ETHICS

Ethics
 branch of philosophy that studies morality or the rightness or wrongness of human conduct
 stands to queries about why there is a reason to do
 dealing with human actions and reasons for action, it also concerned with character
 derived from Greek ethos, which means character (plural: manners)
 also called Moral Philosophy
 it evaluates moral concepts, values, principles, and standards
 considered as normative study of human actions because it is concerned with human conduct
Morality – speaks a code or system of behavior in regards to standards of right or wrong behavior

Ethics and morality necessarily carry the concept of moral standards or rules with regard to behavior.

I. The Importance of Rules to Social Being

Rules
 refer to explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a specific activity or sphere
 it tells us what is/isn’t allowed in a particular context or situation
 serve as a foundation for any healthy society
 without rules, society would likely fall into anarchy
Rules benefit social beings in various manners:
a. Rules protect social being by regulating behavior – build boundaries that place limits on behavior
b. Rules help to guarantee each person certain rights and freedom – each person is guaranteed certain rights as
the government is limited in its power to ensure that it does not become powerful enough to suppress liberty
c. Rules produce a sense of justice among social beings – needed in order to keep the strong from dominating the
weak, that is, to prevent exploitation and domination
d. Rules are essential for a healthy economic system – without rules regulating business, power would centralize
around monopolies and threaten the strength and competitiveness of the system

II. Moral vs. Non-moral Standards

Moral Standard
 concerned with or relating to human behavior, especially the distinction between good and bad behavior
 involve the rules people have the kinds of actions they believe are morally right and wrong, as well as the values
they place on the kinds of objects they believe are morally good and bad
Non-moral Standards
 refers to rules that are unrelated to moral or ethical considerations
 either these standards are not necessarily linked to morality or by nature lack ethical sense
 basic example includes rules of etiquette, fashion standards, rules in games, and various house rules
The following characteristics of moral standards further differentiate them from non-moral standards:
a. Moral standards involve serious wrong or significant benefits – deals with matters which can seriously impact,
injure or benefit human beings
b. Moral standards ought to be preferred to other values – if the moral standard states that a person has the moral
obligation to do something, the he/she is supposed to do that even if it conflicts with other non-moral standards,
and even with self-interest
c. Moral standards are not established by authority figures
 d. Moral standards have the trait of universalizability – entails that moral principles must apply to all who are in the
relevantly similar situation
e. Moral standards are based on impartial considerations – moral standard doesn’t evaluate standards on the basis
of the interests of a certain person or group, but one that goes beyond personal interests to a universal standpoint in
which each person’s interests are impartially counted as equal
f. Moral standards are associated with special emotions and vocabulary – these moral standards are generally put
forth as injunction or imperatives

III. Dilemma and Moral Dilemma

Dilemma – refers to a situation in which a tough choice has to be made between two or more options, especially more or
less equally undesirable ones; not all dilemma are moral dilemmas
Moral Dilemmas (ethical dilemmas) – situations in which a difficult choice has to be made between two courses of
actions, either of which entails transgressing a moral principle; involves conflicts between moral requirements

IV. Three Levels of Moral Dilemmas

a. Personal Dilemmas – experienced and resolved in personal level

b. Organizational Dilemmas – refer to ethical cases encountered and resolved by social organizations; includes
moral dilemmas in business, medical field, and public sector
c. Structural Dilemmas – refer to cases involving network of institutions and operative theoretical paradigms

V. “Only human beings can be ethical”

a. Only human beings are rational, autonomous, and self-conscious – believed to confer a full and equal moral
status to those that possess them as these beings are the only one capable of achieving certain values and goods
b. Only human beings can act morally and immorally – only beings that can act morally can be required to
sacrifice their interests for the sake of others
c. Only human beings are part of the moral community – only human beings can possess or practice values such
as love, honor, social relationships, forgiveness, compassion, and altruism

VI. Freedom as a Foundation of Morality

One of the reasons why animals cannot be ethical is that they are not really autonomous or free. Likewise, a
robot, no matter how beneficial its functions may be, cannot be said to be moral, for it has no freedom or choice but to
work according to what is commanded based on its built-in program.
Basically, morality is a question of choice. Morality, practically, is choosing ethical codes, values, or standards to
guide us in our daily lives. Philosophically, choosing is impossible without freedom. Morality requires and allows choice,
which means the right to choose even differently from our fellows.

VII. Minimum Requirement for Morality: Reason and Impartiality

The late Philosophy professor James Rachel holds that moral judgements must be backed by sound reasoning and
that morality requires the impartial consideration of all parties involved. It is thus submitted that reason and impartiality
compose the “minimum conception” of morality or, as some put it, the minimum requirement for morality.

Reason
  a requirement for morality that entails that human feelings may be important in ethical decisions, but they ought
to be guided by a reason
 sound reasoning helps us to evaluate whether our feelings and intuitions about moral cases are correct and
defensible
Impartiality
 involves the idea that each individual’s interests and point of view are equally important
 also called evenhandedness or fair-mindedness
 a principle of justice holding that decisions ought to be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias,
prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons

LESSON 1: CULTURE IN MORAL BEHAVIOR

I. Culture: Some Definitions
Culture
 it refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies,
religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions
acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving
 it consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting
the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts
 it is the sum total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of
that people and are transmitted from generation to generation
 in its broadest sense, it is a cultivated behavior: the totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which
is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning
 a symbolic communication; some of its symbols include a group’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and
motives

II. Culture’s Role in Moral Behavior

A culture is a ‘way of life’ of a group of people that actually includes moral values and behaviors, along with
knowledge, beliefs, symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by
communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Culture is learned as children grow up in society and discover how their parents and others around them interpret
the world. In our society, we learn to distinguish objects, recognize attributes, and even evaluate what is (morally) good
and bad and to judge when an unusual action is appropriate or inappropriate.
Many aspects of morality are taught. People learn moral aspects of right or wrong from transmitters of culture:
respective parents, teachers, novels, films, and television. Observing or watching them, people develop a set of ideas of
what is right and wrong, and what is acceptable and what is not.
Social Learning – the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from others in the groups to which they belong as
a normal part of childhood
Enculturation (socialization) – process by which infants and children socially learn the culture, including morality, of
those around them

III. ‘Moral Standards as Social Convention’ and the Social Conditioning Theory
Among the popular notions which attempts to give account for basic concepts in Ethics, such as the existence of
moral rules, the sense of moral obligation, and the moral accountability, are the so-called social convention and social
conditioning theories.
Social Convention Theory
 things we regard as moral laws
 things agreed upon by people, like through their authorities
 refers to the usual or customary ways through which things are done within a group
Social Conditioning Theory
 claims that the demand of conscience is also due to society
 can be observed that when one says that a particular action ought not to be done, he/she is not simply echoing
social approval or disapproval

IV. Cultural Relativism in Ethics

Cultural Relativism
 a theory in ethics which holds that ethical judgements have their origins either in individual or cultural standards
 recognized standard is the particular agent
 the most dominant form of moral relativism
 defines moral as what is socially approved by the majority in a particular culture
Moral Relativism
 fundamentally believes that no act is good or bad objectively, and there is no single objective universal standard
through which we can evaluate the truth of moral judgements
 considered basis is a given society

V. Cultural Relativism: An Analysis

VI. Asian Moral Understanding
VII. Filipino Moral Character: Strengths and Weaknesses
VIII. Universal Values