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Ethical
Theories

Meta Normative Applied Descriptive Pragmatic

Dutybased Consequential
Virtue
(Deontology) (Teleology)

Rights based Duty based Ethical Ethical

Utilitarianism
(John Locke) (Kantian) egoism Alturism

Act Hedonistic Rule

(Bentham) (Bentham) (JS Mill)

Values Values are a set of beliefs which help an individual, organisation or a society to make
preferences for certain things or in certain issues or events. Ex: tolerance, Empathy
Moral Values Moral values are those values which are guided by the conscience (inner voice). They are
individualistic in nature. They are set of beliefs or a mental construct driven by cognitive
(reason) and affective (emotions and feeling process) which help in making preferences about
what is good what is bad, what is right and what is wrong?
Moral Moral responsibility is not confined to the roles a person plays in a situation, rather it is based
responsibility on obligations, norms and duties that arise from moral considerations. It can extend beyond
the roles.
Ethics Ethics, being a branch of moral philosophy, deals with values which have societal
/organisational sanction. In restricted sense it can be termed as science which aims at rational
inquiry and justification of fundamental questions of what is good, what is bad, what is right
and what is wrong, from the society or organisational perspective.
Ethics is not individualistic rather it is societal in nature. Ethics can be defined as morality in
action. As ethics aims at establishing a system of rules or codes to regulate individual,
organisational or social behaviours and actions.
Meta ethics It deals with fundamental moral questions as what is good? Or what is bad? Rather than
something is good, bad, right and wrong.
Ø Moral naturalism: moral reasoning is based upon observation of natural facts like other
science disciplines.
Ø Moral intuitionism: all moral reasoning cannot be explained by mere observation of
natural facts, at least a part of it is based upon intuition or self-evident facts.
Ø Emotivism: moral judgements are often dominated by emotions rather than reason.
Ø Moral relativism: moral reasoning is cultural/contextual i.e. not universal and it is majorly
shaped by the customs and traditions of the society.
Ø Error theory: it states that all ordinary moral judgements are false as moral facts
themselves are non-existent.
Descriptive The branch of ethics that describes existing morality, including customs and habits, opinions
Ethics about good and evil, responsible and irresponsible behavior, and acceptable and unacceptable
action.
Normative ethics Normative refers to what ought to be? Rather than what is? Normative ethics deals with the
enquiry of good and bad, right and wrong based on what ought to be the good or right
conduct. i.e. morally ideal situation. It can be further divided into
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Ø Virtue ethics: virtue refers to a character of high moral standards. Virtue ethics define an
act as a morally ethical act simply because it confirms to the high moral character rather
than being a duty imperative or due to the consequence of the act.
Ø Duty ethics: the theory of duty based ethics provide a rational inquiry based upon the fact
whether one followed the duty or not irrespective of the consequences of the duty.
o Rights based: this approach treats duty as a right rather than as an obligation. The
main proponent of rights based duty ethics was John Locke, he argued that being
moral/ethical means respecting others rights.
o Kantian/duty imperatives: this approach treats duty as an obligation towards others
and oneself. It is propounded by Immanuel Kant. He emphasised a single principle of
duty. He referred to duty as a categorical imperative. (supreme duty which is
beyond personal desire or any other conditionality.)
Ø Consequential (Teleology): this ethical theory enquires the morality of an action based
upon its consequences alone. The subjective nature of virtue ethics theory and complexity
in defining duties of deontology gave rise to consequentialism. It can be subdivided as
o Ethical egoism
o Ethical altruism
o Utilitarianism: A type of consequentialism based on the utility principle. In
utilitarianism, actions are judged by the amount of pleasure and pain they bring
about. The action that brings the greatest happiness for the greatest number should be
chosen. (Mill considered the qualities of pleasure too.)
§ Act utilitarianism:
§ Hedonistic utilitarianism:
§ Rule utilitarianism:
Applied ethics
Ethical literacy Grasping the intricacies of complex ethical issues and to see all of the consequences of one’s
action
Ethical Be knowledgeable of ethical principles, recognise and promote constitutional principles of
competency equality & fairness, respect law, protect privileged information, embrace and promote ethical
behaviour, engage in ethical reasoning
Consequentialism Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of
one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that
conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from
acting) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence.
Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best action is the one that maximises
utility. "Utility" is defined in various ways, usually in terms of the well-being of sentient
entities. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the sum of all
pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action.
Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any
action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such
as egoism and altruism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all beings equally.
Act utilitarianism :JS Mill believed that rules should be broken if doing so lead to most good.
Rule Utilitarianism believes that moral rules are most important, as it will ultimately lead to
most good.
Hedonism is the belief that pleasure, or the absence of pain, is the most important principle in
determining the morality of a potential course of action.
Virtue ethics An ethical theory that focuses on the nature of the acting person. This theory indicates which
