HAND OUTS ON ETHICS 2.
Overridingness
Rules
• are important to social beings.
• They are meant to set order.
• Rules are not meant to restrict your
freedom.
• They are meant to help you grow in
freedom, to grow in your power to
choose and do what is good for you and
for others.
• Any rule or law that prevents human
persons from doing good and being
good ought to be repealed. They have
no reason to exist.
Ethics
• comes from the Greek word “ethos”
meaning “custom” used in the works of
Aristotle, while the term “moral” is the
Latin equivalent. Based on the Greek
and Latin etymology of the word “ethics”,
ethics deals with morality.
• or moral philosophy is a branch of
philosophy which deals with moral
standards, inquiries about the rightness
or wrongness of human behavior or the
goodness or badness of personality,
trait, or character
• the study of the morality of human acts
and moral agents, what makes an act
obligatory and what makes the person
accountable.
Morality
• is a system of beliefs about what is right
behavior and wrong behavior
• deals with how a person relates with
others and with the world to promote
what is good.
Ethics
• both a theory and practice
❖ One has to know the theories and
ethical principles of knowing what is
right and wrong and good and bad
actions. However, one has to translate
these theories into actions. Knowing
what is right without changing the way
one behaves morally is a useless
knowledge.
Characteristics of Moral Principles or Moral
Standards
1. Prescriptivity
• refers to the action
• guiding nature of morality.
• the principles should intend to guide and
direct people what to do or should not
do.
• means that moral principles should
tower over all other norms or standards
of evaluation.
• should be given primary or ultimate
importance.
3. Impartiality
• means that moral rule should be neutral
• should apply to anyone regardless of
situation or status.
4. Autonomous from Arbitrary Authority
• moral standards should be
independent, hence be able to stand on
its own
• regardless of what the majority says or
decides, SOMETHING is moral or
immoral. An act should be based on
ethical principles and not on what men
say.
5. Publicity
• since moral standards guide people
what to do, they should be made public.
Reason dictates that rules are made and
promulgated to advice as well as praise
or blame actions.
6. Practicability
• rules are made for men to follow. Hence,
moral standards exist in which human
beings are capable of doing.
7. Moral standards
• are associated with the vocabulary that
depicts emotions or feelings. For
example, when you go against your
moral standards you will say you feel
guilty, remorseful, or ashamed.
❖ When judgment is founded on the
rightness or wrongness of an action, the
criteria is based on one’s moral
standards. In addition, moral standards
are norms or prescriptions that serve as
the frameworks for determining what
ought to be done or what is the right or
wrong action, what is good or bad
character.
e.g., Do not lie., Don’t steal., Don’t kill., Don’t
cheat others.
 Non-moral standards
• can be considered as relative standards
by which something is judged as either
good or bad. The rules of non-moral
standards vary because these rules
depend on the guidelines agreed by a
particular group.
EXAMPLE
• Wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts on
a very formal occasion, Writing a
grammatically incorrect essay.
❖ It is important to determine what kind of
act of which man is morally accountable
and responsible.
There are two acts of man:
1. Act of man
• refers to those acts if which man has no
control. Therefore, it is involuntary.
EXAMPLE
• emotions, circulation of the blood,
pumping of the heart, grinding of the
stomach, and breathing.
2. Human act
• actions which are within the control of
man like walking, talking, eating,
thinking, and biting. It is deliberate,
hence, a voluntary act.
Three Essential Elements of Human Act
1. Knowledge
• where the doer is aware of what he/she
is doing. Obviously, one cannot hold a
person fully responsible for something
that he or she is not aware of. But if he
does an action with awareness, that is
doing the action knowingly, then the
issue of moral responsibility is
inevitable. It is because the action has
been acted upon within the level of
person’s awareness, thus what he does
is a human act which can either be
moral or immoral. Without the
knowledge of the doer, the act is
ordinarily taken as an act of man.
2. Freedom
• in which the act is not done by force. It is
a state of being unrestricted from the
internal impulse and external pressure.
A person is free when he can exercise
control over himself and over his
actions, that is, he can make a wide
range of choices whether to do it or not.
A human act is therefore a free act.
Without freedom in the performance of
the act, a person can never be held
responsible for his action.
