Rules and their Importance
Unauthorized persons are not allowed to enter
• refer to a set of guidelines which have been
put in place in different countries and
communities and have been accepted by all.
• useful tools in guiding and monitoring the
interactions of humans in society.
• prescribed guide for conduct or action
• help guide actions toward desired results.
• when used appropriately, provide a sense of
predictability and consistency for people,
thereby promoting physical, moral, social, and
emotional safety.
• specific sets of norms of behavior, regulations,
and laws established on purpose to regulate the
life in the community.
Rules
• Help people in many aspects of life: enable
people to organize all the processes correctly,
starting from house chores and ending with
more complicated issues as the functioning of
as a whole country.
• Specific modes of behavior that secure a
regulated flow of all processes.
Moral rules assist people in the establishment of
shared values and norms in accordance to which an
honorable member of society can be identified.
Rules are defined in several ways:
1. Rules are instructions that tell you what you
are allowed to do and what you are not
allowed to do.
Examples:
A. Raise your hand when you want to ask
questions.
B. You are not allowed to go to the canteen while
classes are going on.
2. A rule is a statement telling people what they should
do in order to achieve success or a benefit of some
kind.
Examples:
A. Eat nutritious food to maintain a healthy life,
B. Study your lesson well in order to get high
grades in this Ethics class.
3. Rules are statements that describe the way things
usually happen in a particular situation.
Examples:
A. In English, adjectives generally precede the
noun they modify.
B. In Science, all objects thrown up, go down.
4. Rules tell you the normal state of affairs.
Examples:
A. Schools are established for the education of
individuals.
B. Policemen have the duties to maintain peace
and order.
5. Rules influence or restrict actions in a way that is
not good for a person.
Examples:
A. It has been found that fear can ruin our lives
and make us ill.
B.
this room.
6. Rules tell us something that is true or should
happen and then the authority has officially decided
that it is true.
Examples:
A. The court has decided that the respondent is
liable for civil damages.
B. The judge has finally decided that the protest
is in favor of the complainant.
7. Rules are principles or regulations governing
conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, et.
Examples:
A. Fall in line when entering the classroom.
B. Knock before you enter.
Rules
• tend to protect the weaker class in the society
as they might be in a disadvantageous position
if rules are broken.
• provide a stable environment and human co-
existence in a society which leads to peace and
development.
• peace and order are maintained – an important
ingredient for society’s development.
As a way of maintaining these rules, many societies
have adopted and changed them into law. These assure
that no rules will be broken. If one violates the rule, a
corresponding punishment is imposed.
Rules: Concrete Importance
1. Rules organize relations between individuals;
2. Rules make it clear what is right to do/follow
in a society and what is wrong to refrain from.
3. Rules provide an opportunity to achieve
personal and societal goals.
4. Rules regulate various social institutions to
fulfill their integral roles for the common
welfare.
Ethics
• At the heart of ethics is a concern about
something or someone other than ourselves
and our own desires and self-interest.
• is concerned with other people’s interests, with
the interests of society, with God’s interests,
with “ultimate goods” and so on.
The Subject Ethics
Ethics (moral philosophy)
• The scientific study of moral judgments
• The discipline concerned with what is morally
good and bad, right or wrong.
• Any system or theory of moral values or
principles
The subject of Ethics
• Consists of the fundamental issues of practical
decision making and its major concerns
include the nature of ultimate value and the
standards by which human actions can be
judged right or wrong.
• System of moral principles
 • Greek word “ethos” – custom, habit, character
or disposition; characteristic way of doing
things.
• Also about the goodness of individuals and
what it means to live a good life.
• Practical science which is meant to teach how
human ought to leave.
Imperatives of Ethics
“SINE QUA NON” OF ETHICS – (QUITO, 2008)
• Human Freedom
• Existence of God
• Immortality of Souls
Ethical Principles
• Truthfulness/honesty
• Loyalty
• Respect
• Fairness
• Integrity
Branches of Ethics
1. NORMATIVE ETHICS
• Actions are judged by their merits, allowing
societies to develop codes of conduct for
behavior.
• Answers the question: What we ought to do?
EXAMPLES:
 Golden rule
 Helping someone who is lost.
 Finding a wallet and turning it in to the lost
and found
2. DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS
 Asks what people think is moral
 Does not actually claim the things are right or
wrong, but simply studies how individuals or
societies define their morals.
 Defines morals in terms of cultural or personal
significance.
EXAMPLE:
 turning in a lost wallet is moral, not judged as
right or wrong.
3. META-ETHICS
 Concerns with the theoretical meaning and
reference of many propositions, and how their
truth values (if any) can be determined.
 Answers the questions: What is morality?
What is justice? Is there truth? How can I
justify my belief as better than the beliefs held
by others?
