Section Two, there is an explanation of the “ethical gap” that exists insofar as people’s understanding of ethical decision-making in relation to society’s values and norms.

Following this, in Section Three, I will explain how we are called upon daily for ethical opinions and/or decisions about personal, or professional, or environmental (social) problems. In this connection I believe that a person’s ethical involvement should be an implicit/experiential approach that typically move daily from one to the other of the three categories mentioned (e.g., personal). At this point, mostly in chart form, I offer a quick look at six of the major ethical routes or approaches extant as offered by the discipline of philosophy. These “guides,” if followed carefully--that is, one or the other--lead to solutions to many of the problems that prevail in today’s confusing Western-world scenario. Interestingly, and disturbingly, however, one would be hard pressed to find a friend or colleague who consciously has chosen or understands one or another of these approaches to ethical decision-making. I have observed that most books of this nature recommend what amounts to one specific philosophical, religious, or common-sense source. In this regard I believe fervently that the reader must ultimately make his or her own personal decision about which approach to follow--if any! However, if or when it does happen, I hope it will be one that is determined by the individual when the “age of reason” is achieved (let us say, after age 13).

I decided therefore to offer an “easy-entry” approach in Section Four, a three-step one that can be used safely before a person makes a final decision as to which ethical decision-making approach to follow as more experience and maturation occurs during life. Admittedly, many may never proceed beyond this initial (three-step) stage--if they get this far! Incidentally, this three-step approach recommended can also be checked or vetted to a degree by seeking to “equate” it with a jurisprudential (law-court) analysis of the ethical decision to be made. And, fortunately, most of us hear or see or read about law-court trials daily and understand the process quite well.

In Section Five, after brief explanations of each type of dilemma faced, respectively, when confronted with personal, or professional, or social/environmental problems daily, I offer two examples of each using the three-step approach to resolve such decision-making problems. I then decided also that I had a basic responsibility to make my own position on ethical decision-making known clearly. In the turbulent 1960s most students demanded this as a right--that is, something that their instructor owed to them. Today I personally believe that has been called “scientific ethics” offers the best hope for the entire world in the 21st century. (This is one of the positions discussed briefly earlier in decision-making approach IV on p. 38.)

So, in Section VI, I explain why I have personally accepted this approach for use immediately after I have carried out the initial three-step scanning of the situation at hand. (I must explain, however, that definitive scientific evidence about this or that problem is often not readily available when needed.)

Lastly, in Section VII, I suggest an approach to “looking to the future,” a future about which we should all be very concerned. In addition to being worried about simply the presence of human life on Earth, I am worried about the status of individual freedom in our lives. I say this being reminded of Muller’s concept of the “tragic sense” of life. We need to improve the planet Earth in so many ways.