3. Will
• of which the doer has given its consent
to do the act. Unless the action is done
with consent, no action can be
considered as a human act. The
consent of the doer is critical to make a
particular act a human act. Consent is
simply the acquiescence or approval of
the doer for his action. A person may be
free to do it or not but if he does not
allow his will to approve or disapprove
an act, his moral responsibility is
diminished, if not extirpated at all.
In other words, for a man to be fully morally
accountable of his/her act, it must be done
knowingly, freely, and willfully. The absence of
either one or two of the elements may lessen
the accountability of the doer or no
accountability at all.
Voluntariness
• is very mush akin to consent. From the
Latin word, “voluntas”, it refers to the
act of the will. Without the action of the
will, an act is considered involuntary,
hence the doer in this case cannot be
held liable for his action. Only an act that
proceeds from the command of the will
is voluntary. Needless to say, only a
voluntary act is a human act.
Four kinds of voluntariness:
1. Perfect voluntariness
• where all elements of human act are
present. Man is fully accountable of the
act committed.
2. Imperfect voluntariness
• where knowledge is absent. A man who
is not aware of the act that he has done
may not be answerable of his act or no
accountability at all. A boy giving a box
of chocolates to a lady not knowing it is
poisoned is absolved form liability.
3. Simple voluntariness
• is simply doing or not doing the act since
one has/ cannot do anything about it. It
is either positive or negative. A male
student whose house is 10 kilometers
from the school will either ride a jeepney
or not. In most cases, he needs to ride
otherwise he will be late.
4. Conditional Voluntariness
• when the person is forced to do an act in
which in normal condition it should not
be done. When a female employer is
forced to give her cellphone to the
robber pointing a knife to her chest
being afraid of her life.
Morality
• of an act can either moral, immoral, or
amoral. Moral if it is a good act.
Immoral if it is bad. If it is indifferent or
neither good nor bad, then it is amoral.
An amoral act may either become
moral or immoral depending on the
motive or intention of the doer.
How do we know the morality of the act?
The following are determinants of morality.
1. The object or act itself
• reefers to the act done by the doer of
the action. It is either good or bad. The
act of giving as to the act of killing are
examples.
2. Motive or intent
• the purpose or reason of doing the act.
Like a daughter gave a bouquet of
flowers to her mother celebrating a
birthday. Whereas, due to revenge, a
certain boy stabbed his neighbor.
3. Circumstances
• this involves the situations that surround
the commission of the act. They are
basically practical answers to questions.
a. Who
• refers to the persons involved in the act
committed, the doer and the receiver or
the recipient of the act. A child who
accidentally pulled a trigger against
his/her playmate thinking a gun is a toy
may not be accountable compared to an
adult doing the same act. A man boxing
a woman is greatly answerable of his
act. An educated person is more
answerable than an illiterate one.
b. Why
• the reason or motive of doing the act.
Stealing food because of extreme
hunger has lesser accountability as to
someone who stole due to greediness
and selfishness.
c. By what means
• though the intention is good but attaining
the end is unlawful or illicit, then the act
is still immoral. “The end does not justify
the means.” A student whose intention is
to pass the final examination in order to
graduate but attaining such through
cheating, then it is still considered
immoral.
d. Where
• refers to the setting of the action. An act
done in open places like in the market
has greater liability than in quiet places
like in the mountain.
e. When
• refers to the time of the commission of
the act. Time element is important and,
in most cases, vital to assess and judge
morally the human act. Killing a person
while he was sleeping connotes greater
accountability compared to when the
person killed was conscious and still has
time to defend himself. Performing the
act in broad daylight has different liability
while doing it during nighttime.
f. How
• raping a woman in front of her husband
is a greater crime, stabbing a person
many times indicates an extreme hatred.
Whereas, defaming the person through
the use of media is more accountable
than doing it in front of one’s friends.
Generally, circumstances could be
aggravating, justifying, mitigating, or
exempting. The act of self-defense is justifying
since the person doing the act has no intention
of killing at all. It is mitigating when a person is
forced to slap the face of another because he
was boxed. A wife, due to rush emotions, killed
her husband and her paramour catching them
having sexual intercourse falls under
exempting.
Man is an organism that does not act in a
vacuum. He responds and reacts to stimulus.
Thus, the accountability of the commission of
an act can be modified. The liability can be
greater, great, less, lesser, or none at all.
