Conclusion: Ethics Through Thick and Thin, and Ethics and Religion

● This part uses the distinction between thick and thin concepts in order to
illuminate the philosophical discourse referred to as “ethics”.
● By focusing on ethical concepts, ethics can avoid the pitfall of creating a
conceptual gap between empirical discourse and normative discourse.
 Ethics argues that it is linked to philosophical and anthropological
aspirations that have traditionally sought to uncover the thick normative
vocabulary relevant to particular practices and culture.
 Ethics discloses the rich normative meaning of our social practices and
social relations.
● Thick ethical concept is philosophically useful for adopting a
nonrepresentational conception of language, which underlies the expression of
meaning of particular social practices.
 Thick concepts are not derived from thin ones.
● On the contrary, on some versions of this anti-reductive view it is the thick
concepts that are primary, with the thin ones mere abstractions from them
because thin concept like right is that it says nothing about what other properties
an item falling under it has.
 If moral properties supervene on non-moral ones, as most philosophers
accept, then any act that is right will have other, non- moral properties that
make it right.
● In addition, if moral judgments are universal, as the non-naturalists and
noncognitivists believed, then any other act with the same non-moral properties
will likewise be right. In this, it differentiates by the following examples:

(1) Honesty engenders trust.

(2) Kindness encourages friendship.

(3) Mother Teresa's goodness won her a Nobel Prize.

(4) People are starving unnecessarily because of the selfishness • of others.

(5) Racial oppression caused political instability and social protest in apartheid
South Africa.

(6) Hitler instigated and oversaw the deaths of millions of persons because he
was morally depraved.
 (7) Woodworth spent his time and energy arranging his own conveniences rather
than organizing an effective search for the missing people because he was no
damn good..

As you can see, some of these explanations (1), (2), (4) and (5) - employ thick
concepts, while the others - (3), (6) and (7) - employ thin concepts. (Cline & Brendan,
2015).

The Challenges of Pluralism and Fundamentalism: The Search for Universal

Values

A. Globalization in Pluralism: New Challenges to Ethics.

What is globalization?
It is the increasingly closer integration of countries and people of the world
brought about by the enormous reduction of transportation and communication
costs and the breakdown of barriers to the flow of goods, services, capital and
knowledge.

Ethics is an everyday occurrence in one's personal life as well as in the

corporate world. Business ethics examines ethical principles and moral or
ethical problems that arise in a business environment.

Pluralism
 It is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity.
● Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with
little traffic between or among them.
 It is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines
of difference.
● Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference
and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one
another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears
that underlie old patterns of division and violence.
 It is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments.
● It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious
differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.
 It is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and
encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism.
● Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process
reveals both common understandings and real differences.
● Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one
another
● Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table – with
one’scommitments
 Globalization and Pluralism
John Carlo C. Tan

● The technology helps us communicate, interact, and surf the world virtually which
is almost part of majority of the people’s everyday lives.
 Not only one culture is present on the internet almost every culture in the
world is active online therefore causing collisions with other cultures when
ethnocentrism is present, not only ethnocentrism but when one side of the
party thinks the culture of the other user is not morally correct which will
eventually lead into chaos.
 Pluralism is definitely true since each one of us views correct and wrong
differently.
 The problem is neither globalization nor pluralism itself instead; it is the
lack of moral pluralism in which we should view each perspective with
understanding and respect which most of the people lack.
● There are not enough preventive measures to stop the misunderstanding within
the issues of globalization; therefore, we are shocked by the influx of information
that we receive when we interact with people whose culture is different from ours.
 The problem has been too big to handle now.
 If there are people whose mind is narrow and stuck to the point that they
only believe that their belief is the only belief that is acceptable.
● One decision might seem correct to you and some other cultures but that does
not mean that every person in the world will accept it.
 In this generation, everyone wants his/her opinion and culture accepted
but does not even do the same to others.
 The technology is not to be blamed, the users are accountable.

B. Challenges of Fillennials
 Millennials, also known as Generation Y or the Net Generation, are the
demographic cohort that directly follows Generation X.

 The term “millennials” is usually considered to apply to individuals

who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century. In the
Philippines, millennials are called “Fillennials”.
 Deyoe and Fox (2011) found that due to the differences in values
and expectation, conflict is common as millennials enter the
workforce. They found that if these differences in values are not
 addressed or identified, an organization can expect an increase in
conflict.

