Topic: Ethics, Mores, and Values

Notes:
1.0 Ethics is a branch of philosophy that aims to examine the customary beliefs of
people (based on the root words of ethics and morality)
Two approaches in ethics:
 Normative – aims to answer the question “What is good?” which pertains
to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of a given act. Example: Christian
Ethics.
 Meta-ethics – the study of the nature, scope, and the meaning of moral
judgement.

1.1 William Graham Summer claims that the notion of rightness comes from our basic
instinct of survival. Because of such actions, the notions and tradition are created.
These notions of rightness and true are referred to as ‘folkways’ by Summer

Mores, coming from folkways, conceptually preserves and protects society by applying
social pressure to the individual as well as creating customs through repeated
practices or habits which stems from the observation of individuals to group practices.

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Notes from “The Case for Ethical Relativism”:
Our ancestors lived a life that is centered around satisfying their immediate needs which
were deeply rooted to survival. However, such actions gradually became examined and
eventually, most adopted the same methodology which instincts became rooted to and
ultimately became universal and invariable.

Folkways are not creations of human purpose but are an instinctive methodology
developed and passed down throughout time. They are also formed by accident which
is based on ‘pseudo-knowledge’. This is based on the notion that ancestors attribute
certain things to certain events to which they form customary customs and traditions.
Some folkways are destructive in a sense that other-worldly interests outweigh real-
world interests such as destruction of possession in death and restrictions in what is
capable of being eaten. Folkways are not subjected to verification by experience.

Folkways were first raised to mores as most conventions were primarily established due
to ghost fear. Rights can never be natural as it is imposed on the group to establish
peace and equality. Morals can never be intuitive since it is the sum of all taboos and
restrictions by which right conduct is defined. World Philosophy, life policy, right, rights,
and morality are all products of folkways.

Ethnocentrism is the process in which a certain group considers themselves the center
of everything and that their folkways are the only right one hence expressing scorn in
the presence of other group’s folkways.

The mores are the folkways which include the generalizations as to societal welfare
which are suggested by them, and inherent in them as they grow. This becomes a more
powerful term in describe the ethos of the people as it includes the connections towards
societal welfare. Institutions and law are produced out of mores.
 Institutions (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) are crescive when they take the form
mores (spontaneous). Examples are: property, marriage, and religion.

 Enacted institutions are products of rational invention and intention.

Legislation, in order to be strong, must be consistent with the mores. The mores of
different societies and different age are characterized by greater or less readiness and
confidence in regard to the use of positive enactments for the realization of societal
purposes. Institutions and laws have a positive character while mores are unformulated
and undefined. Mores come into operation where laws and tribunals fail hence mores
build up laws and police regulations over time. The goodness and badness of mores
consists in their adjustments to the life conditions and the interests of the time and
place. For everyone, the mores give the notion of what ought to be.
  Honor – is a sentiment of what one owes to one’s self. In every environment,
there is a standard of honor

 Seemliness – conduct which befits one’s character and standards,

 Common sense – a natural gift and universal outfit. It is the stock of ways of
looking at things which we acquired unconsciously by suggestion from the
environment we grew up.

 Conscience – natural or supernatural voice, intuition, and part of the original outfit
of all human beings as such.

Ethnographers study the folkway of all people in comparison to our traditional ones to
which ‘immoral’ refers to the mores of the time and place.

The ‘morals’ of an age is never anything but the consonance between what is done and
what the mores of an age require. Morality should be viewed into two points of view:
 Point of View of Society together with its customs, social rules, and social
sanctions – functions as a way of controlling the behavior of an individual

 Point of View of Individual – the free moral agent who develops habit in the
course of following the social norms established by society.
The notion of morality develops with the interplay between society and individual.

Codification of mores in response to an ever-growing society in terms of complexity:

 Common Laws or Customary Laws – customs of our society that emerges
unconsciously as part of the mores of our culture

 Positive laws – formulated and products of rationality

  Crescive Institutions – products of our mores like our very rich religious practices

 Enacted institutions – products of rational reflection and caters to the needs of

the members of a society

1.2 Freedom and Morality

John Paul Sartre discusses men as ‘condemned to be free’ and is ‘never compelled or
determine; he is totally free and therefore, totally responsible for all the things he does’.
However, since the ‘free moral agent’ is part of a society, mores are there to serve as a
form of social control to limit, govern, or regulate your behavior in order to maintain
order in your society. In conclusion, freedom of the human person assumes that one is
a free moral agent --- moral refers to the freedom centered around one’s own moral
discernment of good and bad.

