers) are acting in the interests of their clients. Since there is nothing like immunity to professional ethics, professional codes cannot confer immunities as well as rights to do what is unethical.
Conclusion
The quest for the code of professional ethics is both controversial as well as problematic because of its application as well as its principles. Ethics has so many issues that are subject to argument, deliberation, discussion, as well as evaluation. It is only through this argumentation and debate that ethical principles can be established. Furthermore, a person’s professionalism is different from ethics because one does not automatically become an ethics expert by virtue of being a professional. These are the moral as well as intellectual confusion of professional ethics.
