Ethics

Foundations of Moral Valuation

• Chapter VI:
• Synthesis: Making Informed Decisions
Chapter VI: Synthesis: Making Informed
Decisions
• The Moral Agent and Contexts
• Moral Deliberation
• Self, Society, and Environment
Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be
able to:
• Identify the different factors that shape an individual in
his/her moral decision-making;
• Internalize the necessary steps toward making informed
moral decisions; and
• Apply the ethical theories or frameworks on moral issues
involving the self, society, and the non-human
environment.
INTRODUCTION
• What is the value of a college-level class in Ethics? We have
been introduced to four major ethical theories or frameworks:
utilitarianism, natural law ethics, Kantian deontology, and
virtue ethics. None of them is definitive nor final.
• What then is the use of studying them? Each represents the
best attempts of the best thinkers in history to give fully
thought-out answers to the questions “What ought I to do?”
and “Why ought I to do so?” This quest has not reached its
final conclusion; instead, it seems that the human condition of
finitude will demand that we continue to grapple with these
questions. The story of humanity appears to be the never-
ending search for what it means to be fully human in the face
of moral choices.
• Applying rational deliberation to determine a person’s ethical responsibility to
himself/herself, society, and environment is the overall goal of a college course in
Ethics. We shall explore all of these later in this chapter.

• In order to do this, we must first attempt to explore the self that must undertake
this challenge. We are talking about the moral agent, the one who eventually must
think about his/her choices and make decisions on what s/he ought to do.

• We cannot simply assume that ethics is an activity that a purely rational creature
engages in. Instead, the realm of morality must be understood as a thoroughly
human realm. Ethical thought and decision-making are done by an agent who is
shaped and dictated upon by many factors within him/her and without.

