What is overpowered integrity

How would you handle the situation? What would you say to them if they were your friends? Then read the commentary for each scenario to see what others have said about the same situation. Keep a record of the information sources you are using so you can reference them in your work. Referencing is a system used to acknowledge the sources of information you have used in your assignment. You do this by including your sources and listing all resources you have used in writing your assignments.

In this video, you will learn key words to use so that you avoid plagiarism. You will understand how to paraphrase a text, document or cite a source, and research so that the paper contains original content but in your own words. What is plagiarism?

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Please click here to provide your feedback. Publication Detail Portlet. Trivial ends, like train-spotting, do not introduce a new species of integrity. To count as being a type of integrity, the sphere of action and commitment in question should be a complex and valuable human pursuit that has distinct ways in which integrity is demonstrated.

Robust examples are intellectual integrity and artistic integrity. On this way of looking at the matter, personal integrity and various specific types of integrity tend to be run together. See Benjamin, ; Calhoun, ; Halfon, ; and Grant, Professional integrity then becomes a matter of the extent to which a person displays personal integrity in professional life.

There are, however, good reasons to resist this running together of various types of integrity. In the first place, our legitimate expectations of people must be sensitive to the roles we have tacitly or explicitly agreed that they perform.

If we expect people to act with integrity in a certain professional context, then our judgment of them should be based on an understanding of this context: its special duties, obligations, rights, competencies, and so on. What it is to display integrity in one profession need not, therefore, carry over to other professions; and the difference between acting with integrity in one context may not share a common currency with what it is to act with integrity in another context.

It seems that the concept of integrity cannot be demarcated into types without specific characterization of the kinds of challenges and hazards encountered in the relevant field of action. Consider the example of intellectual integrity. Intellectuals may differ in the extent to which they exemplify intellectual virtues such as honesty, impartiality, and openness to the views of others. Intellectual integrity may then be thought of as the over-arching virtue that enables and enhances these individual virtues by maintaining a proper balance between them.

Halfon , 54 argues that Socrates had a commitment to the pursuit of truth and knowledge, and he demonstrated his intellectual integrity in the face of attacks on it. Socrates may be an outstanding example of a person of intellectual integrity; nevertheless, there is more to intellectual integrity than having a commitment to truth and knowledge.

However, if one is too open, one could absorb too many influences to be able to properly pursue any line of thought. So an adequate account of intellectual integrity must incorporate conflicting claims: that one must be open to new ideas but not be overwhelmed by them.

There are a range of commonly cited intellectual virtues central to our conception of intellectual integrity, such as honesty, courage, and fairness. Plausibly, such virtues as sensitivity and perceptiveness or insightfulness should also be added.

In Virtues of the Mind , Linda Zagzebski , gives a very comprehensive list of intellectual virtues, adding such items as intellectual humility, perseverance, adaptability and communicativeness.

There are a range of kinds of actions one might expect from a person of intellectual integrity as well: for example, being against plagiarism, refusing to suppress counter-arguments, and consistently acknowledging help. The fact that there are a number of distinct intellectual virtues, involving distinct, and sometime conflicting, dispositions to action, means that we have a need to balance or manage these virtues. For example, a person who has too much intellectual courage may well become a dogmatist, and a person who is excessively impartial will probably lack conviction.

It seems plausible to say that intellectual integrity is that quality that enables a person to balance the various demands of intellectual work and to manifest intellectual virtues in a proper order. This balance cannot be maintained without a certain degree of reflection on the relationship between different intellectual commitments. The importance of appropriate reflection to intellectual integrity indicates that, like personal integrity, it is closely related to self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge appears essential to integrity in general, and given that intellectual integrity concerns knowledge itself, the relationship between having intellectual integrity and self-knowledge is particularly close. This close relationship might lead one to assume that self-deception is antithetical to intellectual integrity because it undermines the kind of self-knowledge, such as knowledge of our intellectual strengths and capacities, necessary to such reflection.