4. APPLIED ETHICS
 Concerns with what a person is obligated (or
permitted) to do in a special situation or a
particular domain of action.
 Answers the question: Should we lie to help a
friend or co-worker?
Moral Experience
• Any encounter wherein a person understands
that the values he or she believes to be
important are either realized or thwarted (Hunt
& Carnevale, 2011).
• You take actions based on your moral
standards.
• Example: When you decide to give a poor
person some money because you feel that it is
the right thing to do.
Why Study Ethics?
• Ethics ensures a generally agreed standard of
work-related behavior that empowers
professionals to foster moral values through
their work.
• Ethics gives a sense of justification in one’s
judgment and helps ensure the decisions at
work are not made based on purely subjective
factors.
• Without the study of ethics, the practice of
one’s profession will fall prey to vastly
conflicting individual interpretations.
Importance of Ethics (Ariola, 2018)
1. It satisfies basic human needs.
2. It creates credibility.
3. It unites people and leaders.
4. It improves decision-making.
5. It brings long term gains.
6. It secures society.
Why Study Ethics? (Leano & Gubia-on, 2018)
1. Your understanding of moral problems will be
widened.
2. Your critical faculties will be trained.
3. You will understand better what your
conscience is, how you acquired it, how far
you are likely to be able to trust to its
deliverances with safety, and how you can
improve it and make it more intelligent.
4. You are proffered some considerations, from
the standpoints of self-realizations, self-
sacrifice, and service, that ought to help you in
making decisions.
Why Study Ethics? (Panza & Potthast, cited in
Palean et. al., 2019)
1. Ethics allows you to live an authentic and
meaningful life.
2. Ethics makes you successful.
3. Ethics allows you to cultivate inner peace.
4. Ethics provides for a stable society.
5. Ethics may help out in the afterlife.
Ethics VS Moral

Ethics and Moral
• When Ethics represents the judgment of right
and wrong, Morality helps support it by
refinements.
• Ethics studies the behavior, and Morality
provides the practical guidance of that
behavior.
• Both terms are used to indicate a fine line
between what activities should be considered
good and what should be considered bad.
• Both ethics and morality work side by side to
make the learning of good activities faster.
• Both concepts help any individual to be a
better person.
• Both terms are interconnected in the way that
Morality helps keep alive the essence of ethics
and its value.
Generally, the term ethics and morality are used
interchangeably, although few different
communities (academic, legal, religious, for
example) will occasionally make a distinction
(Agdalpen & Francisco, 2018).
Morality
• Morality can be defined as the standards that
an individual or a group has about what is
right and wrong, or good and evil.
• Morality is not imposed from outside, but
innate and can even be unconscious.
Moral Agent
“We are capable of making judgments about our
own and other people’s behavior and have the
capacity consciously to change the way we behave
and society as a whole.” (Gulberg, 2011)
Men as Moral Agent
• A moral agent is a being that is “capable of
acting with reference to right and wrong.”
• A moral agent is anything that can be held
responsible for behavior or decisions.
• “It is moral agents who have rights and
responsibilities, because it is moral agents
whom we take to have choices and the power
to choose.”
• A moral agent is an intelligent being who has
the power of choosing, and scope to act
according to his choice; one to whom the
Supreme Governor has given a cognizable
law, with its proper sanction, by which to
regulate his volitions and actions, and who is
placed in circumstances which present no
physical obstruction, either to obedience or
disobedience.
• Being a moral agent means that they can be
held responsible for their decisions and
behaviors, whether they are good or bad.
Men as Moral Agent
A moral agent must have “self-consciousness,
memory, moral principles, other values, and the
reasoning faculty, which allows him to devise plans
for achieving his objectives, to weigh alternatives, and
so on”.
Aristotle and Moral Responsibility
• the first to discuss moral responsibility;
stated that it is “sometimes appropriate to
respond to an agent with praise or blame on
the basis of his/her actions and/or dispositional
traits of character”
• discusses that “only certain kind of agent
qualifies as a moral agent and is thus
properly subject to ascriptions of
responsibility, namely, one who possesses a
capacity for decision”
• “a decision is a particular kind of desire
resulting from deliberation, one that expresses
the agent’s conception of what is good”
Moral and Non-Moral Standards
Moral Standards
• Those moral actions which are within the
moral sphere and are thus objects of moral
judgments (Ariola, 2018).
• These are set of norms in society in accord to
moral principles that supposed to determine
about the kind of actions people believe are
morally right and deter them from doing what
is considered as wrong (Agdalpen &
Francisco, 2018).
• Those laws or commands that allow specific
actions to be committed or those that disallow
actions contrary to these norms.
• Precepts to follow based on mores or
traditional norms and practices that allow
actions as good in specific time and place.
• Serve as our compass, a sort of light in our
path, keeping us on our toes, thus, allowing us
to check if our actions behooves ethical and
moral ideals.