• If we understand this, then we shall see how complex the ethical situation is, one
that demands mature rational thinking as well as courageous decision-making.
THE MORAL AGENT AND CONTEXTS
• What one ought to do in one’s life is not dictated by one’s physical,
interpersonal, social, or historical conditions.
• What one ought to do is also not abstracted from one’s own specific
situation.
• One always comes from somewhere. One is always continuously being
shaped by many factors outside of one’s own free will. The human
individual thus always exists in the tension between being
conditioned by external factors and being a free agent.
• The moral agent is not a calculating, unfeeling machine that
produces completely objective and absolutely correct solutions to
even the most complex moral problems.
CULTURE AND ETHICS
Ethics should neither be reduced to one’s own cultural standards,
nor should it simplistically dismiss one’s unique cultural beliefs and
practices. What is important is that one does not wander into ethical
situations blindly, with the naive assumption that ethical issues will
be resolved automatically by his/her beliefs and traditions. Instead,
s/he should challenge himself/herself to continuously work toward a
fuller maturity in ethical decision-making. Moral development then is
a prerequisite if the individual is to encounter ethical situations with
a clear mind and with his/her values properly placed with respect to
each other.
RELIGION AND ETHICS
Many religious followers assume that what their religion teaches can
be found either in their sacred scripture (e.g. the Bible for Christians, the
Qur’an for Muslims, etc.) or body of writings (e.g. the Vedas, including
the Upanishads, and other texts for Hindus; the Tao Te Ching, Chuang-
tzu, and other Taoist classics for Taoists) or in other forms (other than
written texts) of preaching that their leaders had promulgated and
become part of their traditions.
The moral agent in question must still, in full responsibility, challenge
himself/herself to understand using his/her own powers of rationality, but
with full recognition of his/her own situatedness, and what his/her
religious authorities claim his/her religion teaches.
MORAL DELIBERATION
• American moral psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927−1987)
theorized that moral development happens in six stages which he
divided into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and
post-conventional.
• The significance of studying the different ethical theories and
frameworks becomes clear only to the individual who has achieved,
or is in the process of achieving, moral maturity. For someone who is
still in Kohlberg’s pre-conventional or conventional stages, moral
valuation remains a matter of seeking reward or avoiding
punishment, or at best, a question of following the dictates of other
people.
FEELINGS IN MORAL DELIBERATION
• Aristotle precisely points out that moral virtue goes beyond the
mere act of intellectually identifying the right thing to do. Instead,
it is the condition of one’s character by which the agent is able to
manage his/her emotions or feelings.
• The mature moral agent realizes that s/he is both a product of many
forces, elements, and events, all of which shape his/her situation
and options for a decision. Instead, a meaningful moral decision is
one that s/he makes in full cognizance of where s/he is coming from
and of where s/he ought to go.
MORAL PROBLEMS
• Aristotle recognizes the importance of continuous habituation in the goal of
shaping one’s character so that s/he becomes more used to choosing the right
thing.
• A moral individual is always a human being whose intellect remains finite and
whose passions remain dynamic, and who is always placed in situations that are
unique. There are no automatic moral decisions; one must continue to manage
his/her reason and passions to respond in the best way possible to the
kaleidoscope of moral situations that s/he finds himself/herself in.
THE VALUE OF STUDYING ETHICAL THEORIES AND FRAMEWORK
• The ethical theories or frameworks may serve as guideposts, given that they are
the best attempts to understand morality that the history of human thought has to
offer.
• What the responsible moral individual must instead perform is to continuously test
the cogency and coherence of the ethical theory or framework in question against
the complexity of the concrete experience at hand.
SELF, SOCIETY, AND ENVIRONMENT
INDIVIDUAL/SELF
• In the realm of the self, as noted earlier, one has to pay attention not
just on how one deals with oneself, but also on how one interacts with
other individuals in personal relations. One may respond to the
demand for an ethically responsible “care for the self ” by making full
use of the four ethical theories or frameworks.
• John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, though seemingly a hedonistic theory
given its emphasis on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain,
elevates the human element above the animalistic and above the
merely selfish.
INDIVIDUAL/SELF
• Thomas Aquinas’s natural law theory states as its first natural
inclination the innate tendency that all human beings share with
all other existing things, namely, the natural propensity to
maintain oneself in one’s existence.
• Kant’s deontology celebrates the rational faculty of the moral
agent, which sets it above merely sentient beings.
• Aristotle’s virtue ethics teaches one to cultivate his/her own
intellect as well as his/her character to achieve eudaimonia in
his/her lifetime.
SOCIAL LIFE: IN THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT AND IN THE
GLOBAL VILLAGE
• One’s membership in any society brings forth the demands of
communal life in terms of the group’s rules and regulations. The
ethical question arises when the expectations of a particular
society come into conflict with one’s most fundamental values.
• Mill’s utilitarian doctrine will always push for the greatest
happiness principle as the prime determinant of what can be
considered as good action, whether in the personal sphere or in the
societal realm. Thus, Filipinos cannot simply assume that their
action is good because their culture says so.
SOCIAL LIFE: IN THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT AND IN THE
GLOBAL VILLAGE
• Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, in his natural law theory has a
clear conception of the principles that should guide the individual in
her actions that affect her larger society.
• Immanuel Kant argues for the use of the principles of
universalizability and of humanity as end in itself to form a person’s
autonomous notion of what s/he ought to do.
• Aristotle’s virtue ethics prescribes mesotes as the guide to all the
actions that a person has to take, even in his/her dealing with the
larger community of people.
THE NON-HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
• In the case of utilitarianism, some scholars point out that this
hedonistic doctrine that focuses on the sovereignty of pleasures
and pains in human decision-making should extend into other
creatures that can experience pleasures and pains, namely,
animals. Thus, one of the sources of animal ethics is
utilitarianism.
• Since Kantian deontology focuses on the innate dignity of the
human being as possessing reason, it can be argued that one
cannot possibly universalize maxims that in the end will lead to an
untenable social existence.
THE NON-HUMAN ENVIRONMENT
• Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, may not necessarily talk about
the physical environment and human moral responsibility to it as
such, but one can try to infer from his philosophy that certain
actions should be avoided because they do not produce a
harmonious, peaceful society.
• Lastly, Aristotle’s virtue ethics also pick up on the problem of such
shortsightedness and ask how this can possibly lead to becoming a
better person.
A CLOSING THAT IS REALLY AN OPENING
• In the end, there is only a beginning: We do not have a computer program
here that can automatically calculate what the right thing to do in a given
situation.
• There is only the human individual and his/her community of fellow human
beings who need to accept that they must continue to explore the meaning
of what is good and right while hoping to arrive at the best judgments they
can make at this point in time.
• Realizing the finitude of human understanding and of the capacity to make
choices, but at the same time hoping that one’s best attempt at doing what
is right does mean something in the end—these are part and parcel of
making informed moral decisions.
LESSON SUMMARY
•Making informed decisions in the realm of morality entails first
understanding who one is, in order to account for reasons that one
comes up with as the agent who must choose in a moral situation.
•The mature moral agent must understand how his/her society, history,
culture, and even religion shape who s/he is. S/he must also realize
though that his/her choices in the end cannot simply be a mere product
of these outside forces, but must be made in the spirit of freedom.
•An essential element in maturity is the realization that one’s choices,
even in the realm of ethics, cannot simply be a function of rational
thought, but are inevitably shaped also by the feelings.
•With the aid of the different ethical theories or frameworks discussed in
the previous chapters, the morally mature agent will be able to
appreciate his/her responsibility toward himself/herself, his/her
society, and his/her environment.