However, self-deception does not necessarily undermine intellectual integrity. In fact, some self-deception might be necessary to pursue some lines of thought well. The mild self-deception that one has a good idea before one really has an idea at all is often necessary to get started on a piece of work. Nonetheless, some forms of self-deception are seriously detrimental to intellectual integrity. Gabriele Taylor , believes that self-deception constitutes the most fundamental and important case of lack of integrity.

Casaubon is a cleric working on the connections between different religions, a mammoth scholarly work he has devoted himself to for many years. The kind of failure of integrity here is partly due to failure to take the views of others seriously, and thus differs from cases where others might encourage one in self-deception.

Casaubon acted to prevent his wife Dorothea and others from realising the paucity of his researches. His case is more blameworthy because of this failure and it demonstrates the way in which self-deception can undermine intellectual integrity. Another important type of integrity is artistic integrity. He may have lacked personal integrity because he did not take an assessment of his values and commitments seriously enough. Calhoun , suggests that perhaps Gauguin believes that morality does not demand he give up partiality to his own artistic project.

If this is his view, then the success of his artistic project may contribute to a favorable judgment of his moral integrity. Nor is it clear that being successful in Tahiti contributes to our judgment of his artistic integrity. Would our judgment of his artistic integrity have suffered had he stayed at home producing his art? Artistic integrity may come into conflict with personal and moral integrity, but it is surprisingly difficult to characterize the precise circumstances of such a conflict.

There are certainly connections between artistic integrity and the moral integrity of artists, which in turn is connected to the moral features of artworks themselves. Novitz , 16 , for example, argues that the values we bring to art are social ones, and that so-called pure aesthetic values are themselves socially induced.

At the very least, the moral values which artworks suggest or promote are relevant to considerations of artistic integrity. On the one hand, artistic integrity and moral integrity can overlap, particularly if the standards of artistic integrity are high.

On the other hand, artistic and moral integrity can come apart in situations of great pressure. Circumstances also vary, and with them both the difficulty of pursuing integrity, and our assessment of its merit. Stewart Sutherland argues that the case of Dimitri Shostakovich creates difficulties for an account of integrity developed in terms of consistency.

The idea is that Shostakovich demonstrated equal if not greater integrity than other more artistically consistent composers writing in more congenial circumstances by coding his works with anti-Stalinist irony. More plausibly, however, one might argue that Shostakovich showed considerable strength of character in difficult circumstances whilst also admitting to his many artistic compromises, compromises which affected his integrity as an artist.

Thus, one might rate his moral integrity more highly than his artistic integrity. Expectations of artistic integrity have to be tempered by understanding of the conflicts and pressures, both commercial and political, involved in pursuing artistic values. Does having one type of integrity mean that one is, to that extent, moral? Halfon says that integrity in one sphere of life is admirable, though less admirable than having integrity overall and a specific type of integrity may interfere with moral integrity rather than be expressive of it.

Yet overall integrity demands that this conflict be managed in appropriate ways. Integrity is so broad that it has to encompass morality in a profound way. There certainly can be conflict between types of integrity, particularly where the demands of a profession interfere with personal and moral integrity. However, while different types of integrity can be sequestered from each other, integrity of one type is more likely to flourish in a context of greater integrity in various spheres of existence.

The kind of virtues and skills which are developed in maintaining, say, intellectual integrity, are likely to be available to make use of in dealing with the conflicts and temptations which threaten personal and moral integrity, and conversely. Despite the fact that it is somewhat troublesome, the concept of integrity has played an important role in contemporary discussion of moral theory.

An important and influential line of argument, first developed by Bernard Williams, seeks to show that certain moral theories do not sufficiently respect the integrity of moral agents. This has become an important avenue of critique of modern moral theory. See, for example, Scheffler and Lomasky Modern moral theories, the most representative of which are utilitarianism and Kantian moral theory, do not concern themselves directly with virtue and character. Instead, they are primarily concerned to describe morally correct action.

Theories of morally correct action generally aspire to develop criteria by which to categorize actions as morally obligatory, morally permissible, or morally impermissible.