good or desirable characteristics people should have or develop to be moral.
The good life: The highest good or eudaimonia: a state of being in which one realizes one’s
uniquely human potential. According to Aristotle, the good life is the final goal of human
action. (This does not immediately mean the greatest state of happiness!)
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Each moral virtue (also referred to as a character virtue by Aristotle) holds a position of
equilibrium according to Aristotle. A moral virtue is the middle course between two
extremes of evil; courage is balanced between cowardice and recklessness for example,
generosity between stinginess and being a spendthrift, and pride between subservience and
arrogance.
Cardinal human Ø Prudence: practical wisdom
virtues Ø Temperance: self-control
Ø Courage
Ø Justice
Classification of Self-regarding virtues:
virtues Virtues of this class is conducive to the agent’s own good. The fundamental Virtue is
prudence or rational self-love ( with self-control ).
• Courage - Courage is the power of resisting the fear of pain. It is this which enables
the self to undergo present pains and dangers for the attainment of greater future
benefits and realisation of higher and more permanent ends.
• Temperance -Temperance is the power of resisting the allurement of pleasure.
• Industry and Perseverance - Perseverance is the power of carrying on a task under the
persecution of pains and obstructions.
It should be borne in mind that the above virtues are not to be wholly confined to the class of
self-regarding virtues, as they are often necessary for the good of others.
Other-regarding or Altruistic Virtues
The other-regarding virtues mean the tendencies of the self to regulate its conduct so as to
promote the good of others. They include -
• Justice or the willingness of giving each man his due. Justice consists in not hindering
the personal life of others. It is non-interference with the free development of other
persons. It is generally used in the sense of fairness, equity, impartiality
• Benevolence - Benevolence consists in helping and furthering the personal life of
others. It means sympathy, fellow- feeling and love.
Ideal - regarding Virtues -
The ideal regarding virtues include-
• The aspirations towards the intellectual ideal expressing themselves. In the pursuit of
truth i.e. sincerity, impartiality, concentration and accuracy.
• In the communication of truth i.e. veracity and candour
• In the application of truth i.e. wisdom and prudence.
Machiavelli He believed in use of power and force to govern.
• Consequential/teleological ethics
Immanuel Kant He is associated with the concept of duty (deontological ethics)
• Categorical imperatives: an Absolute unconditional requirement that must be obeyed
in all circumstances and is justified as an end in itself.
Jeremy Bentham He created a complete utilitarian code. This theory is based on the greatest happiness principle
or the principle of utility. His happiness concept was pleasure over pain.
John Stuart Mill He was proponent of refined form of utilitarianism. He claims that one of the strongest
objection to basic utilitarianism is draw from the idea of justice. He proposed two kind of
happiness.
Intellectual or moral principle is higher happiness and physical pleasure are lower.
Courage
Respect
Honesty
Integrity Integrity indicates soundness of moral principles, the character of uncorrupted virtues,
uprightness, honesty and sincerity. Integrity is needed to avoid situations which may give rise
to a conflict of interest.
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It is one of the self-directed virtues.
Intellectual Intellectual property is a class of property emanating primarily from the activities of the
property rights human intellect. Any property, movable or immovable, is legally protected to prevent it from
being stolen. Types of intellectual properties:
Ø Patents: these are legal rights granted for new inventions employing scientific and
technical knowledge. It is granted for a period of 20 years. Patents can be said to be most
common, important and complicated ones because of their techno-legal and the widest
and strongest legal protection one can secure.
o Utility patent: A utility patent is a patent that covers the creation of a new or
improved—and useful—product, process, or machine. A utility patent, also known as a
“patent for invention,” prohibits other individuals or companies from making, using, or
selling the invention without authorization. Utility patents are very valuable assets
because they give inventors exclusive commercial rights to producing and utilizing the
latest technology. In turn, utility patents are difficult to obtain. For one, they are hard
to write, the process may be time consuming and expensive to undertake, and their
complexity may make them difficult to understand.
o Design patent: safeguards its unique visual elements and requires only drawings of a
design accompanied by limited text. Design patents last for 14 years from the date of
filing and can be gotten on their own. To get both a utility patent and a design patent,
remember that the invention must be useful and serve some practical purpose, not just
decoration.
o Plant patent: it is acquired by someone who has discovered or created a new variety of
plant. It lasts 20 years from the date of filing and requires no maintenance fees. Plant
patents are considerably fewer than utility or design patents.
Ø Industrial design: a design is an idea or conception as to the features of shape,
configuration pattern, ornament of composition of lines or colors applied to any article,
two or three dimensional.
Ø Trademarks: a trade mark is a visual symbol in the form of a word, service or label
applied to an article of a manufacturer or commerce with a view to indicating to the
public the origin of manufacture of the goods.
Ø Copyrights: a copyright is basically the right to copy make use of literary, dramatic,
musical, artistic works, cinematographic films, records and broadcasts. It is proprietary
rights and comes into existence as soon as the work is created.
Ø Geographical indications: it identify goods as originating in the territory of a country, an
