ETHICS

KM, MA
• Ethics, or moral philosophy, may be defined in
a provisional way, as the scientific study of
moral judgments. (The practical science of the
morality of the human conduct)
• Fundamental issues of practical decision
making.
• Major concerns: the nature of the ultimate
value and the standards by which humans can
be judged right or wrong.
• The Greek word ethos which can mean custom,
habit, character, or disposition.
• Morality can be defined as the standards that an
individual or a group has about what is right
• Morality is often defined in one of two ways:
– Normative Ethics (prescriptive): actions are
judged by their merits, allowing societies to
develop codes of conduct or behavior. (How
should people act?)
• GOLDEN RULE
• If your actions to another person align with how
you want to be treated, they are moral.
• Try and define how people should act.
– Descriptive Ethics: What do people think is
moral?
• Does not actually claim that things are right or
wrong, but simply studies how individuals or
societies define their morals.
• What makes something right or wrong in a
specific culture?
• Descriptive ethics defines morals in terms of
their cultural or personal significance.
– Morals are seen as a part of a greater system that is
not objective or unbiased but is created by a
culture, like language.
– Objective
– subjective
• Normative: adjective which comes from "norm." norm:
means standard, or rule, or principle, as opposed to
what is "normal" for people to do, that is, what they
actually do.
• For example, the rules of mathematics are normative
because reasoning can be assessed against these rules
and judged correct or incorrect, irrespective of
whether this usage is the normal usage. If everyone
were to calculate:
– 3 + 3 = 33---a mistake,
• Misunderstanding the rules (norms) of
mathematics. So even if this mistake is "normal," a
normative appraisal would hold everyone's actual
thinking to the rule which legislates how they ought to
think, and judge it incorrect.
• Normative ethics is concerned with moral
norms.
• A moral norm is a norm in the sense of
being a standard with which moral agents
ought to comply.
• "Thou shall not murder" is an example of
a moral norm: It is meant to guide our
actions, and to the extent that people do
not comply, we may be judged morally—
that is, morally blamed. This is then the
meaning of a moral norm.
• Two central concepts of normative (prescriptive) ethics:
– The right and the morally good.
– The concept of the right is: (verb)
• the concept of duty,
• the concept of which actions we ought to perform, which it
would be wrong not to perform.
• The concept of the morally good (adj.), a target of the
theory of value, or axiology (Greek: axios = worth; logos =
study of),
– refers to morally good properties of human beings.
– Virtuous character traits such as kindness, courage and
honesty are examples of states that are generally thought
to be morally good.
– the term "right" is usually reserved for actions,
– the "morally good" is for states of character, including
motives.
– Normative ethics is interested in both: It aims to determine
which actions are right, and which states of character are
morally good.
• Which actions are right?
– The central question of normative ethics involves asking
which actions fall into the category of the right and
the category of the wrong. This is called the theory of
right action.
– The theory of right action is an investigation and an
attempt to answer the question:
• "What ought I to do?"
• "What is the right thing to do?"
• Besides the already mentioned terms, "right,"
"wrong," and "ought," other important normative
concepts relating to action include "obligatory,"
"forbidden," "permissible," and "required."
• Theory of right action: concept of right
• Theory of virtue: concept of morally good
• Theory of virtue Theory of value
• A normative theory aims to answer the question of
"what makes actions right or wrong."
• This usually amounts to drawing out basic principles as
standards of right action.
• These basic principles may be employed as a moral
guide to human beings in their lives, deciding whether
particular courses of action—or particular types of
action—are right or wrong.
• The principle of utility in utilitarianism, for example, is a
fundamental moral principle according to which right
actions are those that maximize happiness.
• In Kantianism, the categorical imperative is such a
fundamental principle from which right actions are
derived as duties.
• Which states of character are morally good?
– What states of character are desirable, or morally good.
– Here normative ethics attempts to answer the question: "What sort
of person ought I to be?" This is called the theory of virtue, or
virtue ethics.
