[Music] good day and welcome to this day's lecture we're going to ask and answer a very important question which i think all of us should be asking ourselves and the question is how do we decide at the end of this lecture i'm going to see if in fact you have learned the method for decision making and hopefully your teacher will pick it up with some exercises that will test your ability to make that decision so let's immediately start with this very important story which unfortunately some of you may have experienced so please read the story and after you've read it just think of your answer to the question what should i do a dilemma okay so before we can even figure out how we should handle dilemmas it's very very important that we understand exactly what a dilemma is i know many of you are probably thinking it's very easy but you will be surprised with the discovery that many of you actually phrase or articulate a dilemma in a wrong way and that's why you come up with decisions that are not always correct okay so what is a dilemma very quickly a dilemma happens because good and evil are not apparent if it is apparent then hindi came about so dilemmas are not really about good and evil or good or evil but it is about competing values so that if you choose one value chances are you will sacrifice the other and this is what makes it confounding or if you want to put it another way if you notice i asked the question what should i do i did not say should i tell my mother why not okay because in fact should i tell my mother it's not a dilemma it is a solution and when you have an ethical problem you have competing values competing issues but what is the tendency of the normal human being the tendency is when you have a problem you immediately phrase it in terms of competing solutions should i tell my mother or should i keep quiet and so immediately you're caught in a bind and you don't know exactly what you will do let's try to explore this some more okay if a dilemma is a set of competing values okay and not competing options it means that the value should articulate should be articulated first why should they be articulated first because the truth of the matter is that values and issues are the reasons for your actions and so strictly speaking you do not in fact choose an action you in fact choose a value so we have to ask ourselves once you articulate this i think we've won half of your ethical battle okay so there may be more options and courses of action once you clarify your ethical values okay so ok so what's wrong with that there's really strictly speaking nothing wrong with feelings but feelings are always loaded they're very very very biased and unless we use reason we will not see the full sum no of the dilemma that's why we always say that ethical decision making is in fact a recent process so okay what is a recent process and why a recent process reason process because once you use reason you will realize that there are so many elements involved in decision making the first one of course are facts i'm sure all of us have been in a very emotional situation involving people who are very important for us and what is our tendency our tendency is not to look at facts but in fact to listen only to people who we want to listen to and that's normal so with a recent process you will look at facts and then you will evaluate and look around you and say to yourself and then you look at what are the values what are the principles involved and then note that the options is only one of the five elements in this particular process and then finally we will look at consequences and consequences means different people will be affected differently i know this point is all very conceptual but as we go along here and using the example of your father and your mother it will become clearer to you exactly why these five elements come into play and why you should pay attention to them okay so i have a proposal my proposal is once you are caught in an ethical dilemma especially the more emotionally involved you are take pause i always say to people who ask me what's the first step in ethical decision making i always say stop look and listen and in fact this proposal is simply giving you the steps to stop look and listen so here you go these are your steps number one gather the facts number two who are the stakeholders number three articulate the dilemma as clearly as you can and then number four list the alternatives number five compare the alternatives to the principles you've identified in the dilemma number six you weigh the consequences and then finally you make the decision okay so let's look at gather the facts just very quickly i love this word because this word in fact resonates with how you feel merong bhagava okay i can't quite put my finger into it and when you're in that situation the first thing you do is not to cast judgment on people which we always do the first thing you do is to gather data you have to be patiently gathering data i've taught many medical students these steps but the problem is they're very thorough when it comes to medical data but when it comes to ethical problems then they shortcut the process it's human nature okay so the first step is gathered data there are two very important questions to ask the first question is what do i already know but the second question is once i've stopped and i've begun to listen i must ask myself what do i need to know but i don't know yet and so like any good researcher you will have to get out there and find out for yourself what are the things i need to know so it's very important that you ask yourselves the question for me to be able to have a capture of this particular dilemma these are the things these are the questions that are bothering me but i don't have the answer for them so two questions once again what do we know what do we need to know the second step is very important and these are who are the stakeholders who are stakeholders no in a dilemma you always have several people involved now what's the problem with many of us the problem i think with many of us is we only see the stakeholder who is very dear to us or immediately there for us we do not in fact capture or we miss the stakeholders who i call the abstract stakeholders example if i'm president of the philippines my natural tendency is to be very very no caring and to be very very nurturing of the people who are close to me but there's a problem here the president of the philippines has to take care of about 105 million filipinos and for many of them 105 million filipinos is just a number you cannot say for instance if you're the spokesperson that that's okay only 2 000 have died this 2000 is abstract to you but these are human beings who have families so it's very important that when you ask yourself who are the stakeholders you do not only look at stakeholders or immediately in front of you but you have to figure out who are your abstract stakeholders they all have a valid and strong position in your case secondly okay you have to figure out who are the primary and secondary stakeholders because the primary