Insight

Lighting up ethical if you respect other's space

CRYSTAL VALES
cvales@mscd.edu

Walking around the Auraria Campus, one sees a plethora of students engaging in class discussions and socializing. Inevitably, there are those who are smoking to pass the time in congenial conversations. You could ask 10 of the students traversing through our campus what they thought of their fellow smoker classmates and their responses would range from indifference to a more popular, "I disagree with smoking; it is unhealthy and therefore bad and wrong." For our purposes, we will generalize on this point. Let's take a look at the problem presented by this moral judgment and supposed statement of fact. What are the reasons for the "wrong" label?

In ethics, we attempt to define our terms before we ascribe to a particular perspective in that we are enquiring into what is good and eventually to understand the "rightness" of a thing or an act. Doing so is a matter within itself, one from which we ascertain our moral responsibility. Saying that something is wrong isn't a necessary definition of its wrongness or of wrongness in general. What we can do is attribute our understanding of wrongness and decide accordingly what is really meant by attributing "wrong" or "right" to an act. Rightness and wrongness are descriptive, not definitive. If something can be defined, it can be done without the use of a simile. Right, is defined as "being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper." For our purposes we will examine "just" and "good." The word "proper" is a synonym to good.

Try to imagine good without attributing the qualities of goodness to a thing, person, or place (i.e.: He is a good football player). Describe what good means in this sentence without relating the qualities of football or its rules. Without a simile, good becomes a nonsensical subject without a predicate. The same can be said of good's antithesis, bad. We can say truthfully that saying something is good is not a real definition of what good is, and if that's the case we are unable to determine facts from this description and therefore our saying something is good is not a description of the facts, which defeats our search for the fact that smoking is bad, wrong, etc. Anything outside of the facts is subject to being called a mere expression of emotion.

Our second inclination is to investigate whether or not the act of smoking is unjust. In deciding whether or not an act is unjust, we will examine what a principle of justice would be: "the duty to treat all fairly, distributing the risks and benefits equally." How is smoking unfair to others? If you are a non-smoker and are exposed to a smoker's smoke, then by all means exercise your freedom to choose whether or not you want to be exposed to it and take action. It would be prudent to say that if someone is forcing you to be exposed to anything you are somehow adverse to it is wrong for him or her to do so.

This is where we can apply the principle of autonomy, the most important of all such principles. It is a right to govern one's self in making decisions and the quintessential right to determine what is good for me and what I determine to be wrong for me. Smoking may be an unhealthy thing; there is no lack of empirical evidence that this is true. However, it is my right as an individual to prescribe to decision-making, including things that may or may not be healthy for me. If all things unhealthy were deemed wrong by society, the greater injustice would be that an individual's autonomy would be meaningless. The problem with the moral argument against smoking is that it is a societal or medical argument (i.e.: this qua action is not good for society for these reasons or qua action is not good for one's health, therefore it should not be allowed). Whether or not these reasons stand up to criticism is another matter. These arguments justify themselves and therefore have no place in the study of ethics.

It is our moral responsibility to respect the autonomy in others, as it is our right to respect our own. Perhaps we can say that those who claim to have a moral problem with the act of cigarette smoking are nothing more than those who feel their emotive opinion warrants and supports a moral judgment. Smoking is neither a virtue nor a vice; the right to decide whether it is for us or if it is not for us is our most important virtue.