The following are the modifiers:
1. Ignorance
• is the absence of knowledge. Everyone
should ought to possess and be
responsible to have knowledge.
a. Vincible Ignorance
• where the lack of knowledge can easily
be rectified.
b. Invincible Ignorance
• is difficult to rectify. There is no way of
knowing. A courier delivering an item
without having knowledge what is inside
the box is a bomb which killed a lot of
people inside the house. When a person
is vincible ignorant and no effort on
his/her part to repair the loss for the
reason of escaping one’s responsibility
has a greater liability. Vincible ignorance
becomes affected ignorance. The same
with pretended ignorance, professing of
not knowing when one really knows in
order to flee from being blamed.
2. Concupiscence or passion
• refers to the emotions whether positive
or negative desire. They are neither
moral nor immoral. But man has to
regulate or control his emotions and
must be submitted to the control of
reason. Passions can either be
antecedent or consequent, Antecedent
tends to weaken the will power of the
person and so interfere with the freedom
of the will. The consequence is
intentionally aroused and where the
does and willfully plays his emotions.
3. Fear
• is the disturbance of the mind when a
person is confronted by danger or harm
to oneself or loved ones. It is a form of
emotion. Fear is an instinct for self-
preservation. When a child runs upon
seeing a mad dog and fell in a manhole
because of fear, then the child is not
accountable for his act.
4. Violence
• happens when a physical force is
exerted to a person by another for the
purpose of compelling or forcing the
person to act against his will. When an
accused was compelled to be a witness
against himself to stop the bodily torture
done against him by the authority is not
accountable of his act. Such confession
is not admissible in court.
5. Habits
• are frequently repeated acts. It may be
good or bad. In most cases, habits are
becoming involuntary since they assume
the role of a second nature. It is not
easy to overcome or alter habits. It takes
a strong-willed person to correct a bad
habit, Nevertheless, the person is still
accountable of one’s habits since the
first time the act was done there is
already awareness of the consequences
or effects of the act.
Moral Dilemmas
Dilemma
• is a situation in which a difficult choice
has to be made between two or more
alternatives, especially equally
undesirable ones. Thus, when you find
yourself facing a problem but the
solutions available to you will create
another problem or worse create more
problems, then you are in a moral
dilemma.
A moral dilemma is a situation where:
1. There agent is required to do each of
the two (or more) actions which are
morally unacceptable.
2. The agent can do each of the actions;
3. but the agent cannot do both (or all) of
the actions.
The agent thus seems condemned to moral
failure; no matter what she does, she will do
something wrong (or fail to do something that
she ought to do). This means that moral
dilemmas are situations where two or more
moral values or duties make demands on the
decision-maker, who can only honor one of
them, and thus will violate at least one
important moral concern; no matter what she
decides to do.
Moral dilemma
• presents situations where there is
tension between moral values and
duties that are more or less on equal
footing. The decision-maker has to
choose between a wrong and another
wrong. The decision-maker is in a
deadlock.
False Dilemma
• is a situation where the decision maker
has a moral duty to do one thing, but is
tempted or under pressure to do
something else.
• is a choice between a right or wrong.
Three Levels of Moral Dilemma
1. Personal moral dilemma
• is when your decision in a situation
where there is moral conflict is the
cause of either your own; that of another
person; or a group of people’s potential
harm
2. Organizational Dilemma
• is when a member or members of the
organization is in a situation where there
is moral conflict, and the decision will
potentially harm either some members
of the group or entire organization.
3. Structural Moral Dilemma
• is when a person or group of persons
who holds high level positions in the
society faces a morally conflicting
situation wherein the entire social
system is affected.
Resolving Moral Dilemmas
1. Thinking of available alternative options
revealing that the dilemma does not exist.

2. Choosing the greater good and lesser evil,

or one may apply the situation ethic approach,
one must do only what he can where he is

3. Joseph Fletcher offers some principles in

resolving moral dilemmas. He uses Kant’s
“ought to imply I can” rule. If I ought to do
something, then I can do it. By contraposition, if
I cannot do something, then I cannot be
obliged to do it. Or by implication, either I
cannot be obliged to so something or I can do
it. In other words, one is only obliged to do
something if and only he can do it.