The Role of Ethics

• A science is defined as a systematic body of knowledge

about a particular set of related events or objects.
*Political science deals systematically with political
behavior of a group of people, governance and political
Institutions.
*Medical science deals with systematic study of health
and welfare of human beings.
* Linguistics is the science of language deals with
systematic study of the nature and function of language,
grammatical structure and development.
• Ethics as a science provides a systematic
body of norms, values, and principles which
help in regulating human conduct in society.
Two General Categories of Sciences
• Positive or descriptive sciences, describe objects and
phenomena as we find them with the help of our sense
organs.
An ophthalmologist inform us about the constitution of our eye and
its health.
An economist tells us about wealth generation, investment, effects
of inflation on economic development and other related areas.
• Non of the descriptive or positive sciences claim to deal
beyond their domain or set of objects and facts.
• Another group of sciences deal systematically with
observable conduct and behavior or objects from an
axiological or normative viewpoint.
• These sciences deal with standards, rules or conventions
by which we judge objects, phenomena, prescriptions or
conduct as good or bad, right and wrong, evil or virtuous.
Aesthetics for example deals with standards by which we judge
and perceive objects as beautiful or ugly.
Logic deals with standards by which we judge statements as
true or false, consistent or contradictory and conflicting.
Ethics deals with standards by which we judge human action to
be right or wrong.
• Ethics as a normative science judges human
conduct as good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate.
• When good is taken to be key to ethical behavior,
this leads to ethical theory characterized by value
fulfillment and right means fulfillment of a set of
obligations towards others.
• Such theories are termed Axiological i.e., stressing
value aspect or teleological, stressing final goal,
purpose, objective or design.
Its Classifications
1-Descriptive Ethics
* It reports the actual moral principles that
govern the behavior of individuals in a certain
society ( what the society considers as good or
bad without making any judgment or evaluation
of those ways of behavior).
* It is carried out by anthropologist, sociologist,
historian and psychologist.
2-Normative Ethics/Applied Ethics
* It is an inquiry into the rational grounds for justifying
a set of moral norms for all mankind, and the rational
construction of a system of such norms.
* It deals with norms (or standards) and prescriptions,
what we ought to do and what we ought not to do.
Example: human being should always act in the interest of
others; human being should act in their own self interest Or
it encompasses the making of moral values judgments for
example abortion is immoral.
DEVELOPMENT OF ETHICS
• In ethics emphasis is on rational inquiry and understanding
of what is good and what is bad in terms of human action.
• In this way ethics became synonyms to morality and morals.
• In today’s world we find a discussion on morality in most of
the books on Ethics because these two terms or concepts are
used interchangeably.
• In recent years some other scholars and authors have
differentiated these two terms, ethics and morality,
WHAT IS ETHICS AND MORALITY?

• Oliver argues, “Ethics, is a term that refers not directly to

practice but rather to theory”.
• “This difference in usage, although generally accepted in
philosophical circles, is not followed by people in general.” We
should not use terms ethics and ethical in place of morality and
moral. “Because the two realms—the practical and the
theoretical—do exist and do differ from each other.
• [Oliver A. Johnson, Ethics: Selections from Classical and
Contemporary Writers, fifth edition, Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, New York, 1984, p2]
• However, to say that ethics is the theoretical examination of
morality alone is wrong because in any way we cannot
confine ethical inquiry to morality, conduct or behaviour.
Its scope, from ethical point of view, must include
everything. One of the objectives of ethics is to determine
the rightness or wrongness of ideas, theories and thought.
• According to William H. Shaw, some other philosophers
tend to distinguish morality from ethics. “To them morality
refers to human conduct and values, and ethics refers to the
study of those areas.
Morals and Ethics
• Ethics is presented as a branch of Philosophy which is mainly concerned
with rational inquiry of morality provides a rational basis and
understanding to morality.
• It is asserted that ethics, in fact, “seeks to explain the place of morality in a
scientific view of the world.”
• Dominant paradigm of scholarship indicates the origin of ethical discourse
from Greek, even before Aristotle when Socrates (470-399 BC) raised the
Question; ‘What ought one to do?’
• It was considered the first basic question of ethics.
• Related to good conduct (moral, behavior)
• Guarantee good and successful life
• Thus, we observe that since the time of Greek philosophical thought
ethics and morality have been generally used interchangeably.
• Bertrand Russell asserts: “The first step in ethics … is to be quite
clear as to what we mean by good and bad. Only then can we return
to conduct and ask how right conduct is related to the production of
goods and the avoidance of evils.”