This is a follow-up to yesterday's blog post on ethics fines. This week, I've been reading Karen Pryor's bible on positive training, Don't Shoot the Dog: The New Art of Teaching and Training (Bantam, 1999).

I'm reading the book to get ideas for training the puppy I will soon be getting. Positive training is a more humane and, supposedly, more effective approach than traditional obedience training.

Reading the book, and especially the chapter on ways of getting rid of behavior you don't want, made me think that more consideration should be given to the traditional ways used to prevent officials from dealing irresponsibly with their conflicts of interest.

The important first step is to consider what is the goal of government ethics. Do we really just want to get rid of misbehavior, or do we want officials to learn how to behave properly?

This is the eighth and last in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008), which is itself inspired by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. What’s wonderful about Kant’s approach to ethics is that it not only focuses on the role of reason. It also shows how ethics allows us to transcend our ordinary limitations. Kant considered the two things that most create awe and wonder to be the heavens above and each individual’s ethics within.

There is nothing transcendent in advocating or aiding our self-interests. Any animal can do that. We have the ability to rise above our self-interests, and to put ourselves in others’ shoes, which is the basis of morality.

This is the seventh in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). Neiman’s discussion of Daniel Ellsberg, the government official who let us know about the Pentagon Papers, shows the effect that access to confidential information has on government officials. It’s very similar to the effect of power.

In my first blog post relating to Susan Neiman’s book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008), I referred to Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative.” It’s time to say a little more about it.

Essentially, this is it: “When you act morally, you act according to a principle that you would make universal.” This is a less personal formulation of the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The difference is that, according to the categorical imperative, you act as you would have others act.

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008).

One problem Americans have with respect to government ethics is that one of our society’s principle ideologies is that everyone seeking his or her self-interest leads to a stronger economy than any government policy can provide. This is known popularly as free market theory.

This is the third in a series of blog posts inspired by reading Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (Princeton, 2008). One of her topics is how an individual’s organizational environment can greatly affect his or her conduct. Her goal is not to excuse misconduct, but to explain it and to look at ways of avoiding it. She focuses on two well-known experiments.