Some theories of morally correct action also introduce the category of the supererogatory: an action is supererogatory if and only if it is morally praiseworthy, but not obligatory. The two theories of primary concern to Williams are utilitarianism and Kantian moral theory, and both of these are usually interpreted as eschewing the category of the supererogatory.

See Baron for an argument that Kantian moral theory has no need for the category of the supererogatory. Williams maintains that both utilitarianism and Kantian moral theory are deeply implausible because of their integrity undermining effects. His argument against utilitarianism makes the more transparent appeal to the concept of integrity and it is this argument that we examine here.

This is, very roughly, the view that an agent is to regard as morally obligatory all and only actions that maximize general well-being. The act-utilitarian theory that Williams criticizes has an important feature: it aspires to describe the correct form of moral deliberation.

It does more than specify what it is for an action to be morally correct, it specifies how an agent should think about moral decisions. Agents should think about which of the actions available to them will maximize general well-being and decide to act accordingly.

Notice that this theory is completely impartial and that it makes no room for an agent to give special weight to personal commitments, causes, projects, and the like. Act-utilitarianism recognizes no personal sphere of activity in which moral reflection operates merely as a side-constraint. According to Williams, an agent who adopted this version of utilitarianism would find themselves unable to live with integrity. As he puts it, to become genuinely committed to act-utilitarianism is for a person to become alienated:.

Integrity, on this view, requires that persons act out of their own convictions, that is, out of commitments with which they deeply identify. Act-utilitarianism seeks to replace personal motivations of this kind with impartial utilitarian reasoning. Williams develops the point with two famous and much discussed examples , 97— The example which best illustrates his argument involves the figure of George, a recent doctoral graduate in chemistry who is having difficulty finding work.

George has young children. He also has poor health, limiting his job opportunities. George has a strong commitment to pacifism, a conviction amounting to an identity-conferring commitment. A dilemma arises for George when more senior colleague tells him about a decently paid job in a laboratory doing work on biological and chemical warfare. Should George take the job or not?

The most likely act-utilitarian conclusion here is that George should accept the job. This would contribute greatly to the well-being of his family as well as probably contributing to general welfare by forestalling some relatively zealous development of weapons of mass destruction. The utilitarian calculation, if it really does come out this way, is demanding a sacrifice of George: that he put aside his opposition to, and distaste for, biological and chemical weapons development and deal with the anguish and alienation that may result from working in the laboratory.

According to Williams, however, act-utilitarianism in fact demands a different kind of sacrifice from George. It demands that he act without integrity, abandoning or ignoring a longstanding, identity-conferring commitment to pacifism simply because maximum general well-being is to be found elsewhere.

This is just one, particularly acute, example of the tendency of impartial utilitarian deliberation to run roughshod over identity-conferring commitments, treating them as no more than one source of utility among others. In general, Williams concludes, identity-conferring commitments cannot play the kind of role in act-utilitarian moral deliberation that is required for an agent to act with integrity, that is, for an agent to act with genuine conviction in matters of grave, identity-determining importance to them.

We consider them in turn. The first reply essentially concedes the point and offers in response a development of utilitarian moral theory, one aimed at avoiding the flaws that Williams sought to demonstrate. See Scheffler for a development of this view, and Harris a and b for criticism of the adequacy of this response. Recall that Williams criticizes a version of act-utilitarian moral deliberation , so one may respond to it by describing a version of utilitarianism that does not directly dictate the form of moral deliberation.

Thus one might subscribe to an act-utilitarian account of morally correct action whilst not demanding that someone like George approach life by deliberating in strictly utilitarian ways. Instead, utilitarianism may be thought to furnish criteria from which to derive decision-procedures.

See Driver , Moore , Railton , for discussion of such a view; Cox , Howard-Snyder , and Harcourt for criticism of it. It may just be that moral demands upon us really are very stringent, and identity-conferring commitments must sometimes perhaps often be sacrificed in the interests of, say, our acting to ameliorate preventable suffering.

See Ashford for an argument along these lines. The third, and most influential, line of response argues directly against the idea that utilitarianism demands that agents act against their convictions.

