INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS

Morality
∙ Refers to beliefs concerning right and wrong (Deontic
Concepts), good and bad (Value concepts), beliefs that can
include judgments, values, rules, principles, and theories.

•This address the powerful question that Socrates formulated

24,000 years ago: “How ought we to live?’’
Ethics is concerned with values – moral values

▪ Through sifting and weighing of moral values we

determine what the most important things are in our lives.

▪ What is worth living for and what is worth dying for.

▪ We decide what is the greatest good, what goals we

should pursue in life, what virtues we should cultivate,
what duties we should or should not fulfil, what values we
should put on human life, and what pain and perils we
should be willing to endure for notions such as the
common good, justice, and rights.
Relevance of ethics in our time
▪ Does it matter whether the
present government executes
drug addicts, suspected terrorist
(activists)?
▪ Does it matter whether scientists or
the few powerful people in the world
created virus or contagious disease
just to kill or eliminate the weak and
vulnerable people in the world?
Relevance of ethics in our time
Does it matter if students are Does it matter whether our
cheating during the exams or men in uniform or police
committed dishonesty in their officers tortured suspected
philosophy paper? drug addicts?
Does it matter whether we
Does it matter whether our
regard the terrorists who
doctors or medical practitioners
kidnap, rape and killed
can save people infected by
innocent people in Mindanao
corona virus but casually
as heroes or as murderers?
decide not to?
Relevance of ethics in our time
Do these actions and a
Does it matter whether young million others just as
girls/students being rape and controversial matter at
murdered by criminals? all?

If these matters to us, then, ethics matters, because

these are ethical concerns requiring careful reflection
using concepts and reasoning peculiar to ethics.
 Can we take the easy we out or not to think deeply or
not to systematically be concerned about all these
issues? Can there be consequences?
The no – question
It undermines our
approach increases the
personal freedom
chances that your
responses to moral
Can we just accept the moral
dilemmas or
beliefs handed down to us
contradictions will be
without critically examining
incomplete, confused, or
them?
mistaken.
Solving these problems requires
intellectual tools to critically evaluate
and re – evaluate existing moral
beliefs.

To not do ethics is to stay locked in

a kind of intellectual limbo, where
exploration in ethics and personal
moral progress are barely possible.
Paul Taylor says “that by just embracing
morality bequeathed to him by society we
will be left behind and not be able to defend
our beliefs by rational arguments against
criticism.” This led us from confusion into
disillusioned about morality.

Unable to give an objective, reasoned

justification for his own convictions, he
may turn from dogmatic certainty to total
scepticism, a short step to an amoral life.
 Easy roads in ethics
includes:
You can establish your moral beliefs
Subjectivism by simply consulting your feelings or
emotions.
What a person believes or
Subjective relativism approves of determines the
rightness and wrongness of
actions.
Ethics does not give us a royal road
to moral truth. Instead, it shows us
how to ask critical questions about
morality and systematically seek
answers supported by good reasons.
 Many of the questions in ethics are
among the toughest we can ever
ask like:

Is the moral principle

What makes an action “never lie” valid?
right or wrong?
Should an action be judge
by its consequences or by
the kind of action it is? Can a war ever be just?
Is this moral
argument sound?
 Many of the questions in ethics are
among the toughest we can ever
ask like:

Is capital punishment
Is morality based on ever permissible?
religion?
Is it permissible to break a
promise in order to save a
person’s life? Were his intentions
Do animals and good?
nature have rights?
 The Ethical Landscape
Moral philosophy suggests,
ethics is a branch of
philosophy. Philosophy is Science also studies
the systematic use of critical morality, but not in the way
reasoning to answer the that moral philosophy does.
most fundamental questions
in life. Moral philosophy,
obviously, tries to answer
the fundamental questions
of morality.
 Descriptive ethics
A scientific study of moral beliefs The focus of moral
and practices. Its aim is to philosophy is not what
describe and explain how people people actually believe
and do, but what they
actually behave and think when
should believe and do.
dealing with moral issues and
concepts. This kind of empirical The point of inquiry is to
research is usually conducted by determine what actions
sociologists, anthropologists, and are right/wrong and what
psychologists. things are good/bad.
 Major Divisions in ethics

NORMATIVE ETHICS
METAETHICS

APPLIED ETHICS
 Normative ethics We do normative
ethics when we use
The study of the The ultimate purpose critical reasoning to
principles, rules, or of doing normative demonstrate that a
theories that guide our ethics is to try to moral principle is
actions and judgments. establish the justified, or that a
Refers to norms, or soundness of moral professional conduct
standards, of norms, especially the is contradictory or
judgement – in this norms embodied in a that of a proposed
case, norms for comprehensive moral moral theory is better
judging rightness and system, or theory. than another.
goodness.
 METAETHICS

The study of the meaning and logical structure of moral

belief. It asks not whether an action is right or whether a
person’s character is good. It takes a step back from the
concerns and asks more fundamental questions about
them.
 METAETHICS

What does it mean Is good the same How can a moral

for an action to be thing as desirable? principle be
right? justified?

