Reviewer in Ethics:

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

ETYMOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHY

•Derived from the Greek words “Phylos” meaning “to love” and “Sophia” meaning “Wisdom”.

PHILOSOPHY

•Philosophy literally means ‘love of wisdom’. It is an attempt to arrive at a rational conception of

the reality as a whole. It enquires into the nature of the universe in which we live, the nature of
the human soul, and its destiny, and the nature of God or the Absolute, and their relation to one
another.

Other Definitions of Philosophy

•It enquires into the nature of matter, time, space, causality, evolution, life, and mind, and their
relation to one another. It is the art of thinking all things logically, systematically, and
persistently. It is the art of thinking rationally and systematically of the reality as a whole.
• Plato rightly conceived of philosophy as the persistent attempt to seek clear notions.
•It examines, clarifies, and explains popular and scientific concepts of matter, space, time,
causality, evolution, mechanism, teleology, life, mind or soul, God or the Absolute, right and
wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, arid the like, and arrives at a rational conception of
the reality. Clarification of concepts is the task of philosophy.
 It is the critical analysis of the popular and scientific concepts, and the discovery of their
relations to one another. It is a rational attempt to integrate our knowledge and interpret
and unify our experiences. 
 Philosophy is the rational attempt to have a world-view. It endeavors to reach a
conception of the entire universe with all its elements and aspects and their interrelations
to one another. It is not contented with a partial view of the world. It seeks to have a
synoptic view of the whole reality it tries to have a vision, of the whole. The different
sciences deal with different departments of the world.
 Philosophy is regarded now more as an interpretation of human life, its source, value,
meaning, and destiny, than as an enquiry into the nature of the world, soul, and God. It
tries to understand the universe in relation to man.

WHY IS PHILOSOPHY IMPORTANT?

1) Philosophy can give us wisdom;

2) Philosophy can also help people makes important decisions about the use of new technology
such as bioengineering, stem cells, etc. Philosophy may prove to be a more helpful guide since
philosophy grows organically with new knowledge while religion tends to be more tied to the
past.
3) Philosophy is also a strong foundation on which to build important personal things such as
career, faith, and relationships. 
4) Philosophy can help people live more purposeful and fulfilled lives.

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE   BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY 

METAPHYSICS
 Is everything real? How can I know that something is real? 
 Am I knowledgeable? Do I know everything? How do I know what I know? Am I doing
things right? How can I be sure that I’m not doing the wrong things? What is beauty? Is
beauty subjective? 

Metaphysics – is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world.
Metaphysics philosophers wrestle with such questions as:
Is there a God?
What is Truth?
Do people have free wills?
What is person? What makes person the same through time?
EPISTEMOLOGY
 Am I knowledgeable?
 Do I know everything? How do I know what I know?
 Am I doing things right?
 How can I be sure that I’m not doing the wrong things?
 What is beauty? Is beauty subjective? 

Epistemology – The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (including
limitations) of knowledge. It addresses four main questions.
Typical questions of concern in epistemology are:
What is knowledge?
Do we know anything at all?
How do we know what we know?
Can we be justified in claiming to know?

Ethics & Aesthetics = Value Theory

 Am I doing things right? How can I be sure that I’m not doing the wrong things?
 What is beauty? Is beauty subjective?
VALUE THEORY

Ethics/Axiology – also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy which seeks to