Notes from Anthropology and the Abnormal

‘Normality’ means the general way a given culture happens to live out one of the many
possible patterns of human behavior. ‘Abnormality’ refers to patterns not adopted by a
culture. Normality and abnormality are relative rather than absolute.

Modern social anthropology requires the use of ‘primitive’ people that are untouched by
the near-universal cultures that has spread throughout continents. This is significant in
order to highlight the relativeness of normality and abnormality of cultures throughout
the world.

One of those significant examples of such ‘abnormal is normal’ is homosexuality

wherein different cultures provide different roles to the said individuals either shameful
or honorable. Another brilliant showcase of such phenomenon is the culture at Dobu
wherein a state similar to paranoia is normal while kindness is deemed ‘crazy’.
The selection that different cultures have made in the course of history is non-rational
and subconscious yet is still of great significance. In conclusion, ‘normality’ is culturally
defined and is the socially elaborated segment of human behavior in any culture while
‘abnormality’ is the segment that a civilization does not use. A normal action is one
which falls well within the limits of expected behavior for a particular society.

“In other words, most individuals are plastic to the molding force of the society into
which they were born into”.
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1.3 Necessary Conditions for Morality: Freedom and Obligation

According to John Mothershead, two necessary conditions needed for morality to occur:
freedom and obligation. Refer to the previous chapter for the discussion of freedom.

Obligation is constructed as one’s duty to himself/herself to exercise freedom as a

rational moral being. In other words, you are not free to be unfree. It is within the
capacity of the human person as an active and free moral agent to exercise his/her
freedom of choice as his/her obligation to him/herself

Notes: Mothershead’s Ethics

Ethics is the name of the study wherein the subject matter is morality. To reiterate,
morality includes both the good and the bad as it is commonly misinterpreted as only
referring to ‘good’ due to the usage of ‘immoral’ which denotes the ‘bad’.

In the interaction with the notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, humans tend to take sides which is
commonly called value experience and the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are spoken of as values or
disvalues. Technical skill has value but not necessarily moral value. It belongs to the
large class of values that are usually called values of utility among other distinguished
ones namely beauty, truth, validity, meaning, religious values, and social values.
FALSE: All goods are morals ones.

Moral values differ from other values by being unlimited --- not having a limitation in the
scope of their relevance. Moral values take precedence over others.

CLARIFICATION: Sentences usually expressing something true or false is a

preposition to which the act of thought that confirms a proposition is called a judgement

A moral decision is a moral judgement that has reference to the judger’s own future
action. Not all moral decisions are decisions. Many of our moral judgements have
reference to other people or groups of people. When moral judgements are in reference
to institutions, we think in terms of the life of the institution.

Deliberate human actions are often called conducts which is characterized by attitudes
or traits of character and organizations or institutions. Moral judgement should be
passed if we regard acts as a product of conduct.

Morality centers about deliberate actions (conduct) and has to do with budgeting of
these actions, whether for ourselves, certain others, or active beings. Moral values are
the priority ratings established by such budgeting.

Most human decisions and actions are motivated by automatically operating reflexes in
combination with various habits formed on the basis of experience. We must able to
distinguish moral judgement that express conditioning similar to dogs and moral
judgement including the application of a moral principle. The life of a man is only partly
a moral life for much of the time we simply run on the basis of the accidents of our
upbringing.
2.0 Values and Choices

Explains the notion that only human beings are moral.

2.1 Only humans are moral

Animal exhibiting signs of moral decisions have been assigned to have pre-reflective
morality which occurs prior to deliberation and reflection. In regards to this, human
beings are the only moral beings due to their capability of deliberate human action.

2.2 Value Experiences: Values and Moral Values

Values are the result of this process of value experience where you set which priorities
to pursue, or the side-taking nature of humans during decision-making. Values can
become moral values if they are able to achieve infinite priority or the highest priority in
the span of one’s life. This states that if a value, money or beauty e.g., is able to
influence the other aspects of your life through either compromising or centering, it has
achieved the state of moral values.

Moral decision is the most important class of moral judgements because it has
reference to the judger’s own future action. Not all moral judgements are decisions as
many of our moral judgements have reference to other people or group of people.

Normative answers are answers about what we ought to do from a moral system that
we uphold and its moral principles in response to a hypothetical situation. These
practical choices when confronted with the actual situation have to do more with the
psychological aspect of the person actually embroiled in the moral situation or dilemma,
according to Grassian.