BIOETHICS considered unacceptable because they

are against the social norms.

INTRODUCTION
Important Features About Morals & Ethics
ETHICS AND MORAL
(Billington, 2003)
Ethics
● Probably the most important feature
➢ Understand and examine the moral life
about ethics and morals is that no one
➢ standards of “good and bad”
can avoid making moral or ethical
distinguished by a certain community or
decisions because social connections
social setting.
with others necessitates that people
Moral must consider moral and ethical
➢ Specific ways of behaving or the way actions.
people set on to accomplish ethical
● Other people are always involved with

.
practices
one’s moral and ethical decisions.

.M
➢ an individual's own principles regarding Private morality does not exist.
right and wrong.
● Moral decisions matter because every
Morality decision affects someone else's life,
self-esteem, or happiness level.
➢ Came from latin word “moralis” means
pertaining to manners ● Definite conclusions or resolutions will
never be reached in ethical debates.
.P
Common Morality
➢ Universal claim ● In the area of morals and ethics, people
➢ Has pre thought cannot exercise moral judgment
1. Nurture - taught by parents without being given a choice; in other
2. Biological - genes, can be changed words, a necessity for making a sound
or strengthened moral judgment is being able to choose
.J
3. Spiritual - sense of worship an option from among a number of
choices.
Immorality
➢ Unacceptable behavior as compared to ● People use moral reasoning to make
others moral moral judgments or to discover right
actions.
M

Amoral
➢ having or showing no concern about
whether behavior is morally right or
wrong (absence of moral)
Nonmoral
➢ does not require morality and is acted
out according to the prevailing
conventions. Ex. animals
Unethical
➢ Not following code of ethics
➢ when a person, a professional, or an
industry does anything that is
Normative Ethics and Metaethics
Normative Ethics
➢ study of what makes actions right or
wrong, what makes situations or events
good or bad and what makes people
virtuous or vicious.
Metaethics
➢ consists in the attempt to answer the
fundamental philosophical questions
about the nature of ethical theory itself.
➢ More on defining terminologies
➢ Second major philosophical of inquiry
Bioethics / Healthcare Ethics
➢ Domain of ethics that focuses on moral
issues of healthcare
Jonsen 1998
● “Nuremberg Code of 1947” - document
used to protect human subject during
experimentations.

Robert Fulghun, All I really Need to Know I

Learned in Kindergarten
“Live a balance life - learn some and think

.
some and draw and paint and sing and
dance and play and work every day some…

.M
when you go out into the world, watch out for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”

King Solomon, Eelesiats 11:9

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let
thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth,
.P
and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in
the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that
all of these things God will bring thee into
judgment.”
.J
M
BIOETHICS
ETHICAL THEORIES &
OTHER APPROACHES
ETHICAL THEORIES
➢ are attempts to provide a clear, unified
account of what our ethical obligations
are
➢ to tell a single “story” about what we are
obligated to do, without referring
directly to specific examples
.
Deontology
.M
➢ an ethical theory based on dutiful
actions, not actions based on rewards,
happiness, or consequences
1. Natural Law Theory
➢ Rightness of actions is self-evident and
.P
is determined by nature, not by customs
and human preferences.
➢ The law of reason, which is implanted in
the order of nature as opposed to being
revealed through intuition or one’s
.J
innate sense, commands human
actions.
➢ Use of the highest right reason and
rationality guides human beings to their
goals and their ends.
M
2. Kantianism
Immanuel Kant
➢ a German Philosopher of the 18th
century
➢ Define a person as a rational human
being with freedom and moral worth. A
person is morally good and admirable if
actions are done from a sense of duty
➢ Reasoning is sufficient to lead a person
to moral actions; moral actions should
be undertaken as ends in themselves,
not as means to ends
➢ emphasize that people should regard
everyone with dignity and respect, and
when they do not, individuals feel used
and demoralized.
● Hypothetical imperatives – duties or
rules that people ought to observe if
certain ends to be achieved. “If-then”
● Categorical Imperatives – moral
actions must be based on reasons.
Where moral actions are concerned,
duties and laws are absolute,
unconditional and universal
➔ “If I perform this action, should it
become a universal law?”
➔ No action can ever be judged as
right if the action cannot have the
potential to become a binding law
for all people.
3. W.D. Ross’s Seven Prima Facie Duties
➢ Prima Facie (conditional)
➢ Two moral principles: Rightness and
goodness
➢ “one that dictates what I should do
when other relevant factors in a
situation are not considered.
➢ Actual duties are those real duties that
a person is obligate to perform. Prima
facie duties are morally significant
duties as they relate to individual
circumstances at first sight
➢ are not absolute but conditional
Conflict between prima facie duty to keep a
promise and a prima facie duty to assist
someone in need:
● …it is clear (in terms of our “ordinary
moral consciousness”) that the
duty to keep promises is usually
mor incumbent upon us than the
duty to assist those who are in
 need. However, if the promise is
relatively trivial and the need of
another is compelling – a matter of
serious distress- then it is equally
clear that the priority is reversed. In
the difficult cases… there is … no
hard-and-fast rule… The best that
anyone can do is to make a
reflective, ‘considered decision’ as
to which of the competing prima
facie duties has the priority…
Moral rules:
.
1. Duties of fidelity: telling the truth,
keeping actual and implicit promises
.M
2. Duties of reparation: righting the
wrongs we have done to others.
3. Duties of gratitude: recognizing the
services others have done for us
4. Duties of justice: preventing a
.P
distribution of pleasure or happiness
that is not in keeping with the merit of
the people involved.
5. Duties of beneficence: helping to better
the condition of other beings.
.J
6. Duties of self-improvement: bettering
ourselves with respect to virtue or
intelligence.
7. Duties of non-maleficence: avoiding or
preventing an injury to other.
M
Utilitarianism
➢ promote the highest good that is
possible in every situation- “the greatest
good for the greatest number”
➢ Jeremy Bentham – British utilitarianism
➢ is related to real-life, common-sense
actions and their consequences, not
aristocratic privilege, religious faith, or
tradition.
➢ each form of happiness is equal, and
each object should be evaluated
according to its production of
happiness, good, or pleasure
➢ Mill challenged Bentham – object of
pleasure and happiness do have
different qualities and are not equal.
Pleasure and happiness should be
prioritized according to a persons
intellectual ability. In this way, the most
prioritized , higher pleasures, such as
applying the Golden Rule to one’s
conduct, are preferable over lower
pleasures, such as immediate
gratification and physical pleasure
alone
Teleology
➢ determines what is right or wrong base
on an actions consequences. Also
called utilitarian ethics. It requires
decision maker to determine and use
those actions that will result in
maximizing good- that is- greatest good
for the greatest number of people.
Kantianism (Deontology)
➢ says that—as a matter of respect—there
are certain absolute (or nearly absolute)
rules that must be followed (for
example, the rule that we must respect
people’s privacy, or respect other
people’s right to make decisions about
their own lives);
Social Contract Theory (or
“contractarianism”)
➢ says that, in order to figure out what
ethical rules to follow, we ought to
imagine what rules rational beings
would agree to in an “ideal”
decision-making context;
Virtue Theory
➢ says that we ought to focus not on what
rules to follow, but on what kinds of
people (or organizations!) we want to
 be, and what kinds of ethical examples
we ought to follow;

Feminist Ethics
➢ a complex set of interrelated
perspectives that emphasize
interpersonal concerns such as caring,
interdependence, and the ethical
requirements of particular relationships.
Such concerns are traditionally
identified with women, but Feminist
Ethics should not be thought of as a
theory only for women.

.
.M
.P
.J
M