REQUIREMENTS FOR THE STUDY OF ETHICS

A. REGARDING THE MORAL AGENT

Moral agents should possess or maintain four qualities in the study of ethics: freedom,
responsibility, rationality, and impartiality.

FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE’S ACT AND TO OTHERS

Morality presupposes that a person is capable of choosing right from wrong and that the
person’s ability to choose is grounded on the idea that the person is free. Freedom,
then, along with reason, is of central importance to the person as it makes them distinct
from other creature, especially to her nearest kin – the brutes.

The brutes/animals just like humans are capable of mobility. They can hunt for food
when hungry and search for shelter when caught in the elements but unlike humans,
their actions are confined to their biological rhythms and instincts. Humans can go
beyond that, we can suspend our biological needs in the search for higher and nobler
goals.

We do still have biological and natural instincts like animals but we also have the ability
to hope and dream and recognize that in one way or another we can direct our lives the
way we want it to be. To say that our life is bound by these urges would be to say that
your life is not worth fighting or living for.

Freedom for us is not just the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want them
but it’s also the ability to make our way within the limits of physical and material
entanglements.

To presuppose that the person acts in certain manners within the nexus of her power
logically implies that she is the owner of those actions; that she is responsible for her
actions. Consequently, it also means that she is responsible for whatever
consequences of her actions to others.

Responsibility to one’s actions also entails that the person is liable morally and legally.

REASON AND IMPARTIALITY

The fundamental belief in the person as a rational being is one of the underlying threads
that weaves Western Philosophy’s quest for the universal moral principle. Most thinkers
in Western Philosophy are convinced that each person will come to a universal
agreement on the ultimate principle which governs moral actions.
Reason serves as the grounding principle of moral actions but soon, philosophers have
begun to doubt if reason is enough of an objective requirement. Upon examining many
ethical theories such as Kant’s Categorical Imperative, it stands to show that there is a
mechanism that helps make sure that these ethical principles are free from biases and
prejudices, as well as the whims and caprices of those who are tasked to construct
them.

Any moral and legal principle which privileges one interest over another is not only
viewed with suspect but will ultimately lose in the moral test. Impartiality, along with
rationality, then is a fundamental requirement for morality.

B. REGARDING MORAL STANDARDS AND NON-MORAL STANDARDS

MORAL VERSUS NON-MORAL STANDARDS

As we’ve established before morality and ethics are two different things and cannot be
used interchangeably. Morality is concerned with the standards of right and wrong while
ethics is concerned with the study of morality and how people fare with the standards
that it had set.

So to effectively study the underlying principles of morality, we first need to identify

which standards are moral standard and which ones are not so that we will not mistake
it for just a normal statement.

MORAL STANDARD NON-MORAL STANDARD

A moral standard is a concept that tells
what actions are desirable and which
ones are undesirable. These
distinctions have moral and ethical
value.
It seeks to codify rules of conduct (right
and wrong) which can be rationally
accepted by relevant individuals.
A non-moral standard is a concept that
tells us what actions are desirable and
which ones are not.
However, these do not concern moral
actions or judgments such as the rules
or standards that can tell us what we
can or can not like but it doesn’t tell us
if they are right or wrong/ good or bad
 C. REGARDING MORAL DILEMMAS

MORAL DILLEMAS

A dilemma is a situation where the individual is made to choose between two or more
conflicting options. If placed in the context of ethics and morality, a moral dilemma
places the moral agent (a person who has both rationality to think and freedom to
choose) in a situation that requires them to choose between two or more conflicting
moral requirements.

A moral requirement means that the person is obliged to do certain acts so having to
choose between two or more moral requirements means that someone has to choose
between two or more conflicting options of actions that they have to do/act out/carry out.

ELEMENTS OF A MORAL DILEMMA

1. A moral agent doing the choosing or deciding;

2. An obligation to choose and act on the situation and choose between each
of the two or more options open to them;

3. The fact that she cannot choose and do both or more than one option. This
means that the person is bound to commit something wrong or do something that
they ought not to do. By choosing either one, they fail others and they fail
themselves.

COMMON TYPES OF MORAL DILEMMAS

A. Genuine Moral Dilemma

A genuine moral dilemma is one in which none of the possible course of actions
override the others (none of the choices is the better one)

B. False Moral Dilemma

A false moral dilemma is the opposite of GMD where one of the possible courses of
actions override the others (one of the choices is the better one)

C. Dilemmas from Epistemic Conflict

A dilemma from epistemic conflict is one that is caused by the moral agent not
knowing or having enough information to determine which choice is the moral choice
in a given situation.

E. Self-Imposed Dilemma

A self-imposed dilemma is a dilemma caused by the agent’s wrongdoings prior.

F. World-Imposed Dilemmas

A world-imposed dilemma is a dilemma caused by the occurrence of certain world

events in the world where the moral agent is which place them in a situation where
they have to choose between two or more conflicting options

G. Single-Agent Dilemmas

A single-agent dilemma is a dilemma that involves one person only and is in a

situation to choose between one or more options that have the same moral
requirement but cannot choose both.

H. Multi-Person Dilemmas

A multi-agent dilemma is a dilemma that involves two or more people and place
them in a situation to choose between one or more options that have the same
moral requirement but cannot choose both. While good for some situations, having
more people involved in this a moral dilemma might lead to interpersonal conflict
about which option should be chosen once differing opinions clash against one
another.

I. Obligations and Role-Related Dilemmas

An obligation and role-related dilemma is a dilemma that is caused by

conflicts between a moral agent’s duty or role and their obligations.

An example of this is a variation of the classic trolley problem:

The train operator has a son and his son got stuck in a section of the train rails and
cannot get out. To save him, the train operator must switch the train tracks but doing
so will cause the train to derail, crash into a mountain, and kill all the passengers. As
a train operator, he is in-charge of making sure that the train and all of its
passengers are safe; this is his obligation as someone that works with the transport
company. But as a father, it is his role to protect his family at all costs. So, now, he is
torn between his obligation telling him to not switch the train tracks to save the train
passengers (to which his son dies) or to save his role telling him to switch the train
tracks to save his son (to which the train passengers die).