“Strange” business going around at HDB flat: Committee
October 15, 20111. The owner refers to ethics committees. Public Service Commission (PSC), Presidential Council for Minority Rights, and Presidential Council for Religious Harmony are of similar nature. They consisted people from inside and outside government with public duties. The President’s office and the Attorney-General’s Chambers too have public duties. All represents fair-mindedness of the State.
2. Complaint Julian Baggini
The return to ethics. The overall thrust of my argument about the grievance culture is that it places law above ethics, and this leads to three bad consequences: responsibility being denied in some places and inappropriately ascribed in others…
What we cannot and should not have is a return to authority-based morality. Politically and socially this will not work, since the world has become far too pluralistic for any authority to hold sway in a sustainable way.
Moral philosophy has the potential to be a help or a hindrance in this regard, and the way the subject is usually taught, it looks more like a hindrance. Most people who study it are presented with a standard trio of moral frameworks: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics. On this view, consequentialists believe that actions are right or wrong solely in terms of whether they produce good or bad outcomes; deontologists believe that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of their consequences; and virtue theorists say that being good is not about following strict rules but about developing the moral character to make ethical choices. To give these caricatures a concrete example, consequentialists would say that whether torture is wrong depends on whether, in balance, it leads to more goods than harms; a deontologists would say that torture is wrong in itself; and a virtue theorist would say that torture is not something one can imagine a virtuous person doing, but who knows there may be exceptions.
However, there is another way of looking at moral philosophy which has more potential. Although there is no consensus as to which moral theory is the right one, there is a tacit acceptance of a common procedure for thinking through moral theories. This can be summed up as the view that moral discourse is a democratic, rational activity. It works by assessing the different reasons given for or against a particular course of action in a way that defers to no authority. This is the way in which ethics committees work: they do not require everyone involved to subscribe to the same fundamental theory of ethics. Rather, they demand that people effectively set these aside and offer only such reasons as can be assessed and judged by the common standards of rationality. It is democratic, not in the sense that it necessarily follows majority opinion, but in the sense that contributions to the debate are assessed on the merits of the arguments, not on the status of the person offering them.
3. The owner wrote to PSC, which administers the code of conduct, and to HDB, which has its rules and regulations. A principled approach is to reply, but there is none. Where an ethics committee comes to a decision from contributions based on fact-finding, the connection of the officers chooses the status quo of doing nothing. The questions that need asking: a) Does the neighbour carries on a trade in the flat? b) Do officers collude with the neighbour? c) Why are people station across the neighbour? d) Why do insiders assist the owner? e) Were there no reference of the case in the media, if only indirectly?
4. Mr Tan Kin Lian said he would form a personal Council before and during the presidential election. Someone wrote it was “glorified feedback”, and it was quoted by a Minister. But, in the owner’s case, it makes sense. A personal Council could assist the President in giving voice to the people when the system fail.
5. The owner wrote to the President last month, and noise has lowered and lessen. He appreciated it, however, the noise is not justifiable. Generally work is through the day, and there is the potential for increase noise.