Utilitarianism demands that agents adopt utilitarian ideals; that agents give utilitarian ideals the kind of priority that would have them function as the central identity-conferring commitments of their life.

Thus utilitarianism does not demand that one live without identity-conferring commitments at all, but that one live with utilitarian identity-conferring commitments. Were George a utilitarian, he would not have been acting against his convictions by taking a job in the chemical weapons factory.

He does not lose his integrity simply in virtue of his commitment to utilitarianism. Williams appears to confuse the case in which a utilitarian George acts against his personal interests in which case his integrity would be preserved with the case in which a non-utilitarian George is somehow persuaded to act as a utilitarian in which case his integrity would not be preserved.

See Carr , Trianosky and Blustein for versions of this criticism. As we have seen, there are other plausible candidates for an account of integrity and the critique of utilitarianism may well succeed better in their terms. The key issues are whether utilitarian commitment is compatible with a fully satisfactory account of integrity, and if so, whether integrity is of such value and importance that the clash between integrity and utilitarian commitment undermines the plausibility of utilitarian moral theory.

An adequate account of integrity needs to deal with these issues and to capture basic intuitions about the nature of integrity: that persons of integrity may differ about what is right but a moral monster cannot have integrity.

For Rosenbaum , 34, 65 , integrity is not an a priori ideal, but provides for a context-sensitive, working theory of morality. So it is that, although he sees universal applicability in this concept of integrity, and indeed in aspects of integrity-based morality more widely, Rosenbaum , f. These are the thick sincerity of the claimant, and the thin acceptability of the proposed exemption — which must thus be compatible with the basic rights of others. Even where the social and political dimensions of integrity are discussed, integrity is often seen as largely a private or personal affair—albeit one with important implications in the public sphere.

Less attention has been given to ways in which social e. They can do this either by promoting or undermining features essential to having or practicing integrity; or by aiding, abetting, or being inimical to the defeaters of integrity e. If integrity is as central and important a virtue as recent work on the topic suggests, then ideally the institutions—including forms of government and economic arrangements—that help shape our lives should be structured in ways that promote integrity.

Arguably, this is not the case, and why it may not be the case, and how to change it, is as much a problem for social and political philosophy, and ethics generally, as it is for philosophical psychology. Babbitt explicitly links personal integrity to political and social structures in a way that broadens the concept of integrity. What she says is applicable to all of the views that we have discussed. But her account also enables us to raise questions about the relationship between social structures and personal integrity.

The most general question is what kinds of society and what kinds of practice within a society are most conducive to personal integrity? And if integrity is connected to well-being, then adverse social and political conditions are a threat—not merely an ultimate threat, but also a daily threat—to well-being.

The twentieth century technical term for this mismatch is alienation. Alienation results when people are so confused or conflicted—are relentlessly exposed, for example, to the social manufacture of incompatible desires—that they take on roles they mistakenly believe they want or deceive themselves about wanting.

Are political and social conditions in contemporary liberal democracies conducive both to acquiring the self-understanding necessary for integrity and, more generally, to the business of acting with integrity? This is one reason education has always played a prominent role in discussion of liberal-democratic forms of life.

Such an instrumental view of education is rather narrow and omits any role for inculcation of the means to choose goods wisely. Integrity requires more than facilitation of an instrumental capacity to acquired desired goods. It requires the wisdom and self-knowledge to choose appropriate goods, worthwhile goals, and so on.

It is, perhaps, hard to see extant social educational structures playing a very significant role in this process, and harder still to imagine real institutions—institutions compatible with the demands and limitations of contemporary life—that would.

If social educational structures fail to facilitate the life of integrity, other structures may be positively hostile to it.

Arguably, and despite what might seem like overwhelming choice, job markets are structured by financial and other incentives, restricted opportunities and economic rents. The result is that many people choose careers they do not really want and for which they are barely suited. There are other perhaps more straightforward ways in which social and cultural structures may be inimical to the pursuit of integrity.