• Ethical principles that we live by and believe;
important blueprints of our behavior, which
we abide by daily; and are influenced by our
society, or by certain ethical universals
(Palean, et.al, 2019).
Examples:
1. Pirating movies from the internet.
2. Lying to save one’s dignity.
3. Killing people.
4. Loving your neighbor.
Non-Moral Standards
 • Those actions devoid of moral quality and
thus excluded from the scope of moral
judgment (Ariola, 2018).
• Those unwanted principles, which are in
opposition to everything that we are expected
to be and do; are influenced largely by the
constructs prescribed in our society (Palean
et.al, 2019).
• Rules that are unrelated to moral or ethical
considerations; either these standards are not
necessarily linked to morality or by nature lack
ethical sense.
Examples:
1. Rules of etiquette
2. Fashion standards
3. Rules in games
4. House rules
Moral and Non-Moral Standards
Six Characteristics of Moral Standards which Further
differentiate them from non-moral standards
(Velasquez, 2012)
1. Moral standards involve serious wrongs or
significant benefits.
Moral standards deal with matters which can seriously
impact, that is, injure or benefit human beings. It is
not the case with many non-moral standards. For
instance, following or violating some basketball rules
may matter in basketball games but does not
necessarily affect one’s life or well-being.
Other examples:
 lying, stealing, and killing (hurt people)
 treating people with respect and kindness
(uplifts people)
2. Moral standards ought to be preferred to other
values.
Moral standards have overriding character or
hegemonic authority. If a moral standard states that a
person has the moral obligation to do something, then
he/she is supposed to do that even if conflicts with
other non-moral standards, and even with self-interest.
Example:
 Because trust is important to you than revenge,
you refuse to expose your friend’s terrible
secret even though she offended you.
3. Moral standards are not established by authority
figures.
Moral standards are not invented, formed or generated
by authoritative bodies or persons such as nations’
legislative bodies. Ideally instead, these values ought
to be considered in the process of making laws. In
principle therefore, moral standards cannot be changed
nor nullified by the decisions of particular authoritative
body.
Moral standards do not depend on any external
authority but in how a person perceives the
reasonableness of the action.
Example:
• You will not copy your classmate’s answers
during the exam not because your teacher will
fail you if you do, but because you personally
believe cheating is wrong and demeaning to
you as a student.
4. Moral standards have the trait of
universalizability.
Moral principles must apply to all who are in the
relevantly similar situation. When you truly believe an
act is wrong, you also will not agree or consent when
other people commit what you consider a wrongful act.
If you believe an action is morally right, then you will
also support other people doing such acts.
Examples:
 Golden rule.
 You believe lying is wrong, therefore you will
also not agree when someone is not telling the
truth.
 You tend to trust the person whom you know
as someone who is true to his/her word.
5. Moral standards are based on impartial
considerations.
Impartiality is usually depicted as being free of bias
or prejudice. Impartiality in morality requires that we
will equal and/or adequate consideration to the
interests of all concerned parties.
Moral standards are based on objectivity. This means
what you consider as right or wrong does not depend
on whether the action advances the interest of a
particular person or group, but your action depends on
a universal standpoint where everyone’s interest is
counted as equal.
6. Moral standards are associated with special
emotions and vocabulary.
This feature is used to evaluate behavior, to assign
praise and blame and to produce feelings of
satisfaction or of guilt.
Example:
If a person violates a moral standard by telling a lie
even to fulfill a special purpose, it is not surprising if
he/she starts feeling guilty or being ashamed of his
behavior afterwards.
On the contrary, not much guilt is felt if one goes
against the current fashion trend.
Other Example:
When you go against your moral standards, you will
feel guilty, remorseful, or ashamed. You may describe
your behavior as immoral or sinful. If you see other
people against your moral standards, you feel
indignant or perhaps disgusted with that person.
Dilemma
MORAL DILEMMA is a situation where:
• You are presented with two or more actions,
all of which you have the ability to perform.
• There are moral reasons for you to choose
each of the actions.
• You cannot perform all of the actions and have
to choose which action, or actions when there
are three or more choices to perform.
A difficult situation in which an individual is
confronted to choose between two or more alternative
actions, neither of which resolves the situation in a
morally acceptable manner.
• Something or someone will suffer no matter
what choice you make.
Three conditions that must be present in moral
dilemmas:
1. The person or the agent of moral action is
obliged to make a decision about which course
of action is better.
2. There must be different courses of action to
choose from.
3. No matter what course of action is taken, some
moral principles are always compromised.