 Millennials may have difficulty earning respect and credibility from the older
generations in the workplace. These are some of the challenges of Fillennials:
 Millennials have higher levels of anxiety and depression than
previous generations.
 A Psychology Today study showed that millennials are reporting
the highest levels of clinical anxiety, stress and depression of any
other generation at the same age.

Technology

● The use of technology has also provided a negative value in the millennial
generation because they now expect to have instant everything (Behrens, 2009;
Cahill & Sedrak, 2012).

 With internet speed providing instant access to any answer, this

generation now expects to have instant answers and instant feedback.

Feedback

● Feedback is something practitioners found to be a negative value in Millennials.

 Cahill and Sedrak (2012) believe that millennials need constant feedback
and when feedback is not provided, they will interpret their work as
unsatisfactory. The continuous need for feedback can cause surprise and
frustration in an organization (Cahill & Sedrak, 2012).

Challenges to Fillennials
Cheyenne Elay L. Reyes

 In the Philippines, Filipino millennial or "Fillennial" is now a thing. According to

an article published by TIME Magazine, millennials are consisted of people
born from 1980 to 2000.

 Millennials in the Philippines are described as those who are social media
dependent and also, the “selfie” generation

 Millennials in the Philippines are known to usually spend for luxury goods
which leave their bank accounts shaken, the reason why they are also
described as “broke”
  Millennials are also described as narcissist, making them known as the " Me,
Me, Me Generation”.

 There are also good attitudes which millennials possess: being politically and
socially-engaged.

 Compared to other generations, millennials have their say about issues

and are more involved with politics.

 Millennials have their own personalities.

 They seek to find better ways of doing things because when millennials
were babies, technology was already available.

 According to Mr. Jos Ortega of Havas Media Ortega, Millennials are

characterized in different identities.
 “Who they are on Facebook may not necessarily be who they are in real
life, on Instagram, or on Twitter ", said Ortega.
 Actually, fillenials are pretty awesome.
 They are adapting fast. But sometimes we say; they don't have the work
ethics.

 They are getting more and more lazier than ever. Why? Because they are
abusing the system.

 What is social media for fillennials?

 Some of us, fillennials, use social media for communicating with friends,
posting the best part of our lives and making new friends via online, but
some of us use social media as their masks

 Showing the real you is far better than hiding in the shadows of your fake identity
like a coward.
 Always remember that living in a harsh reality is far better than living in a
perfect lie

 Being a millennial is not that easy.

 It doesn't make you escape from criticism.
 While you're giving your opinion, some will say "toxic" "cancer" just
because your beliefs contradict theirs. Yes, receiving those kinds of
feedbacks can pull you down but it will depend on you on how you will
handle the situation.

C. The religious Response: The role of Religion in Ethics

● Religion is one of the more frequently mentioned determinants of the moral
values that underpin ethical standards.
 The major world religions have moral teachings and in various ways
indicate disapproval of unethical actions.
 Most of them teach that an omniscient God observes human actions and
holds people accountable for their actions.
 It is logical to assume that adherents to a religion would be less tolerant of
unethical behavior (Clark & Dawnson, 1996).
 In contradiction, according to Soraj Hongladaróm of Chulalongkorn
University (2017) religion does have a role to play in developing a sense
of ethics, but it is rather limited.
o This is because religions tend not to emphasize the role of critical
and independent thinking which is important in developing a sense
of ethical responsibility.
 What religions tend to do is to give a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that the
faithful need to follow. But it does not provide much explanation as to why
these rules should be followed.

 A different perception from different people's judgment only emphasizes that

religions can help somewhat as a guide, but in the end we must think for
ourselves in which we should develop the ability to justify things and weigh
what's right aligned on our beliefs.
 There is a spectrum of views about how religion and ethics are related,
religion is the absolute bedrock of ethics to one that holds that ethics is
based on humanistic assumptions justified mainly and sometimes only, by
appeals to reason.

 The relationship between religion and ethics is about the relationship between
revelation and reason.

 Religion is based in some measure on the idea that God, the Supreme Being,
reveals insights about life and its true meaning.

 Ethics, from a strictly humanistic perspective, is based on the tenets of reason:

Anything that is not rationally verifiable cannot be considered justifiable.
 From this perspective, ethical principles need not derive their authority
from religious doctrine.
 Instead, these principles are upheld for their value in promoting
independent and responsible individuals who are capable of making
decisions that maximize their own well-being while respecting the well-
being of others.
 Even though religious and secular ethics don't derive their authority from
the same source, we still must find a way to establish common ground
between them; otherwise we're condemning ourselves.