What makes something ethically right

What does right really mean how do you know when something is truly right or wrong? What is ignorance in ethics? What are the types of ignorance? What is the main function of the veil of ignorance? What is Rawls philosophy? What are the two main principles of fairness?

What is called principle of fairness? What factors define fairness? What is the ethical principle of fairness? What are five basic principles in professional ethics?

What is the purpose of code of ethics? Previous Article What is the season during Thanksgiving? Actions that produce pain are wrong, and actions that produce pleasure are right.

Everyone has interests—things they care about—and it would be reasonable for someone to say that they should only have to be concerned with the things that they care about, and that benefit them. Someone could say that morality comes from rationality, so whatever is rational is right, and whatever is irrational is wrong. Maybe you believe that everyone has certain basic, natural rights, and upholding those rights is good, while violating them is bad.

The most important thing to some people is their relationships with others and the bonds of care between them. For them, good actions are ones that promote and sustain those relationships, and bad actions are ones that damage them. You might believe that what makes an action right or wrong has to do with the person who does it. That definitely benefits Turing Pharmaceuticals. But is it ethical? It was simply impossible for the public to believe that something that is so clearly unethical is perfectly legal.

In some ways, it still boggles the mind. The public did get some kind of justice, though. Shkreli was indicted and convicted of fraud in early , and he will be behind bars for seven years.

But the irony is that his conviction had nothing to do with Daraprim, which remains absurdly expensive. Here is the crux of the argument about the difference between legality and ethics. If legality and ethics were the same thing, there would never be a need to make a new law. Anything that is legal would be, by default, ethical.

In other words, there would be no way to separate legality from morality. If you consider legality and ethics to be the same thing, it would be impossible to pass a law related to the use of this plastic. There is no law banning its use. Therefore, its use is legal. Therefore, its use is ethical. Therefore, any attempt to limit its use would be unethical. This is a simplified example, of course, but you can see how this circular logic applies to this subject, and why it falls apart when we look at something like the Shkreli case.

The fact of the matter is that we, as humans, can inherently understand when something is unethical e. And that understanding—knowing when something is wrong , even when it is legal —is at the heart of all legislation. We hope this article has been informative, and helped you understand the lines between ethics and legality, and how these two things are distinct.