origin or locality in that territory, where specific quality, reputations or other
characteristics of the goods is essentially attributed to their geographical origin.
Environmental • Invisible hand refers to the market and role of demand and supply.
ethics • Tragedy of commons: destruction of natural resource may be done by few, but cost is
borne by all. Tragedy of Commons is a term developed by Garrett Hardin.
• Green washing: most companies violating environmental norms by projecting their
products as eco-friendly whereas in reality is not.
Ethical dilemma A ethical dilemma arises from a situation that necessitates a choice between competing sets of
principles.
Ethical dilemma can be solved by showing that the claimed situation is only apparent and does
not really exist, or choosing the greater good and lesser evil.
Unethical Ø Plan stamping: engineers are often called upon to approve the safety and integrity of
practices existing structures or designs. The approval of designs without proper analysis or
supervision is called plan stamping.
Ø Double dipping: being paid by more than one party for services on same project. It is
related to conflict of interest.
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Ø Moonlighting: It is a situation in which an employee works for two different
organisations without informing the employers. This is against the right to pursue one’s
legitimate self-interest.
Ø Paternalism: the policy or practice on the part of people in authority of restricting the
freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to or otherwise dependent on them in
their supposed interest.
Ø Bootlegging: refers to working on a project which are prohibited or not properly
authorized.
Ø Grease payment: is an offer to facilitate speedy clearance from customs and getting
faster processing or permits.
Ø Nepotism: is the practice of giving favours to relatives and close friends, often by hiring
them.
Ø Self-dealing: is when a fiduciary acts in their own best interest in a transaction rather
than in the best interest of their clients. It represents a conflict of interest and an illegal
act, and can lead to litigation, penalties, and termination of employment for those who
commit it. Self-dealing may take many forms but generally involves an individual
benefiting — or attempting to benefit — from a transaction that is being executed on
behalf of another party.
Vale conflict Value conflict occurs when individuals or group of people hold strong personal beliefs that are
in disagreement within themselves or in disagreement with the institution’s values.
Value based conflicts are particularly pervasive in public policy. Indeed, nearly all public
policy controversies entail divergent beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. Efforts to
promote equal opportunity might result in conflicts among values such as efficiency, justice,
equality, diversity, merit and individual achievement.
Responsibility of Responsibility: Being held accountable for your actions and for the effects of your actions.
engineers Linked to the role you have in a certain situation.
Passive Responsibility: it is backward-looking responsibility, it becomes relevant after
something undesirable has occurred; its specific form are accountability, blameworthiness,
and liability.
• Accountability: Backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being held to account
for, or justify one’s actions towards others.
• Blame-worthiness: Backward-looking responsibility in the sense of being a proper target
of blame for one’s actions or the consequences of one’s actions.
Active responsibility: Responsibility before something has happened referring to a duty or
task to care for certain state-of-affairs or persons. It’s not primarily about blame but requires a
certain positive attitude or character trait of dealing with matters.
1. Adequate perception of threatened violations of norms
2. Consideration of the consequences
3. Autonomy
4. Displaying conduct that is based on a verifiable and consistent code
5. Taking role obligations seriously
Whistle-blowing The disclosure of certain abuses in a company by an employee in which he or she is
employed, without the consent of their superiors, and in order to remedy these abuses and/or
to warn the public about these abuses. Guidelines for when whistle-blowing is morally
required according to business ethicist Richard De George:
1. The organization to which the would-be whistleblower belongs will, through its
product or policy, do serious and considerable harm to the public (whether to users of
its product, to innocent bystanders, or to the public at large).
2. The would-be whistleblower has identified that threat of harm, reported it to her
immediate superior, making clear both the threat itself and the objection to it, and
concluded that the superior will do nothing effective.
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3. The would-be whistleblower has exhausted other internal procedures within the
organization (for example, by going up the organizational ladders as far as allowed) –
or at least made use of as many internal procedures as the danger to others and her
own safety make reasonable.
4. The would-be whistleblower has (or has accessible) evidence that would convince a
reasonable, impartial observer that her view of the threat is correct.
The would-be whistleblower has good reason to believe that revealing the threat will
(probably) prevent the harm at reasonable cost (all things considered).
Collingridge This dilemma refers to a double-blind problem to control the direction of technological
dilemma development. On the one hand, it is often not possible to predict the consequences of new
technologies already in the early phases of technological development. On the other hand,
once the (negative) consequences materialize it often has become very difficult to change the
direction of technological development.
Codes of conduct A code in which organizations (like companies or professional associations) lay down
guidelines for responsible behavior of their members.
- Aspirational code: A code that expresses the moral values of a profession or
company.
