Welcome Back!

STARTING SOON … GET COMFORTABLE

Ethics and Values
ETHICAL PRACTICE

04/09/2021 LEVEL 4 | ETHICS AND VALUES | BA (HONS) INTEGRATED HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 2
Becoming a saint or sinner

Are you good? Are you bad? A host of consequences hangs on the answer. Such is the common
belief, at any rate. Because we invest the question with meaning.

A brief experiment can quickly convince you that the question, so grave in appearance, has no
foundation.
Heather Lanier | TED October 2017
Conundrum: is homosexuality wrong
because it is unnatural?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/01/14/sophie-smith/academic-freedom/
 Is homosexuality wrong because it is
unnatural?
The Is-Ought gap and its implications for our moral judgements

The argument that some behaviour is wrong because it’s unnatural – or right because it’s natural – is very
common. It is unfortunate then that the argument doesn’t work. Consider:

Climbing Mount Everest is wrong because it’s unnatural for human beings to exist at 29,000 feet above sea level.

Vegetarianism is unnatural and therefore morally wrong.

It is unnatural to abstain from sex, therefore Catholic priests are immoral (those that manage to abstain from
sex).
The Is-Ought Gap
The Is-Ought gap refers to the fact that statements about what is the case do not imply further
statements about what should be the case.

 …. The fact that something in the world is a certain way tells us nothing about whether it
should be that way.

For example: if it were found that human were genetically predisposed towards violence and
murder it would not follow that we ought to go around assaulting and killing people.
Social Disruption
What if Ted Kelp made his argument based on the consequences of homosexuality.

Human beings are by nature heterosexual

Society is organised to reflect this fact
Homosexuality is therefore socially disruptive
This has bad consequences

Empirical support | logical support | Reason

Your values
If you think Pastor Kelp is right
It is likely
You value intuitions or feelings in coming to
moral judgements;
You do not feel it is necessary to provide a
rational justification for moral judgements;
You either don’t understand or don’t accept,
the Is-Ought gap
If you think Paster Kelp is wrong
It is likely
You accept Hume’s point that it is not possible
to derive a moral ought from a statement
about how the world is.
It is possible
You don’t think that homosexuality is
unnatural
Ethics is everywhere
Seedhouse 2009 (Chapters 2 & 3)

In order to create an ethically aware health care system we have to understand ethics properly;
i.e. to undersatand that ethics is everywhere and personal.

Whatever approach we use to better understand our conundrums, we need to think about their
social and philosophical sources.

‘Work for health is a moral endeavour … The health worker has to think about what she wants to
achieve and how she wants to achieve it, and she must consider whether the person she is trying
to help has the same goals.’
Understanding ethics
Everyday ethics
Daily discussion of moral issues – expressing
approval/disapproval of values and principles.
At times inconsistent at time incoherent.
Espoused and enacted values, conscious and
unconscious values are all expressed and
explored here in an often haphazard way.
Technical ethics
Tidies up those haphazard discussions to
create theories that are internally consistent
and coherent. The best known strands of
technical ethics are:
◦ Ethics as a quest to understand the ‘good’
◦ Ethics based on either consequences or duties
◦ Ethics as a process of deliberation
Seedhouse (2017: 120)
‘tragic choices’; either/or decisions
_____________________________
Behind the question of whether abortion should be
a legal right are questions of personhood,
autonomy, and the nature of moral right
______________________________
Everything we do we might do differently or not at
all. The deliberation about what to do or not to do
is deeply ethical.

Read pp 119 - 126

04/09/2021 LEVEL 4 | ETHICS AND VALUES | BA (HONS) INTEGRATED HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE 14