Plato and Aristotle made the purpose of ethics central to their Philosophy.
First things First
First things First A manifesto which had the best interest in creativity. In short it argues that visual communicators and creatives were wasting their talents by taking jobs that contribute little to the world. Jobs such as Advertising Toothpastes and Cigarettes etc... It is in no was anti consumerist but a call of arms. The aim of it was to use your talents to improve the world and not waste them on menial tasks. The journal was republished in Adbusters (2000), A very anti capitalist publication. In the republication a lot of it was changed.
All the products were changed into items which were charged with an ethical dilemma. So if you are using your skills to advertise credit cards then you are encouraging people to get into dept. You support and implicitly endorse an environment which is changing the way citizen consumers think and interact with each other.
The first manifesto's point is to put your talents to use. However the second one has twisted it by saying that designing for a capitalist society is wrong and feeds into it.
A meme is an idea central to every advert. It rhymes with dream. They tend to be a catchphrase, a concept or tune or belief - something which gets stuck in your head and then passed from brain to brain. They argue that memes should be used in a warfare against the capitalist culture.
Victor Papanek - 'Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufactures to sell to people'
How do we determine what is good?
- Subjective Relativism
There are no universal moral norms of right and wrong. All people decide right and wrong for themselves. It is up to the individual to decide for themselves. Although this works on a small scale but on a society scale it would turn to chaos.
- Cultural Relativism
The ethical theory that whats right or wrong depends on place and/or time. But problems begin to occur when you apply your cultural values to other cultures and humanity as a whole.
- Divine Command Theory
Good actions are aligned with the will of God, bad actions are contray to the will of God. The holy book helps make the decisions. However it causes issues when all ethics are layed out for you by the God.
Kant
Katianism - Deontological Ethics. Kant's philosophy was all based around the theory of Duty. People wills should be based on moral rules, Therefore its important that our actions are based on appropriate moral rules. So we must think about what actions affect wider society. To determine our actions we must use the categorical imperative.
Categorical Imperative:
1. Act only from moral rules that you can at the same time universalise it.
2. Act so that you always treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves and never as means to an end.
John Stuart Mill - Utilitarianism, Consequentialist Ethics
An action is right to the extent that it increases the total happiness of the affects parties. An action is wrong to the extent that decreases the total happiness of the affected parties. Happiness may have many definitions such as as: advantage, benefit, good or pleasure.
Social Contract Theory - Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau
An agreement between individuals held together by common interest. Avoids society degenerating onto the 'state of nature' or 'war of all against all' (Hobbes) "Morality consists in a set of rules, governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that other follow those rules as well.
Toolbox of Moral Ethics Theories.
Whether presented with problems that are easy or difficult to solve, the four workable ethical theories,
-Katianism
-Act Utilitarianism
-Rule Utilitarianism
-Social Contract Theory
could provide us with possible solutions to many of the problems raised by the ' First Things First' manifesto.
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