ETHICS LECTURE
FUNDAMENTALS TO ETHICS
a) Definition of Philosophy, Ethics, Morality (and its
similarities and differences)
● RELATIVE (observers of different frames
will have different versions of the same
reality and every observer’s frame is equally
valid)
● UNIVERSAL
● SUBJECTIVE (opinionated per person)
● PHILOSOPHY – the study of the fundamental
nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,
especially when considered as an academic
discipline
● Ethics is a system of moral principles. They
affect how people make decisions and lead their
lives. Handles without premature judgement that
might obscure the main issue in question. It is a
philosophical reflection that emerges from our basic
desire to make sense of the complexities of the
human conditions.
○ Started with SOCCRATES
○ Greek
○ 3 schools of ethics: obligation,
consequentialism, character
○ Ethics: practical decision
● Standard: idea or thing used as a measure or
model to distinguish between right and wrong (e.g.
etiquette, evaluation, conduct)
● Not every standard is acceptable internationally:
cultural relativism
● Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos”,
meaning “character” or “custom”, and the
derivative phrase ta ethika, which Plata and
Aristotle used to describe their own studies of
Greek values and ideals
- Character applicable to the standard in the
society one belongs in
- Virtue ethics
- Cultural Relativism
● Accordingly, ethics – is first of all a concern for
character including what we call being a good
person, but it is also a concern for the overall
character of a good person, but it is also a concern
for the overall character of a good society, which is
called its ethos
● Re: culture
● Ethics is participation in, and understanding of an
ethos; it is an effort to understand the social rules
that govern and limit our behavior (political
domain such as laws and policies)
ETHOS OF MAN
● Ethics is that part of philosophy that is concerned
of living well, being a good person, doing the right
thing, getting along with other people and wanting
the right things in life.
● Beliefs and norms
● The word ethics refers both to a discipline – the
study of our values and their justification – and
the subject matter of that discipline – the actual
values and rules of conduct by which we live (act
with a purpose and of people’s interest)
● Part of our ethics is understanding ethics, that is,
acting for reasons and being able to defend our
actions if called upon to do so
● It is not enough to simply do what you are told; it
is just as important to know the reason why and to
be able to say no when you think the act is wrong
(everything is bound by reasons)
- Reasons and feelings: determine and set
the course of action of making our ethical
and partial decisions specially in moral
situations
- Moral situations
- Moral decisions
- Human actions – think before you act,
evaluate before you utter
- Feelings without reasons are useless and
unethical
- Moral development by Lawrence Kolberg: 6
steps
- MORAL VALUATIONS
- Etiquette – standard
● It is important to have reasons, to have a larger
vision, to have a framework within which to house
and defend your opinions
● The study of ethics teaches us to appreciate the
overall system of reasons within which having
ethics makes sense. Understanding what you are
doing and why is just as essential to ethics as doing
the right thing
● MORALITY – There is already pre-ordained
standards (commandments, rules or tradition)
which are sole determinants of what ought to be.
Commandments, rules and traditions are already
authoritative and unchangeable
● Morality is something more specific, a subset of
ethical rules that are of particular importance and
transcend the boundaries of any particular ethos
● Morality consists of the most basic and
inviolable rules of society
● Ethics and morals relate to “right” and “wrong”
conduct. While they are sometimes used
interchangeably, they are different: ethics refer to
rules provided by an external source, i.e. codes of
conduct in workplaces or principles in religions
- ETHICS
o More on the external, transcends
beyond the inner self or majority of
the population
o Adapt to the [standard applicable]
outside, not only in one’s inner self
o Rules, what is acceptable
o Objective
- MORALITY
o Personal perception
 o Comes from within or internal
o Sometimes encompassed with
religion
o Subjective
● Saying something as right or wrong depends on
what point of view you are into whether in the
aspect of politics or the law, religion, or basically
from your personal insights and beliefs
● Ethics and morality are both relative wherein a
subject or a topic is relative to one observer, each
one of us have different reference frames
● Ethics versus Morals
● ETHICS
○ The rules of conduct recognized in
respect to a particular class of human
actions or a particular group or culture.