- Advisory code: A code of conduct that has the objective to help individual
professionals or employees to exercise moral judgments in concrete situations on the
basis of the more general values and norms of the profession or company. [most
professional codes for engineers]
- Disciplinary code: A code that has the objective to achieve that the behavior of all
professionals or employees meets certain values and norms.
What is Profession: Often mentioned characteristics of a profession include:
profession 1) use of specialized knowledge and skills;
2) a monopoly on the carrying out of the occupation;
3) assessment only possible by peers.
In addition, the following two requirements are also sometimes mentioned:
4) service orientation to society;
5) ethical standards.
Professional code Code of conduct that is formulated by a professional association. Professional codes for
engineers provide content to the responsibility of engineers. They express the moral norms
and values of the profession. Most modern professional codes relate to three domains:
• Integrity and competent professional practice: In a competent way implies that the
practitioner must be well enough educated, must keep up to date in his field and must take
only work in his field of competence. With integrity and honesty, we mean that the
profession must be conducted in an honest, faithful, and truthful manner. This entails, for
instance, that facts may not be manipulated and agreements must be honored.
• Obligations towards clients and employers: It is stipulated that engineers should serve the
interests of their clients and employers and that they must keep secret the confidential
information passed on by clients or employers.
• Social responsibility and obligations towards the public: Matters frequently referred to
are: safety; health; the environment; sustainable development; and the welfare of the
public.
Professional Professional ethics refer to the principles that govern the behaviour of a person or group in an
ethics environment related to particular profession. These are often codified as a set of rules, which a
particular group of people use.
Honesty, integrity, transparency, accountability, obedience to the law, confidentially,
objectivity, respect and loyalty are major aspects of the professional ethics.
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One of the earliest examples of professional ethics is the Hippocratic Oath (It requires a new
physician to swear, by a number of Greek healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards.)
to which medical doctors still adhere to this day.
Courageous The characteristics which courageous engineers are expected to own and show in their
engineer profession are:
• Perseverance (sustained hard work)
• Experimentation (preparedness to face the challenges, i.e. unexpected or unintended
results)
• Involvement (attitude, clear and firm resolve to act)
• Commitment (willing to get into action and to reach the desired goals by any alternative
but ethical means).
Empathy Affective empathy refers to the sensations and feelings one gets in response to others’
emotions.
Cognitive empathy refers to our ability to identify and understand others’ emotions.
Emotional resonance is a compassion of feeling the others’ pain.
Sentient compassion refers to feeling of compassion towards any living being.
Authority Institutional authority is the right given to the employees to exercise power, to complete the
task and force them to achieve their goals.
Expert authority is the possession of special knowledge, skills and competence to perform a
job efficiently and effectively.
Moral or ethical Moral pluralism is the idea that there can be conflicting moral views that are each worthy of
pluralism respect. Moral pluralists tend to be open-minded when faced with competing viewpoints.
They analyze issues from several moral points of view before deciding and taking action.
Moral pluralists believe that many moral issues are extremely complicated. Thus, no single
philosophical approach will always provide all the answers.
So, moral pluralism occupies a sensible middle ground between “there is only one right
answer” as moral absolutism says, and “there is no wrong answer” as moral relativism claims.
Fiduciary duty A fiduciary duty is the legal responsibility to act solely in the best interest of another party.
“Fiduciary” means trust, and a person with a fiduciary duty has a legal obligation to maintain
that trust. For example, lawyers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their clients.
Some examples of fiduciary duties include duties of undivided loyalty, due diligence and
reasonable care, full disclosure of any conflicts of interest, and confidentiality.
Cognitivism and • Cognitivism, In metaethics, the thesis that the function of moral sentences (e.g., sentences
non-cognitivism in which moral terms such as “right,” “wrong,” and “ought” are used) is to describe a
domain of moral facts existing independently of our subjective thoughts and feelings, and
that moral statements can accordingly be thought of as objectively true or false.
• Non-cognitivists have proposed various alternative theories of meaning for moral
sentences. Emotivism, prescriptivism.
Previous year Q Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of
belief.
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. More broadly, it studies concepts that directly
relate to being, in particular becoming, existence, reality, as well as the basic categories of
being and their relations.
Etymology is the study of the history of words. By extension, the phrase "the etymology of
[some word]" means the origin of the particular word.
Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term
"insect" was vaguer, and historically the definition of entomology included the study of
terrestrial animals in other arthropod groups or other phyla, such as arachnids, myriapods,
earthworms, land snails, and slugs.
Test series Ø Moral Awareness: Proficiency in recognizing moral problems in engineering.
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Ø Cogent Moral Reasoning: Comprehending and assessing different views.
Ø Moral Coherence: Forming consistent viewpoints based on facts.
Ø