GEC8/ETHICS

Moral Philosophy
Man

The only being endowed with wisdom and reason. It is man’s noble responsibility and duty to;
1. Maintain order and continue to improve all things in the universe
2. Establish harmonious environment without robbing other’s freedom and right to live.

Rule
Rules are important to social beings. Imagine the chaos that results from the absence of Rules.
For instance:
Students and professors alike come to school in any attire they want.
Everyone in the classroom wants to talk at the same time.
No traffic rules, No Phil Constitution and other Laws of the Land
Absence of Rules=Chaos/Disorder

Why are rules important?

To set order in society “No one is above the Law”, we are all subject to rules/laws including even the
highest official in the country otherwise there will be chaos.
Leave the people to themselves, no laws and inner goodness will flourish” – Lao Tsu

Rules are NOT meant to RESTRICT your FREEDOM.

They are meant to help one grow in freedom and to grow in your ability to choose and do what is good
for you and for others. Any rule or law that prevents human persons from doing good and being good
ought to be repealed/abolished as they are “suffocating Rules/Laws and not good Laws.

Do law-abiding citizens feel the restricting presence of a rule?

Law abiding citizens don’t even feel the restricting presence of a rule/law because they already do what
the rule/law states everybody should do.
This is the state where one acts not because rules demand it but because one sees he has to act that
way. A state where one owns the moral standard not just abide by the moral standard.

Why do we need to study ethics?-

 There are right ways and wrong ways of doing things.
 We must have agreements, understandings, principles, or rules of procedure.
 Moral conduct and ethical systems must be intelligently appraised and criticized
 Ethics seeks to point out to men the true values of life.

We are not living in this world alone. All our judgements, decisions and actions does not only affect
us. It will have an effect or it also will affect our families, our friends, our relatives and our communities,
and so we have to study ethics and we need to study Ethics to help us know what is right from wrong,
good from bad so as we can do that which is right and avoid doing that which is wrong. Ethics can give
real and practical guidance to our lives.

“The unexamined life not worth living” – Socrates

Nature and Scope of Ethics

Etymology and Meaning of Ethics

Ethics
As used in the works of Aristotle.
Greek word “ethos” w/c means “custom, habit, character or disposition
Latin word equivalent “Mors, Moris” w/c means “Moral”

Based on these Greek and Latin etymology, Ethics simply means, it deals with “MORALITY”
Custom
Way of behaving, something which is usually done. A belief that has been established for a long time. A
long standing practice of a person (daily habit) or group (cultural practice) such as, “if something has
been done a certain way for a long time and has become generally accepted then it’s a Custom.

Moral
Concerned with the Principle of right and wrong BEHAVIOR and the goodness and badness of human
character/act. It refers to what societies sanction as right and acceptable

ETHICS defined
Ethics or Moral Philosophy – is a branch of Philosophy which deals with moral standards, it inquires
about the rightness and wrongness of human behaviour/act or the goodness and badness of personality
trait or character.

>It deals with ideas, with topics such as moral standards or norms of morality, conscience, moral values
and virtues.
>It is a study of the morality of human acts and the moral agents, what makes an act obligatory and
what makes a person accountable.
>It is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do,
usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. (Manuel
Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J.,)
>Ethics is an active process rather than a static condition, so some ethicist use the expression doing
ethics. When people are doing ethics, they need to support their beliefs and assertions with sound
reasoning.
>Way of Life
Assumptions of Ethics
Assumptions – fundamental beliefs or statements that are accepted to be true without the burden of
proving or of proof.
1. Man is a rational being
-capable of knowing both intentions and the consequences of his actions, and is capable of judging
them as right or wrong
2. Man is free
-act according to his will and has the power to act, speak, or think if chooses without restraints

Objectives of Ethics

>To study and assess human behaviour

>To establish principles and moral standards of behaviour

Ethical objectives are based on the following factors:

1. Objectivity - decision based on facts not from the mere feelings
2. Impartiality - (also called even-handedness or fair-mindedness) is a principle of justice
holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias,
prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons
3. Accuracy - Accuracy is to be ensuring that the information is correct and without any
mistake. Information accuracy is important because the life of people may depend in it like the
medical information at the hospitals, so the information must be accurate. The quality of
information measured by accuracy, timeliness, completeness, relevance and if it is easy to be
understood by the users, so the accuracy important for quality of information. And the accuracy
represents all organization actions. To get accurate information we need the right value.
4. Public Accountability - Accountability is the readiness or preparedness to give an
explanation or justification to stakeholders for one’s judgments, intentions and actions.
5. Fairness - The fairness approach assumes that people should be treated equally regardless
of their station in life, that is, they should not be subject to discrimination.
6. Truthfulness - the quality of being honest and not containing or telling any lies
 Scopes of ethics

3 different scopes of ethics

1. Meta-Ethics: Meta-ethics comprises the area of situational ethics and deals with logical
questions like ‘What do we mean by ‘freedom’ and ‘determinism’ etc. It delves into the nature
of ethical properties, attitudes and judgments. For example, a media critic’s description of a TV
series as ‘good drama’ does not necessarily denote that the program is morally sound. It is the
function of Meta-ethics to define such vague concepts in ethical terms. Some of the theories of
Meta-Ethics are Naturalism, Non-Naturalism, Emotivism and Prescriptivism.

2. Normative Ethics: Normative ethics deals with standards or norms by which we can judge
human actions to be right or wrong. It deals with the criteria of what is morally right or
wrong. For example, if someone murders a person, everyone will agree that it is wrong. The
question is: Why is it wrong to murder someone? There are a lot of different answers we could
give, but if we want to specify a principle that stated why it's wrong, the answer might be:
Murder is wrong because when we kill someone, we violate their right to live. Another
perspective might be – To inflict unnecessary suffering on the person being murdered or their
family is wrong, that’s why to kill a person is wrong.

There are three elements emphasized by normative ethics:

The person who performs the act (the agent)
The act
The consequences of the act

3. Applied Ethics: Applied ethics is the problem-solving branch of moral philosophy. It uses the
insights derived from Meta-ethics and the general principles and rules of normative ethics in
addressing specific ethical issues and cases in a professional, disciplinary or practical field.
Applied ethics is the vital link between theory and practice, the real test of ethical decision-
making. Applied ethics often requires not only theoretical analysis but also practical and
feasible solutions.

Applied ethics takes into consideration issues such as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment,
drug decriminalization, gay marriage, etc.

In this sense, ethics talk about how to awaken our conscience. We are becoming more aware
of our duties and responsibilities towards other beings where we are at. Nowadays, almost
anywhere we go through the advance of the technology, we see CCTV that serves as our static
eyes to see of what we are doing. We call it as an advance invention to see through what had
happened when we are not around. But ever since there is this more advance and more
accurate “built in CCTV” in us, that is our conscience. Even if the world did not see or know
what we did but our conscience always tells us that we did something to others. We may
tamper or edit the CCTV but not our conscience.

Meta-ethics - insights
Normative ethics - general rules/principle
Applied ethics - problem solving branch

Nature of Ethics
1. Scientific
A scientific explanation of what is right and what is wrong
2. Not an Art
Morality deals with motive, intention, purpose and choice which are considered right or wrong in the
light of goodness
3. Variable nature
Human beings change and the morality and ethical perspective in them also changes
4. Exclusively for human beings
We are the ones who have the capacity for moral judgment