○ Principles or habits with respect to right or
wrong
● While morals also prescribe dos and don’ts,
morality is ultimately a personal compass of
right and wrong
- Adapt the applications of the majority of the
population: norms
- Beyond the norms = actions may be
unethical
- Based on the framework
- Everything we do outside, there has to be
an ethical framework (e.g. killing – inner self
= good; externally = killing is a crime)
- There is already an existing framework and
a legal, ethical, and moral standard
MORALS
- Comes from within
- Limited to mind
● Where do they come from?
ETHICS
● Social System – External
MORAL
● Individual – Internal
- Political domain society: government,
governance, controlled by democratic
system
- Societal domain society: outside from the
political world (family, community, small
town, village, group, barangay), practice
about what norms is
● Why we do it?
ETHICS
● Because society says it is the right thing
to do
MORAL
● Because we believe in something being
right or wrong
FLEXIBILITY
● Ethics are dependent on others for definition
● They tend to be consistent within a certain
context but can vary between contexts
● Morality usually consistent, although can change
if an individual’s beliefs change
THE LIMITS
Ethics
● A person strictly following Ethical Principles may
not have any Morals at all.
● Likewise, one could violate ethical principles
within a given system of rules in order to maintain
Moral Integrity
Morality
● A Moral Person although perhaps bound by a
higher covenant, may choose to follow a code of
ethics as it would apply to a system
● “Make it fit”
- Ethics is external, morality is internal. One’s
morality could be good to oneself but not to
the other
ORIGIN
Ethics
● Greek word “ethos” meaning character
Morals
● Latin word “mos” or “moris” meaning from which
adjective moral is derived to equivalent to ethos
ACCEPTABILITY
● Ethics are governed by professional and legal
guidelines within a particular time and place and
population
● Morality transcends cultural norms as human
person in general
MORAL ACT
● Must be our own act, it must spring from our
own will
● Driven by personal beliefs and values
● Example: Telling the truth
● In that act, you can do a moral object (the only
subject of morality)
● Feelings and Reasons: FEELINGS WITHOUT
REASONS ARE BLIND
● REASON sets the course for making ethical and
impartial decisions especially in moral situations
although it is not the sole determining factor in
coming up with such decisions
MORAL COURAGE
● Is the result of morally developed will
● It is a virtue that enable one to be ethical, not just
in thought but more importantly in deed
MORAL OBJECT
● The object of human act that specifies it morally –
giving it the species of a good or evil, virtuous, or
vicious act of an unjust act of theft, lying,
faithfulness, chastity, etc. – is commonly called the
moral object
Nicomachean Ethics – theory of Aristotle, what
makes a virtuous character possible, which is in
turn necessary if happiness is to be possible.
Judean Ethics (Judeo Christian Ethics) – doing
what is right, righteousness of actions
● The object is called moral in order to distinguish
it from mere physical objects which though
specifying of an act on its purely natural level do
not confer its moral species
Moral Object – inner self/ interpretations of actions
of i.e. stealing such as conscious/ goodness and
wrongness of an action; is the only subject of
morality; basis of moral action
Political Domain – Government restrictions/
regulations
Ethical Domain - divided into four categories, or
domains: consequences, actions, character, and
motive
AMORAL
● Lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the
rightness or wrongness of something
Example: A Toddler, Artificial Intelligence, Down
Syndrome
IMMORAL
● Immoral is the violation of moral laws, norms, or
standards.
● Immorality is normally applied to people or
actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to
groups or corporate bodies and works of
STANDARD
● Measure to do the norm or to model our
comparative evaluation
Why is Freedom crucial in making Moral Decision?
● When we have the freedom sometimes, we will
not evaluate or actions
● This would create partial decision
What is the advantage of owning our moral
standards?