address questions about morality; that is, about concepts like good and bad, right and wrong,
justice, virtue, etc.
• The ethicists attempts to answer such questions as:
What is good? What makes action of people good?
What is right? What makes action right?
Is morality subjective or objective?
Aesthetics – is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty,
art, taste, and the creation and appreciation of beauty.
It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensory- emotional values, sometimes
called judgments of sentiment and taste
METAPHYSICS
EPISTEMOLOGY
ETHICS
AESTHETICS
LOGIC
LOGIC - is the study of reasoning. Logic is often divided into two parts, inductive reasoning, and
deductive reasoning. The first is drawing general conclusions from specific examples, the
second is drawing logical conclusions from definitions and axioms.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
• is the study of concepts such as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a
legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what makes a
government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should
take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government if any,
and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever.
Lesson 2: Key Concept in Ethics
Ethics/Epistemology- Derived from the Greek word ethos, which means “character”, or, in
plural, “manners.
Ethics-
 is the branch of philosophy that studies morality or the rightness or wrongness of human conduct.
Morality speaks of a code system of behavior in regards to standards of right or wrong behavior.
 Also called ‘moral philosophy’, ethics evaluates moral concepts, values, principles, and
standards. Because it is concerned with norms of human conduct, ethics is considered a
normative study of human actions.
WHY DO YOU THINK RULES ARE IMPORTANT?
Rules - It refers to explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a
specific activity or sphere. (“Rule,” n.d.). Rules tell us what is dor not allowed in a particular
context or situation. It also serves as a foundation for any healthy society.
The Importance of Rules to Social Beings
a) Rules protect social beings by regulating behavior. Rules build boundaries that place
limits on behavior. One of the reasons people follow accepted rules is to avoid negative
consequences.
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. Rules on divisions of power and checks and
balances further protect individual liberty.
c) Rules produce a sense of justice among social beings. Rules are needed to keep the
strong from dominating the weak, that is, to prevent exploitation and domination. In effect, rules
generate a stable system that provides justice, in which even the richest and most powerful
have limitations ion what they can do. If they transgress rules and such laws and ordinances
and take advantage of people, there are consequences both socially and criminally.
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. Rules are needed to ensure product safety, employee safety, and product quality.
MORALITY- Refers to the standards that a person or a group has about what is right and
wrong, or good and evil.
MORAL STANDARD vs NON- MORAL STANDARD
MORAL STANDARD - are those concerned with or relating to human behavior, especially the
distinction between good and bad (or right and wrong) behavior. It involves the rules people
have about the kind of actions they believe are morally right and wrong, as well as the values
they place on the kinds of objects they believe is morally good and morally bad.
NON- MORAL STANDARD- Refer 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 examples of non-moral standards include rules of etiquette, fashion standards, rules in
games, and various house rules. Technically, religious rules, some traditions, and legal statutes
(i.e. laws and ordinances) are non-moral principles, though they can be ethically relevant
depending on some factors and contexts.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARD
Moral standards involve serious wrongs or significant benefits.
Moral standards ought to be preferred to other values
Moral standards are not established by authority figures
Moral standards have the trait of universalizability
Moral standards are based on impartial considerations.
Moral standards are associated with special emotions and vocabulary
LESSON 3: 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 dilemmas are moral
dilemmas.
 Also called ‘ethical dilemmas,’ moral dilemmas are situations in which a difficult choice
has to be made between two courses of action, either of which entails transgressing a
moral principle. At the very least, a moral dilemma involves conflicts between moral
requirements.
Key features of a moral dilemma
A. The agent is required to do each of two (or more) actions;
B. The agent can do each of the actions, but the agent cannot do both (or all) of the
actions.
Three levels of moral Dilemmas
Personal dilemmas- are those experienced and resolved on a personal level. Since may
ethical decisions are personally made, many, if not most of, moral dilemmas fall under, or boil
down to, this level.
Organizational dilemmas- refer to ethical cases encountered and resolved by social
organizations. This category includes moral dilemmas in business, the medical field, and the
public sector.
Structural dilemmas- refer to cases involving a network of institutions and operative theoretical
paradigms.
Only human beings can be ethical
A. Only human beings are rational, autonomous, ad self-conscious.
B. Only human beings can act morally or immorally.
C. Only human beings are part of the moral community.

LESSON 4: Culture in Moral Behaviour

DO YOU THINK CULTURE AFFECTS ONE’S MORAL BEHAVIOR? IN WHAT SENSE?

 Culture denotes the practices, beliefs, and perceptions of a given society.

 Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values,
attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relation, 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.
 Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups.
 • Culture is the totality of the learned behaviour of a group of people that are general
considered to be a tradition of the people and are transmitted from generation to generation’
• Culture is the totality of the person learned.
• Culture is symbolic communication.
Culture’s Role in Moral Behaviour

 A culture is a way of life of a group of people, and this so- called way of life includes
moral values and behaviours, along with knowledge, beliefs, symbols that accept.
 Many aspects of morality are taught. People learn morals and aspects of right or wrong
from transmitters of culture; respective parents, teachers, novels, films, and television.
 Anthropologically speaking, culture – including moral values, beliefs, and behaviour – is
learned from other people while growing up in a particular society or group.
 Social learning is the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from others in the
groups to which they belong, as a normal part of childhood.
“Moral Standards as Social Convention” and the Social Conditioning Theory
Among the popular notions which attempt to give account for the basic Concepts in Ethics, such
as the existence of moral rules, the sense of moral obligation, and moral accountability, are so-
called social conventions and social conditioning theories.
•A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social
norms, or criteria, often taking the form of a custom. In a social context, a convention may retain
the character of an "unwritten law" of custom.
•SOCIAL CONVENTIONS are those arbitrary rules and norms governing the countless
behaviors all of us engage in every day without necessarily thinking about them, from shaking
hands when greeting someone to driving on the right side of the road.
Concerning social conditioning theory it can be observed that when one says that a particular
action “ought or not ought” to be done, he/she is not simply echoing social approval or
disapproval.
Cultural Relativism in Ethics
• Cultural relativism is perhaps the most famous form of moral relativism, a theory in ethics
which holds that ethical judgment.
• 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 judgment.
• Moral relativism submits that different moral principles apply to different persons or groups of
individuals.
• The relativist theory is very much compatible with moral subjectivism. If the considered basis is
a given society, the relativist ideology is typically referred to as cultural relativism.
  Cultural relativism, the most dominant form of moral relativism, defines “moral” as what
is socially approved by the majority in a particular culture. It maintains that an act is
ethical in a culture that approved of it, but immoral in one that disapproves of it.

Cultural Relativism: An Analysis

• Valuable lessons from ethical relativism – The theory makes us understand that our feelings
and beliefs do not necessarily reflect the truth – they may be mere products of cultural
conditioning.
• The theory’s ethical faults – the theory “moral” simply means socially approved. Cultural
relativism discourages analytical thinking and independent decision-making in Ethics. Logically,
cultural relativism is inconsistent in promoting tolerance while teaching that no culture is morally
superior or more progressive than others.
Asian Moral Understanding
Because culture has a major impact on morality, people from different culture appears to have
seemingly, but not essentially, different sets of Ethics.
This table summarizes what are perceived as differences between Western and Eastern Ethics.
As indicated in the table, the basis Of Asian or Eastern Ethics is religion, specifically Eastern
religions or philosophers Confucianism, for instance, focuses on the cultivation of the virtue of
maintenance of morality, the most basic of which are ren (an obligation of altruism and
humaneness for another individual), Yi (the upholding of righteousness and the moral
disposition to do good), and li (a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person
should properly act in everyday life).
Filipino Moral Character: Strengths and Weaknesses
Filipino cultural morality, especially that which concerns social ethics, centers on ideally having
a “smooth interpersonal relationship” SIR with others. The definition of smooth interpersonal
relationships in the Philippines is principally supported by anchored on at least six basic Filipino
values.
1. Pakikisama
2. Hiya
4. Utang na Loob
3. Amor Propio 6. Respect to Elders
5. Filipino Hospitality
Universal Values
By universal values, we mean those values generally shared by culture. The existence of the
so-called universal values is strong proof that cultural relativism is wrong. If certain values exist
both in Western and Eastern cultures (including Filipino culture) despite the distance, then
cultural relativism’s claim that cultural moralities radically differ from each other is mistaken.