In moral dilemmas, the moral agent “seems to have
fated to commit something wrong, which implies that
she is bound to morally fail because in one way or
another, she will fail to do something which she ought
to do. In other words, by choosing one of the possible
moral requirements, the person fails on others.” –
Benjamin Labastin
Moral Conflict Show
Depending on your keyword, present in class a scene
showing moral conflict faced by:
1. A person whose choice will adversely affect
very important people in your life (Personal);
2. A business owner whose choice will adversely
affect either the company or the employees
(Organizational); or
3. A high-ranking government official who needs
to choose between implementing or not
implementing a policy not because it will
affect the poor communities, but not
implementing it will also impact the
environment (Structural).
Types of Moral Dilemma
1. Epistemic and ontological
 There are two or more moral requirements
that conflict with each other.
 The moral agent hardly knows which one
takes precedence over the other.
 One option must be better than the other;
only it needs fuller knowledge of the
situation; thus, EPISTEMIC.
2. Self-imposed and world-imposed
 There are two or more moral dilemmas that
conflict with each other, yet neither these
conflicting moral requirements overrides each
other.
 Neither of the moral requirements is stronger
than the other; hence, the moral agent can
hardly choose between the conflicting moral
requirements.
Self-Imposed Dilemma
• Caused by the moral agent’s wrongdoings.
World-Imposed Dilemma
• Certain events in the world place the moral
agent in a situation of moral conflict.
3. Obligation and prohibition
 More than one feasible action is obligatory.
(Obligation Dilemmas)
 All feasible actions are forbidden.
(Prohibition Dilemma)
4. Single-agent and multi-person
Single-agent Dilemmas
 The agent “ought, all things considered, to do
A, ought, all things considered, to do B, and
she cannot do both A and B.
Multi-person Dilemmas
 - One agent, P1, ought to do A; a second
agent, P2, ought to do B; and though each
agent can do what he ought to do, it is not
possible both for P1 to do A and P2 to do B.
 - Requires more than choosing what is right; it
also entails that the persons involved reached a
general consensus.
Three Levels of Moral Dilemma
1. Personal/Individual
 An individual moral dilemma is experienced
by individuals who have a hard time choosing
the right action from two or more actions. No
matter what choice, the individual has
someone, or something will suffer no matter
what choice the individual makes.
 Example: Let’s say you’re in a situation in
which you can choose whether your
son/daughter dies or the man who can cure
cancer. If you had a choice to save your child,
or the person who can cure cancer, who would
you choose?
2. Organizational
 In an organizational moral dilemma,
administrative decisions are characterized as
having routines, and challenges. In business
and organizations, there are always dilemmas
encountered by the administrator and the
employees. It is really very hard to pin down
the necessary morals to benefit the company.
Guiding institutionalization and nurturing
conflict are both viewed as useful in moral
leadership within organizations.
3. Systematic/Structural
 Systematic types of dilemmas occur in the
ordinary conditions of life. Why do dilemmas
occur in ordinary everyday life? Some,
however, may not seem to be dilemmas at all
but an ordinary ethical problem. Also, while it
is common in modern ethics to address
dilemma merely to propose theories to resolve,
it must be remembered that systematic
dilemmas may betray structure to ethics that
means they cannot be resolved.
 These refer to the conformity and compliance
of each member to an expected code of
conduct to be manifested in the
agency/workplace.
 Structural moral dilemma is when a person or
group of persons who holds high-level
positions in society faces a morally conflicting
 situation wherein the entire social system is
affected.
 Example 1: The Controversy in the Social
Security System in 2016
The SSS members have been asking for a two-
thousand pesos SSS pension increase. Several
lawmakers supported the call because they see it
will benefit the senior citizen members. On the
other hand, the SSS executive opposed it saying
the institution cannot sustain such amount in the
long run, and the SSS will go bankrupt in 2014.
Being the President of the Philippines, the final
decision was in the hands of then President
Benigno Aquino III. In the end, President Aquino
vetoed the bill passed by Congress to hike the SSS
pension because he believed “the stability of the
entire SSS benefit system will be seriously
compromised in favor of two million pensioners
and their dependents”. (CNN Philippines, 2017)

FREEDOM
Kantian Version
 it is also essential that the agents should have
the capacity to rise above their feelings and
passions and act for the sake of the moral law
(Haksar, 2018, as cited in Agdalpen &
Francisco, 2019).
 In Kant philosophy, freedom is defined as a
concept which is involved in the moral
domain, at the question: what should I do?
 In summary, Kant says that the moral law is
only that I know myself as a free person.
Kantian freedom is closely linked to the
notion of autonomy, which means law itself:
thus, freedom falls obedience to a law that I
created myself. It is therefore, respect its
commitment to compliance with oneself.
 To act freely is to act autonomously. To act
autonomously is to act according to a law I
give myself. Whenever I act according to the
laws of nature, demands of social convention,
when I pursue pleasure and comfort, I am not
acting freely. To act freely is not simply to
choose a means to a given end. To act freely
is to choose the end itself, for its own sake.