– The focus of this aspect of normative ethics is character. A virtue is
a morally desirable state of character such as courage.
– The theory of virtue is directed not at what actions one ought to do,
but what person one should be. What is a virtuous person like?
What is a vicious person like?
– What makes traits of character virtuous or vicious?
– Virtue ethics emphasizes an individual’s character as the key
element of ethical thinking.
– A virtue is an excellent trait of character. It is moral excellence. A
trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as
a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are
characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual
greatness.
o Important concepts for the theory of virtue include terms such as good,
bad, virtuous, vicious, honest, courageous, and praiseworthy.
o Only good people can make good moral decisions.
o The best way to be moral is to constantly seek to improve oneself.
• a theory of right action aims to specify which
actions are right,
• a theory of virtue should specify the virtues, that
is, traits of character it is good or bad to possess.
– It should say, for example, that courage is a virtue, and cowardice a
vice.
– It should explain why we should think of traits like these as
virtues or vices.
– The form of this justification might be: Courage is a virtue because
it tends to bring benefits to other people. Here again, the state of
character is assessed against a basic normative principle, namely,
that it is right to bring benefits to other people.
• Descriptive ethics investigates the attitudes of
individuals or groups of people. (comparative ethics)
• What ought to be noted is that culture is
generational and not static. Therefore, a new
generation will come with its own set of morals and
that qualifies to be their ethics. Descriptive ethics will
hence try to oversee whether ethics still holds its
place.
• It would be describing the norms or ethical systems
used in a given geographical locale or a given culture.
• it simply involves describing how people behave
and/or what sorts of moral standards they claim to
follow.
• Descriptive ethics is about what
motivates pro-social behavior, how people
reason about ethics, what people believe
to have overriding importance, and how
societies regulate behavior (such as by
punishing people for doing certain actions).
• We know that empathy helps motivate pro-
social behavior (such as giving to charity)
and we know that our beliefs about what
has overriding importance is somewhat
based on the culture we live in.
 Cultural relativism
• The ability to understand the culture on its own terms
and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s
own culture.
• Culture: derived from the Latin word “cultura” or
“cultus” which means care or cultivation.
• Culture as cultivation implies that every human being is
a potential member of his own social group.
• He cannot develop inborn talents without other people.
• His accomplishments not only help him achieve self-
actualization but also make him/her a contributing
member of society.
 Man as Moral Agent
• The idea of moral agency
• Moral Agent is a being capable of acting with reference to right
and wrong.
 An intelligent being who has choices and the power to choose.
 Moral action- an action that springs from choice, and is not
necessitated either by mental propulsions or external
circumstances: Intelligent, free, accountable.
 Instinctive Action- the result of an undeviating and unfailing
but blind propulsion.
 Divine Action- which though certain as instinct, is yet in the
fullest sense intelligent and free.
 It does not necessarily mean that they are successfully making
moral decisions. It means that they are in a category that
enables them to be blamed.
 To be blamed: to have rights and duties.
• Must be a living creature.
• Must be able to comprehend abstract moral
principles and apply them to decision making.
• Must have self-consciousness, memory, moral
principles, other values
• Reasoning faculty– devise plans for achieving his
objectives, to weight alternatives, and so on.
• What you will learn and gain from conforming to your
principles.
• Advantages and disadvantages of violating your
moral principles.
• A moral agent lives in a society with others who they
consider to have moral rights.
 Why Study Ethics?
• His understanding of moral problems will be
widened
• His critical faculties will be trained
• It will enable a person to understand better
what his conscience is, how he acquired it,
how far he is likely to be able to trust to its
deliverances with safety, and how he can
improve it and make it more intelligent.
• Self-realizations.
• A being capable of moral agency is one who
possesses the means of judging rightly, and
power to act accordingly; but whether he
will do so or not, depends on the voluntary
exercise of his faculties.
• Ethics is concerned with other people’s
interest, with the interest of the society, with
God’s interest, with “ultimate goods”, and so
on.