stakeholders are the ones who will be directly hit the secondary stakeholders may not be as directly hit the second question there is the third question i'm sorry is what are their stakes and what interests are they protecting so once again who are affected what are their interests i suggest you use this table it makes it easier for you to analyze who are the stakeholders and what are the interests that they are protecting and third the most important remember this is what i said about dilemmas competing values competing issues not conflicting options okay so you articulate the dilemma you make a dilemma statement and this is how a dilemma statement should look like you articulate it in a statement like this which you are now seeing in your screen so if you look at no this dilemma statement if we now use our example of the father's infidelity this is the way it looks like what are the values and the issues involved number one respecting my father's privacy number two i do want to preserve the peace and harmony in the family once i tell my mother there will be problems so that is very important but fidelity in marriage is also very important to me upholding the truth is also very important to me so please take note i just want you to realize that these are not actions these are competing issues and if you really take time to think about a dilemma when it happens to you all of these things will come if only you give it time so now that i have my dilemma what do i do next this is the time now to talk about alternatives we brainstorm as many possible options as we can and then we eliminate the untenable ones you will know malala many young they match the values and the principles that we identified in the dilemma values and principles no are the more important ones remember than the options so please there are always two extreme alternatives in a dilemma should i tell my mother or should i not tell my mother but then it's always helpful to think of a third creative option a middle option as we call it just just a word of warning perhaps sometimes there is no third option but as far as you can do think of a third option again another warning it's not a compromise okay it's not a compromise it's a creative option in addressing as many values as you can you want to address as many values as you can and so i suggest you make this three matrix column to make the task easier and this is the way the column will look like on the left will be your alternative and so if you notice i listed alternatives there the two extreme alternatives and one and two and the third alternative is talk to my father and the man that he confessed but i don't stop there huh because if i stop there that means so i talked to my father but if he says no then i will do it if he does not that's why sinabico okay so the fifth one is now that i have the alternatives i now compare the alternatives with the values that were in the dilemma do not airdrop values from nowhere i've seen so many students do this they just airdrop the sassabin could use a comment because in fact the second column is a reflection of the values articulated in your dilemma so if you create a matrix where the values are matched with the options it becomes clear to you that choices have values attached to them so let's look at it in terms of the matrix this is the matrix i tell my mother what will be the values that i am supporting fidelity in marriage write the truth no if i keep quiet these are the values that will be supported and then the third i challenge you now while you are there seated in front of your computer think about the value and the principles that the third one will address so we now have step five and so finally we have step six we now have way the consequences the third column in the matrix should articulate the consequences for each of the alternatives especially the primary stakeholder you must consider both negative and positive so let's matrix it now so here we are okay for the mother there will be a consequence for the father there will be a consequence the children will be a consequence so plus means positive negative means negative i want you please to be patient with this one many students get lazy with this one why is this so important because you realize by sitting down and really figuring it out that many of your options will have detrimental effects to many people so list them as patiently as you can so i listed this down for you and then again for number three i suggest there this is yours you figure out well you're seated in front of your computer what will be the consequences for the third option so finally we've come to the end of it we now make a decision there is no painless decision as the nike commercial says it we just do it now it's important that we do it by constantly referring to the matrix because in fact when somebody challenges you later on why you made the decision it will be easy for you to do what in ethics we call justification which is by the way different from rationalization rationalization is an instinctive decision and then you rationalize it justification is a reason process you have a recent process you make the decision and then you justify it what do you use for your proof aha i have my matrix that's my proof so and here i always say this many books don't put this but i say it i teach this to business people as well and i always say it's important to strategize steps for execution so strategize so once again i propose to you the steps and these are your steps what are the facts where the stakeholders what is the dilemma what are the options what are the principles involved what are the consequences what is the decision strategize so i hope from now on you will practice using it you cannot do it on every little decision you will make please do it only on the major decisions that you will make and please be patient remember the three-week rule if you want to develop a habit you have to do it for three weeks be patient with yourself eventually it will become second nature so this is the conclusion and in a way a word of warning for you about this process that i have just thought it seems like a beautiful process which can make us clearer thinkers and more decisive decision makers but okay while the decision-making process which we just went through slows us down and teaches us to be rational i just wanted to tell you that in the end being ethical is about character in other words it's not enough for you to go through a reason process in the end indeed and this faculty is the faculty of the will the will makes you carry out a decision and here you go this is about care courage but your fellow teacher your ethics teacher cannot teach you courage i can only teach you moral decision making a reason process in the end this is about who we really are and i'd like to end this lecture by quoting aristotle one of my favorite philosophers in the end we are what we repeatedly do ethics is character and you build that character by patiently pounding and doing this moral reasoning process thank you very much and i hope that helped you [Music] you