ETHICS REVIEWER

Meaning and Scope of Ethics

Characteristics of Moral Standards

It takes less time TO DO THINGS RIGHT than to explain why you did it wrong. – Henry Longfellow

HOW WOULD YOU DISTINGUISH GOOD THINGS FROM BAD THINGS?

Morality refers to the set of standards an individual person or society uses to judge whether an act good
or bad, whether someone is virtuous or not, or whether we ought to do this or that.

The word “Ethics” is sometimes used to refer to one’s set of moral beliefs and practices. Strictly
speaking, however, it refers to the discipline that examines the moral standards of an individual
or society.

THREE GENERAL IDEAS OF ETHICS

Metaethics - It looks into the nature, meaning, scope, and foundations of moral values, beliefs, and
judgments. Examples of metaethical questions are: Is morality objective or relative? Is morality based
on reason, emotions, intuition, or facts? What are moral persons? What does it mean to be morally
accountable? Intention with mind

Normative Ethics - It is concerned with the formulation of moral standards, rules, or principles to
determine right from wrong conduct or ways of life worth pursuing. Kung Nakagawa kang kasalanan,
pagbayaran ito

Applied Ethics - It examines the particular moral issues occurring in both the personal and social
spheres. It determines the moral permissibility of actions and practices in specific areas of human
concern like business, medicine, nature, law, sports, and others.

Moral standards are often confused with other normative standards also concerned with “good” or
“proper” behavior, such as:

1. Standards of Etiquette: based on culture or conventional practices

2. Legal Standards: based on governmental laws

3. Religious Standards: based on religious laws

Four Characteristics of Moral Standards

1. Moral standards deal with matters that can seriously harm or benefit human beings (and other
moral persons).

2. Moral standards have universal validity.

 • If it is morally wrong for Person A to do act X, then it is wrong to do X for anyone under
circumstances relevantly similar to Person A’s.

3. Moral standards have a particularly overriding importance.

• Moral standards are used to evaluate even the correctness of other normative
standards such as legal and cultural ones.

4. Moral standards are not established by the decisions of authoritarian bodies, nor are they
determined by appealing to consensus or tradition.

Summary

The difference between ethics and morality is that while Morals define our own character, Ethics dictates
the inner working of a social system.

Key Concepts in Ethics

Agency/ Agent – Human person

Rationality/ Intelligence – Pagkakaiba ng tao sa hayop

Moral Agent - Freedom

Determinants of human acts

Consider these three to serve morally upright:

1. Object – Activity
2. Motive – Intention
3. Circumstances – outcome kung gaano kalala o ka grabe ang nagawa.

Knowledge

Volition – kagustuhan natin

Acts of Man – Involuntary (paghinga)

Types of Good

1. Real
2. Apparent – bagay na mali talaga but ginagawa nating mabuti at jinujustify natin
3. Conditional – tatanggap ng punishment ang mga bata kung magulo sila.
4. Simple –
 5. Imperfect – pleasures that are passive (materials sa buhay natin na nawawala, pagkain, tubig)
6. Perfect – God, happiness

Eudaimonia: The Ultimate Good, Livingwell & Acting well

Eudaimonia – Family, Wealth, Health, Spirituality, Friends

Obligation – opt to/ not to (pwede kang maging hindi obligado sa isang bagay)

Responsibility – sumunod sa batas/ sumunod sa trabaho

Conscience – an act of the practical judgement of reason deciding upon an individual action as good and
to be perfomed or as evil and to be avoided. (Remember that walang bad conscience)

Erroneous – mga tao na sinanay ang sarili na gawin yung mali.

Sources Of Authority

External – the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as a regulating the
actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.

1987 Constitution

To ensure a separation of powers, the U.S. Federal Government is made up of three branches:
legislative, executive and judicial.

Legislative – responsible for making laws within a country.

Judiciary – holds the power to settle controversies involving rights that are legally demandable and
enforceable. Who enacts the law. humahatol sa mga nagkasala

Executive – highest authority. Ex. President (siya yung may final say or siya ang nag aapprove ng bill)
SOURCES OF AUTHORITY EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL

Law - the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of
its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him
to obey it.

(Justice should be fair but for rich people most of the time they are above the law.)

RELIGION – is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and

practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that
generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements.

(role model on how to be a good person.)

If religion taught you a bad thing, mag isip isip na tayo kung magstay pa tayo doon.

Culture – refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings,
hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material
objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual
and group striving.

(product of our ancestors of the past that we can use in present and future.)

“Understanding languages and other cultures builds bridges.”

Cultural Relativism - Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no scientific
standards for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Studying differences
in culture among groups and societies presupposes a position of cultural relativism. It does not imply
normalcy for oneself, nor for one's society.

- It, however, calls for judgment when dealing with groups or societies different from one's own.
Information about the nature of cultural differences between societies, their roots, and their
consequences should precede judgment and action. Negotiation is more likely to succeed when the
parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints.

Subjectivism - the individual is the sole determinant of what is morally good or bad, right or wrong.

Ethical subjectivism

Good points of subjectivism

1. Reflects the subjective elements of morality

2. Reflects the evaluative elements of moral statements
3. Shows that moral judgements communicate dis/approval
4. Reflects the persuasive intentions behind ethical discussions
 5. May clarify what people are arguing about

Bad points of subjectivism

“If I approve of something, it must be good”

“Moral statements seem more than statements about feelings”

“How can we blame people if moral truths are always subjective?

Psychological egoism – Human beings are naturally self-centered, so all our action are always already
motivated by self-interest.

Ethical egoism – people ought to pursue their own self-interest, and no one has any obligation to
promote anyone else’s interests.