● Makes us become responsible and be guided by
our own principles
MORAL STANDARD
NON-MORAL-CONDUCT-BEHVIOR-ACT
● Wearing shorts to a formal dinner
● Coming in informal dress to the office
● Attending calls during meetings
NON-MORAL STANDARDS
● Standards of etiquette by which we judge
manners whether good or bad
● Standards we call the law by which we judge
what is right or wrong
● Standard of aesthetics
● The athletic standard
● Moral values pertain to moral agents. Non-
moral values are usually being “amoral” versus
being called “immoral” and pertain to entities such
as computers and robots. These have no
independent thinking and are not moral agents, but
machines that do exactly as instructed by (moral or
immoral) people
MORAL PRINCIPLES
● Autonomy, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence,
and fidelity are each absolute truth in and of
themselves. By exploring the dilemma in regards
with these principles one may come to a better
understanding of the conflicting issues
HUMAN ACT
● It is an act that are freely chosen in consequence
of a judgement of conscience, can be morally
evaluated. They are either good or evil. According
to tradition, the moral specification of human acts
occurs primarily and fundamentally through their
objectives
● While human act is something you do voluntarily,
acts of man are acts that people perform without
considering the possible effects to his or her life,
good or bad. This is something done involuntarily.
An example is blinking our eyes every few seconds
or so.
● Human Action against the Acts of man
● Human Action: freedom, voluntariness or free
will, knowledge
● Knowledge – Human Act proceeds from
deliberate will
● Freedom – a human act determined by the will
and by nothing else
 Freedom is autonomous. without
freedom, actions are under control
● Willfulness – this is the formal essential quality of
the human act because both knowledge and
freedom are present
● Natural Law – this law suggests that human laws
are derived from eternal and unchangeable
principles found in nature. It points out that people
can be aware of these laws by the use of reason
 Saint Thomas Aquinas
 Derived from the principles found in
nature/ unnatural action
 Example: Mother and child relationship
● Divine Command Theory – connected with the
principles of God/ commandments of God
● Examples of Natural Law:
1. Parents should take care of their children
2. One should try to preserve one’s life
3. People should do no harm to others
4. People should help the vulnerable
CHAPTER I: THE ETHICAL DIMENSION OF
HUMAN EXISTENCE
● Value
● Sources of Authority
● Senses of Self
KINDS OF MORAL VALUATION
● Aesthetics – from the Greek word “aesthesis”
which means “sense” or “feeling” and refers to the
judgements of personal approval or disapproval
that we make about what we see, hear, smell, or
taste
● Personal approval on everything what we
observe found in our nature
● Etiquette – concerned with right or wrong actions,
but those which might be considered not quite
grave enough to belong to a discussion on ethics
● Technical – form the Greek word “techne” and
refers to a proper way – (or right way) of doing
things
ETHICS AND MORALS
● “Morals” may be used to refer to specific beliefs
or attitudes that people have or to describe acts
that people perform. We also have terms such as
“moral judgement” or “moral reasoning”, which
suggest a more rational aspect
● “Ethics” can be spoken of as the discipline of
studying and understanding ideal human behavior
and ideal ways of thinking. Thus, ethics is
acknowledged as an intellectual discipline
belonging to philosophy
MORAL JUDGEMENT VS. MORAL DECISION
● A moral judgement is how you feel or think about
a matter as you consider the activity weighed
against your internal value systems
● A moral decision is when you have determined
what your course of action will be in connection to
the matter under consideration
MORAL ISSUE VS. MORAL DILEMMA
● Moral issues are those which involve a difference
of belief and not a matter of preference.
● Example: On this view, examples of a moral
issue would include whether it is right that one
speaks truthfully in a particular circumstance or
whether one obeys the law in a particular
circumstance, as these issues as the rightness or
wrongness of the action are assumed to be
factually determinable through empirical inquiry
MORAL DILEMMA
● Is a situation or event that questions the morals
of a person in a temporary situation. The person
can return to those morals after the event, but for
the duration of the event they must choose one
moral that over rules another
Heinz Dilemma Principle
 Is a frequently used example in many
ethics and morality classes
 One well-known version of the dilemma,
used in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of
moral development, is stated as follows:
A woman was near death from a special
kind of cancer. There was one drug that the
doctors thought might save her. It was a
form of radium that a druggist in the same
town had recently discovered. The drug was
expensive to make, but the druggist was
charging ten times what the drug cost him to
make. He paid 200 dollars for the radium
and charged 2000 dollars for a small dose
of the drug.