The ideology of love, for instance, may undermine the integrity of lovers, as it may undermine the possibility of genuine and realistic love. In professional life, people may be called upon not only tacitly to lie, bluff or manipulate the truth in ways that directly or indirectly affect their integrity. The construction of a mission statement or a strategic plan is in some ways an open invitation to dissemble, pander and obfuscate.

And there are many kinds of assessments, reports and application processes that foster both deception and self-deception. If this is right, then contemporary society is inimical to a life of integrity in many small-scale ways. Broad social structures also have a deleterious effect on our capacity to live with integrity and here, of course, the effects of totalitarian regimes are more extreme than those liberal democracies.

Those who are oppressed seem to be in a paradoxical relation to integrity. On the one hand, members of oppressed groups would seem to be deprived of the conditions for developing integrity: the freedom to make choices how to act and think.

As Babbitt , notes, one needs to be able to make choices in order to develop the kinds of interests and concerns which are central to leading a life of integrity. On the other hand, oppressed people are often able to reflect on political and social realities with the greater insight because they do not benefit from them.

Oppressed groups therefore have all the more scope to think about social reality with integrity, and to act out of this understanding with integrity. A capacity for reflection and understanding enables one to work toward integrity even if it does not ensure that one achieves an ideal of integrity. Any attempt to strive for integrity has to take account of the effect of social and political context. The kind of society which is likely to be more conducive to integrity is one which enables people to develop and make use of their capacity for critical reflection, one which does not force people to take up particular roles because of their sex or race or any other reason, and one which does not encourage individuals to betray each other, either to escape prison or to advance their career.

Societies and political structures can be both inimical and favorable to the development of integrity, sometimes both at once. Integrity as Self-Integration 2. The Identity View of Integrity 3. The Self-Constitution View of Integrity 4. Integrity as Standing for Something 5. Integrity as Moral Purpose 6.

Integrity as a Virtue 7. Types of Integrity 8. Integrity and Moral Theory 9. Integrity as Self-Integration On the self-integration view of integrity, integrity is a matter of persons integrating various parts of their personality into a harmonious, intact whole. As Frankfurt puts it, when a person unreservedly decides to endorse a particular desire: … the person no longer holds himself at all apart from the desire to which he has committed himself.

It is no longer unsettled or uncertain whether the object of that desire—that is, what he wants—is what he really wants: The decision determines what the person really wants by making the desires upon which he decides fully his own.

To this extent the person, in making a decision by which he identifies with a desire, constitutes himself. Frankfurt , 38 When agents thus constitute themselves without ambivalence that is, unresolved desire for a thing and against it or inconsistency that is, unresolved desire for incompatible things , then the agent has what Frankfurt calls wholeheartedness. Williams a, 49 A number of criticisms of the identity view of integrity have been made. The Self-Constitution View of Integrity The self-integration view of integrity and the identity view of integrity, as we described them above, place only formal limits on the kinds of desires and projects that might constitute an integrated self.

Korsgaard sums up her thinking like this: And in the course of this process, of falling apart and pulling yourself back together, you create something new, you constitute something new: yourself.

For the way to make yourself into an agent, a person, is to make yourself into a particular person, with a practical identity of your own.

And the way to make yourself into a particular person, who can interact well with herself and others, is to be consistent and unified and whole — to have integrity.

The moral law is the law of self-constitution. As she puts it: Persons of integrity treat their own endorsements as ones that matter, or ought to matter, to fellow deliberators. Integrity as Moral Purpose Another way of thinking about integrity places moral constraints upon the kinds of commitment to which a person of integrity must remain true. He writes that persons of integrity: …embrace a moral point of view that urges them to be conceptually clear, logically consistent, apprised of relevant empirical evidence, and careful about acknowledging as well as weighing relevant moral considerations.

Persons of integrity impose these restrictions on themselves since they are concerned, not simply with taking any moral position, but with pursuing a commitment to do what is best. Sally is a person of principle: pleasure. Harold demonstrates great integrity in his single-minded pursuit of approval. John was a man of uncommon integrity. He let nothing, not friendship, not justice, not truth stand in the way of his amassment of wealth.