Ladd Code Of Ethics Essay

Ladd argues that attempts to make professional codes of ethics are confused about the nature of ethics (Ladd, pg 130). I will be arguing that Ladd’s thesis is not true and that the supporting arguments for his claim do not hold up. To do so, I will first be stating and explaining Ladd’s arguments for his thesis. Next, I will show why these arguments do not hold up using reasoning and counterexamples. Lastly, I will consider possible responses to my arguments from Ladd and disprove those as well.

Ladd believes that codes of ethics are seriously confused about the nature of ethics (Ladd, pg 130). He gives many reasons for this belief, but I am going to focus on the two that I believe are the strongest and most important. His first being that

This statement is what Ladd uses to back up his thesis. In simpler terms, he believes that ethics is not something that can be settled by a group of authority that agrees upon what is ethical. He believes that there must be deep examination, discussion and argumentation to be able to tell what is ethical. This argument that Ladd makes leads us to believe that he is making an assumption about the way that codes of ethics are created. Ladd assumes that there is no deep examination, discussion or argumentation when a group decides upon a code of ethics. This assumption cannot possibly hold true for the making of all codes of ethics. In most cases we would expect there to be deep thought, discussion and arguing that goes into the process of creating a code. Ladd might respond by saying that my argument is assuming things about the way codes of ethics are created as well. With a small amount of research, one can find many guidelines on how to create a code of ethics for a company. Some common practices advised by Developing a Code of Conduct: A Step‐By‐Step Guide, include many of the previously mentioned steps that Ladd believes take place to establish ethical

Ladd believes that having a code of ethics becomes the only reason that people follow the code and that people who are mindlessly following it are not acting ethically. These beliefs prove to us that Ladd is making another assumption about people who follow a code of ethics. He is assuming that people who follow these codes are not self-directed. He believes that people only follow a code, because it is imposed on them. If we take into consideration a person whose personal beliefs in ethics matches up with the code of ethics, then we see that Ladd’s argument does not hold up. In this case, the person would have no reason to feel as if the code is being imposed on them since they believe what the code states. Ladd’s argument again does not hold up if we look at a scenario where the code of ethics not only states the code, but states the reason the code was put into place. In this case a person would have a justified reason for following the code and would not be mindlessly following it. Ladd may argue that it would be unlikely that there be a person that agrees with one hundred percent of their company’s code of ethics and that most people are still having a code of ethics imposed on them. Even that argument does not hold up. I have no doubt that there are certain parts of a code of ethics that people may not agree with, but people can still agree with some