Chapter 1

THE ETHICAL DIMENSION OF

HUMAN EXISTENCE
Ethics is about…
• The good thing to be done and the bad thing
to be avoided.
• The right and wrong thing to do.
• What consists an acceptable or unacceptable
human behaviour.
• Determining the grounds of human values.
Kinds of valuation
• Aesthetic valuation – good or bad in art and
beauty.
• Etiquette valuation – polite and impolite
behaviour.
• Technical valuation – the right and wrong
way or method of doing things.
The ethical or moral valuation
• Valuations that have a grave impact or effect to
the concern for human well-being or life itself.
• Human well-being: poverty, inequality, or
sexual identity, private data handling
• Human life: war, capital punishment, abortion,
euthanasia
Vagueness in the scope of ethics
• The distinction between what belongs to
ethics and what does not is not always so
clearly defined.
• Are clothes always just a matter of taste or
would provocative clothing call for some
kind of moral judgment?
Ethics and morals
• Not ethical – (amoral) not belonging to the
sphere of ethical valuation.
• Not ethical – (immoral/unethical) not
measuring up to the requirement or
standard of morality.
Ethics as a branch of philosophy
• morals – (practical) referring to personal
moral beliefs, attitudes, and conduct.
• moral – (theoretical) referring to a
conceptual description of something as
belonging to the sphere of ethics as a moral
science/study.
Ethics as a branch of philosophy
• The term "ethics" can be spoken of as the
discipline of studying and understanding
ideal human behavior and ideal ways of
thinking.
• It is an intellectual discipline belonging to
philosophy.
Ethics as a branch of philosophy
• Acceptable = ethical/moral
• Unacceptable = unethical/moral
• Professional ethics: ethical/unethical conduct but
not necessarily moral/immoral.
Ethics or morality?

•Ethics = morality
•Ethical = moral
•Unethical = immoral
Descriptive and Normative Ethics
• Descriptive ethics – describes how people actually
make moral valuations.
• Done by sociologists, anthropologists, and historians
• Normative ethics – prescribes how people should
ideally make moral valuations.
• Done by philosophers and theologians
Ethics as a philosophical study…
• goes beyond theoretical description (descriptive
theory).
• does not simply accept any theoretical prescription
(normative theory).
• makes a CRITICAL EVALUATION of the strengths
and weaknesses of normative theories.
Moral Issue
• QUESTION: What makes an issue a moral
issue?
• MORAL ISSUE – situation that calls for moral
valuation.
• QUESTION: How do we know that such a
situation calls for a moral valuation?
Moral Issue
• MORAL ISSUE – a situation involving more
universally obligatory practices (normative
morality) and are not confined to individual
societies.
• MORAL ISSUE – a controversy (inconclusive
debates) regarding the morality (moral
acceptability or permissibility) of certain actions.
Moral Decisions
• MORAL DECISION – a choice involving moral
valuation a person or moral agent makes on what
course of action to do or not to do in a given
situation.
• MORAL JUDGMENT – a person or moral observer’s
assessment as to the moral rightness or wrongness
of a moral agent’s action in a given situation.
Moral Dilemmas
• MORAL DILEMMAS – a situation where a person or
moral agent is forced to choose between or among
conflicting options, all of which are morally
unacceptable.
• No matter what option or course of action is taken,
some moral principles are violated or moral values
jeopardized.
 Moral Dilemmas
• There is a train that, much to your horror, is about to
run over your beloved grown up son, who has been
tied to its track. It just so happens that you have just
enough time to flip a switch that will send the train
down a different track, saving your son. However, tied
to the other track, is your granddaughter, the daughter
of the very son in danger of being run over. Your son is
begging and pleading with you not to flip the switch,
not to kill his daughter. What would you do?
 Moral Dilemmas
• A pregnant woman leading a group of people out of a cave
on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time
high tide will be upon them, and unless she is unstuck, they
will all be drowned except the woman, whose head is out
of the cave. Fortunately, (or unfortunately,) someone has
with him a stick of dynamite. There seems to be no other
way to get the pregnant woman loose without using the
dynamite which will inevitably kill her; but if they do not
use it everyone will drown. What should they do?
REASONING
• Moral judgments, like moral decisions, are always
ACCOUNTABLE.
• Accountable (answerable) – we have an obligation
to give reasons for our judgments and decisions.
• What reasons do we give to decide or to judge that
a certain way of acting is either right or wrong?
REASONING
• GIVING REASONS means asking and answering the
question “WHY?”.
• Asking why may bring us to give no more than
superficial reasons.
• Asking why can also lead us to a deeper reason, if
not, the most profound of reasons why something
is morally acceptable or not?
REASONING

• PHILOSOPHY is an activity of
questioning the very
FOUNDATIONS of THOUGHT – the
deepest reasons of our beliefs.
REASONING
• Why don’t you cheat?
• Because I’m afraid of punishment.
• Why does cheating deserve punishment?
• Because it is against the school rules.
• Why do school rules prohibit cheating?
• Because it is wrong.
REASONING
• Why is cheating wrong?
• Because it is against the school rules???
• Because it is unfair—it violates the principle of
justice and fairness.
• What is wrong with being unfair?
• WHAT IS JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS AND WHY ARE THEY
IMPORTANT TO HUMAN LIFE?
REASONING
• What is wrong with the following reasoning?
• “I did not cheat on the exam because I was afraid
that I might get caught.”
• “I looked after my father in the hospital because I
wanted to get a higher-allowance.”
• Why are these reasons not good enough?
REASONING
• Because they are superficial reasons.
• They do not strike at the thing-itself or the
ULTIMATE determinant—the VERY PRINCIPLE—of
rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness of an
action.
• MORAL PRINCIPLE – a rationally established
GROUND by which one justifies and maintains one’s
moral decisions and judgments.
REASONING
• MORAL/ETHICAL THEORY – a systematic and abstract
EXPLANATION of how various set of moral facts,
phenomena, and principles are related to each other
based on an assumption or an organized set of
assumptions about human life and well-being.
• MORAL/ETHICAL FRAMEWORK – a set of theoretically
interconnected moral concepts and ideas which serve to
STRUCTURE and evaluate reasons for moral decisions and
judgments.