

Ethics

 branch of philosophy
 systematic questioning
and critical examination
of the underlying
principles of morality
 2 General
Approaches of Ethics

 Normative ethics
- to give an answer to the
question
 Meta-ethics
- beyond the concepts
 According to Sumner

 Notion of what is right
is known as “folkway”
 From these folkways,
emerge the mores
 According to Sumner

 2 factors of Emergence
of Morality: the point of
view of the society
together its customs,
social rules and sanctions
 According to Sumner

 2. The individual has
unconsciously developed
habits to follow social
norms established by
society
 FREEDOM
Assumes thatone is a free
moral agent
According to John Mothershead
 2 necessary conditions for
morality to occur
1.Freedom – taking full
 2 necessary conditions
for morality to occur

2. Obligation –
construed one’s duty to
himself to exercise this
freedom as a rational
moral being
 CONDUCT

 refers to deliberate
human action
Pre-reflective morality
attributed to animals
 According to John
Mothershead


Only humans are moral
in so far as a human
person capable of
deliberate human action.
 Value Experience
 of our
 side-taking part
experience
 Accdg. to Mothershead, a
value can become a moral
values if they become
unlimited priorities in their
scope of relevance in life
 MORAL DECISION

 most important class
of moral judgments
because it has refe-
rence to the judge’s
own future action
Deontological Ethics or
reasoning

 Is ethics based on
duty
 Greek word DEIN
means DUTY
 Deontological Ethics or
reasoning

Recognizes that there are
moral principles that we
follow which we consider
as universally correct and
should be applicable to all
humanity
 Deontological Ethics or
reasoning

 This fundamental
moral principle is known
as the “Categorical
Imperative” or the law of
morality
 Teleology

 “Telos” = END, GOAL,
PURPOSE
 Teleologist believes that
the end or goal or purpose
of an action must be based
on its consequences
 Teleology

 DICTUM is the most
common form of
consequentialism
 Dictum – the end justifies
the means
 As against Deontological
ethics which looks at the

nature or intrinsic value of
the act itself, teleological or
consequentialist ethics aims
to examine the instrumental
value of the act or its
consequences or purpose
 Approaches to Moral
Reasoning

 Common mistakes in
moral reasoning:
a.Failure to recognize
the vagueness of
moral concepts
 Approaches to Moral
Reasoning

 Common mistakes in moral reasoning:

b. failure to recognize the

value-laden nature of
many concepts which
appear value-free
 Approaches to Moral
Reasoning

 Common mistakes in
moral reasoning:
c. uncritical use of
emotive terms
 Approaches to Moral
Reasoning

 Common mistakes in
moral reasoning:
d. Hasty generalization
e. faulty causal
reasoning
 Approaches to Moral
Reasoning
 
Common mistakes in moral reasoning:

f. rationalization
g. dismissal of a moral
position on the basis of
their origin
 One should be wary

of them in order to
avoid committing
these mistakes in
proposing a moral
argument