To do normative ethics, we must assume

certain things about the meaning of moral
Is there such a terms and the logical relations among them.
thing as moral But the job of metaethics is to question all
truth? these assumptions, to see if they really make
sense.
 APPLIED ETHICS
The application of moral norms to specific moral
issues or cases, particularly those in a
profession such as medicine or law.
Did the doctor do right in
performing that abortion? Was it right for the journalist
to distort her reporting to aid
Is it morally permissible a particular side in the war?
for scientists to perform
Questions like these drive the
experiments on people search for answers in applied
without their consent? ethics.
 In every division of ethics, we
must be careful to distinguish
Instrumentally Values between values and
or extrinsically obligations
good

Intrinsically Obligation
good
Moral traits of moral principle

Shares this trait with all

normative discourse and is
Prescriptivity
used to appraise behavior,
assign praise and blame,
and produce feelings of
satisfaction or guilt.
 • Moral principles must apply to all
people who are in a relevantly
Universalizability similar situation. This trait is an
extension of the principle of
consistency.

• Universalizability applies to all

evaluative judgments. If I say that
X is a good Y, then I am logically
committed to judge that anything
relevantly similar to X is a good
Y.
 Moral principles have
Overridingness predominant authority and
override other kinds of
principles.
 A moral principle must have
practicability, which means that it
must be workable and its rules must
Practicality not lay a heavy burden on us when
we follow them.

Accordingly, most ethical systems

take human limitations into
consideration.
 • Moral principles must be made
public in order to guide our
actions.
Publicity
• Publicity is necessary because
we use principles to prescribe
behavior, give advice, and assign
praise and blame. It would be
self-defeating to keep them a
secret.
 Domains of ethical assessment
Action
a. An obligatory act is one that morality
A right act is an requires you to do; it is not permissible for
act that is you to refrain from doing it.
permissible for
you to do. It may b. An optional act is one that is neither
obligatory nor wrong to do. It is not your
be either (a)
duty to do it, nor is it your duty not to do it.
obligatory or (b) Neither doing it nor not doing it would be
optional wrong.
 Domains of ethical assessment
A wrong act is one Within the range of permissible
you have an acts is the notion of
obligation, or a duty, supererogatory acts, or highly
to refrain from altruistic acts. These acts are
doing: It is an act neither required nor obligatory,
you ought not to do; but they exceed what morality
it is not permissible requires, going “beyond the call
to do it of duty.”
 Domains of ethical assessment
A wrong act is one Within the range of permissible
you have an acts is the notion of
obligation, or a duty, supererogatory acts, or highly
to refrain from altruistic acts. These acts are
doing: It is an act neither required nor obligatory,
you ought not to do; but they exceed what morality
it is not permissible requires, going “beyond the call
to do it of duty.”
 Domains of ethical assessment
One important kind of ethical theory that emphasizes
the nature of the act is called deontological (from the
Greek word deon, meaning “duty”).

These theories hold that something is inherently right

or good about such acts as truth telling and promise
keeping and inherently wrong or bad about such acts
as lying and promise breaking.
 Domains of ethical assessment

Perhaps the leading proponent of

deontological ethics in recent centuries is
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who defended
a principle of moral duty that he calls the
categorical imperative: “Act only on that
maxim whereby you can at the same time
will that it would become a universal law.”
 Domains of ethical assessment
Consequences
Ethical theories that focus primarily on consequences in
determining moral rightness and wrongness are called
teleological ethics (from the Greek telos, meaning “goal
directed”). The most famous of these theories is
utilitarianism, set forth by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), which requires us to do
what is likeliest to have the best consequences. In Mill’s
words, “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to
promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the
reverse of happiness.”
Domains of ethical assessment
Character
Moral philosophers call such good character traits
virtues and bad traits vices. Entire theories of morality
have been developed from these notions and are called
virtue theories.

The classic proponent of virtue theory was Aristotle

(384–322 BCE), who maintained that the development
of virtuous character traits is needed to ensure that we
habitually act rightly.
Domains of ethical assessment

Motive

Full moral description of any act

will take motive into account as
a relevant factor.
THANKS!
(a) Pojman, L. and J. Fieser. Ethics: Discovering right and
wrong. (USA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2012), pp.
1-13.

(b) Rachel J. & Stuart Rachels. The Elements of Moral

Philosophy. 7th Edition. (USA: Mc Graw – Hill, 2010), pp.
1 – 13.

(c) Vaughn, Lewis. Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and

Contemporary Issues. 3rd Edition. (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2013), pp. 3 – 8.