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Introduction To Ethics (Brief Reading)

Ethics is a branch of philosophy concerning moral principles that define what is good or bad for individuals and society. It deals with topics like how to live a good life, rights and responsibilities, and determining what is right and wrong. There are different approaches to ethics such as metaethics, which examines the nature of moral judgments, and normative ethics, which evaluates what is morally right or wrong. While ethics provides tools for analyzing moral issues, it does not always give a single right answer, and individuals must make their own decisions in applying ethical principles to controversial topics.

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25 views

Introduction To Ethics (Brief Reading)

Ethics is a branch of philosophy concerning moral principles that define what is good or bad for individuals and society. It deals with topics like how to live a good life, rights and responsibilities, and determining what is right and wrong. There are different approaches to ethics such as metaethics, which examines the nature of moral judgments, and normative ethics, which evaluates what is morally right or wrong. While ethics provides tools for analyzing moral issues, it does not always give a single right answer, and individuals must make their own decisions in applying ethical principles to controversial topics.

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Ethics: a general introduction

Ethics are a system of moral principles and a branch of philosophy which defines what is good for
individuals and society.

What is ethics?

At its simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how people make decisions and
lead their lives. Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also
described as moral philosophy. The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean
custom, habit, character or disposition. Ethics covers the following dilemmas:

 how to live a good life


 our rights and responsibilities
 the language of right and wrong
 moral decisions - what is good and bad?
Our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and cultures. They infuse
debates on topics like abortion, human rights and professional conduct. Approaches to ethics
Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas: metaethics, normative ethics
and applied ethics.
 Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement. It looks at the origins and meaning of
ethical principles.
 Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for
what is right or wrong.
 Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishment
What use is ethics?
If ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way human beings behave.
Some philosophers think that ethics does do this. They argue that if a person realises that it would
be morally good to do something then it would be irrational for that person not to do it. But human
beings often behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head suggests a
different course of action
Ethics is concerned with other people. However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about
moral issues.
 Ethics can provide a moral map
Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters.
Because these are such emotional issues we often let our hearts do the arguing while our
brains just go with the flow. But there's another way of tackling these issues, and that's
where philosophers can come in - they offer us ethical rules and principles that enable us to
take a cooler view of moral problems. So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework
that we can use to find our way through difficult issues.
 Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement
Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue can often find that
what they disagree about is just one particular part of the issue, and that they broadly agree
on everything else. That can take a lot of heat out of the argument, and sometimes even hint
at a way for them to resolve their problem. But sometimes ethics doesn't provide people
with the sort of help that they really want.
 Ethics doesn't give right answers
Ethics doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems. Indeed more and more
people think that for many ethical issues there isn't a single right answer - just a set of
principles that can be applied to particular cases to give those involved some clear choices.
Some philosophers go further and say that all ethics can do is eliminate confusion and clarify
the issues. After that it's up to each individual to come to their own conclusions.
 Ethics can give several answers
Many people want there to be a single right answer to ethical questions. They find moral
ambiguity hard to live with because they genuinely want to do the 'right' thing, and even if
they can't work out what that right thing is, they like the idea that 'somewhere' there is one
right answer. But often there isn't one right answer - there may be several right answers, or
just some least worst answers - and the individual must choose between them. For others
moral ambiguity is difficult because it forces them to take responsibility for their own
choices and actions, rather than falling back on convenient rules and customs.
Ethics and people:
 Ethics is about the 'other'
At the heart of ethics is a concern about something or someone other than ourselves and our own
desires and self-interest. Ethics is concerned with other people's interests, with the interests of
society, with God's interests, with "ultimate goods", and so on. So when a person 'thinks ethically'
they are giving at least some thought to something beyond themselves.
 Ethics as source of group strength
One problem with ethics is the way it's often used as a weapon. If a group believes that a
particular activity is "wrong" it can then use morality as the justification for attacking those
who practice that activity. When people do this, they often see those who they regard as
immoral as in some way less human or deserving of respect than themselves; sometimes
with tragic consequences.
 Good people as well as good actions
Ethics is not only about the morality of particular courses of action, but it's also about the
goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life. Virtue Ethics is particularly
concerned with the moral character of human beings.
Searching for the source of right and wrong
At times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could be solved in one of two ways:

 by discovering what God wanted people to do


 by thinking rigorously about moral principles and problems

If a person did this properly they would be led to the right conclusion. But now even philosophers
are less sure that it's possible to devise a satisfactory and complete theory of ethics - at least not one
that leads to conclusions. Modern thinkers often teach that ethics leads people not to conclusions
but to 'decisions'. In this view, the role of ethics is limited to clarifying 'what's at stake' in particular
ethical problems.

Philosophy can help identify the range of ethical methods, conversations and value systems that can
be applied to a particular problem. But after these things have been made clear, each person must
make their own individual decision as to what to do, and then react appropriately to the
consequences.

Are ethical statements objectively true?

Do ethical statements provide information about anything other than human opinions and
attitudes?
 Ethical realists think that human beings discover ethical truths that already have an
independent existence.
 Ethical non-realists think that human beings invent ethical truths.
The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many different ethical codes and moral
beliefs. So if there are real ethical truths out there (wherever!) then human beings don't seem to
be very good at discovering them. One form of ethical realism teaches that ethical properties
exist independently of human beings, and that ethical statements give knowledge about the
objective world. To put it another way; the ethical properties of the world and the things in it
exist and remain the same, regardless of what people think or feel - or whether people think or
feel about them at all. On the face of it, it [ethical realism] means the view that moral qualities
such as wrongness, and likewise moral facts such as the fact that an act was wrong, exist in
rerum natura, so that, if one says that a certain act was wrong, one is saying that there existed,
somehow, somewhere, this quality of wrongness, and that it had to exist there if that act were
to be wrong.

BBC - Ethics - Introduction to ethics: Ethics: a general introduction.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro_1.shtml

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