ENGLI 1101 PROVIDE A BRIEF OVERVIEW CASE QUALIFIES ETHICAL ISSUE / TU ENGLI 1101 PROVIDE A BRIEF OVERVIEW CASE QUALIFIES | Page 2

the ethical course of not disclosing to the astronauts their impending
fate that seemingly makes it so appealing to our moral intuitions.
Nobody told the
astronauts what very well could happen on reentry,
and without access to the discussions of those
concerned with tile loss, they had no way to know it
themselves. Can we find support in ethical reasoning
for our reticence? To do so, perhaps our reasoning takes a certain
direction that we might find in
other kinds of moral decision-making: let's consider
several different seemingly analogous cases.
First, let's say that there is a military operation in
which the leaders of the operation know that there
is a reasonable chance that certain units will be
destroyed by the enemy. Nevertheless, other units in
the operation are dependent on these doomed units
performing their part of the operation. Should the
leaders of the operation inform the members of the
endangered units that they are most likely to die? Wouldn't this
knowledge affect their performance,
thereby jeopardizing the mission and the lives of
others? Isn't it the case that in the military profession, sometimes
leaders know that certain people are
about to die, but not only do they not tell them, they
also exaggerate their chances for survival? In this
profession, the ethical perspective might be one that
emphasizes a primarily Utilitarian view of thingsthat one ought to try
to promote the greater good for
the greater number, even at some cost to a few.
There are all kinds of ways we can imagine in
which informing the astronauts of the real risks
they faced might affect their performance in ways
that could affect others. It is, after all, a very
powerful impulse to pursue one's own survival. If
they knew of the damage to the tiles, for example,
would they perhaps engage in an unauthorized
space walk in an attempt to jury-rig some kind of