The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, did not
have enough money, but he could only get
together 1,000 dollars. He told the druggist
that his wife was dying and asked him to
sell it cheaper, but the druggist said: “No, I
discovered the drug and I’m going to make
money from it.” Heinz got desperate and
broke into the man’s store and stole the
drug for his wife.
 Should Heinz have broken into the store and
stolen the drug for his wife?
MORAL ISSUE
● Drugs, Homosexuality, Abortion, Pornography,
Drunkenness, Gambling, Fornication, Profanity
OTHER CLARIFICATIONS AND TERMINOLOGY
● Descriptive – a descriptive study of ethics reports
how people, particularly groups, make their moral
valuations without making any judgement either for
or against these valuations
● Meta Ethics – deals with the nature of moral
judgement. It looks at the origins and meaning of
ethical principles
● Applied Ethics – refers to the practical application
of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to
real-world actions and their moral considerations in
the areas of private and public life, the professions,
health, technology, law, and leadership.
● A Normative Study of Ethics, is often done in
philosophy or moral theology, engages the
question: What could or should be considered as
the right way of acting? In other words, a normative
discussion prescribes what we ought to maintain as
our standards or bases for moral valuation
● Rules and Rights – rights ethical principles of
freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the
fundamental normative rules about what is allowed
of people or owed to people; Rule one of a set of
explicit or understood regulations or principles
governing conduct within a particular activity or
sphere
SCHOOLS OF ETHICS
● Thee three schools are virtue ethics,
consequentialist ethics, and deontological or duty-
based ethics. Each approach provides a different
way to understand ethics
● Virtue Ethics – broad term for theories that
emphasize the role of character and virtue in moral
philosophy rather than either doing one’s duty or
acting in order to bring about good consequences
● Consequentialist Vs. Non-consequentialist
Theories of Ethics
● There are two broad categories of ethical theories
concerning the source of value: consequentialist
and non-consequentialist
● A CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORY OF VALUE
judges the rightness or wrongness of an action
based on the consequences that action has. The
most familiar example would be ULITARIANISM –
“that action is best that produces the greatest good
for the greatest number” (Jeremy Bentham)
● A NON-CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORY OF
VALUE judges the rightness or wrongness of an
action based on properties intrinsic to the action,
not on its consequences
● LIBERTARIANISM – people should be free to do
as they like as long as they respect freedom of
others to do the same
● Deontological Ethics – or deontology (from Greek
word “deon”, “obligation, duty”) is the normative
ethical theory that the morality of an action should
be based on whether that action itself is right or
wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on
the consequences of the action
REASONING
● What reasons do we give to decide or judge that
a certain way of acting is either right or wrong?
 A person’s fear of punishment or desire
for reward can provide him/ her a reason for
acting in a certain way
 The promise of rewards and the fear of
punishments can certainly motivate us to
act but are not in themselves a determinant
of the rightness or wrongness of a certain
way of acting or of the good or the bad in a
particular pursuit
 Beyond rewards and punishments, it is
possible for our moral valuation – our
decisions and judgements – to be based on
a principle
● LAW – it is supposed that law is one’s guide to
ethical behavior. In the Philippines, Filipinos are
constrained to obey the laws of the land as stated
in the country’s criminal and civil codes. The law
cannot tell us what to pursue, only what to avoid.
● RELIGION – the divinity called God, Allah, or
Supreme Being commands and one is obliged to
obey his/her Creator (Divine Command Theory)
● CULTURE – our exposure to different societies
and their cultures makes us aware that there are
ways of thinking and valuing that are different from
our own, that there is in fact a wide diversity in
how different people believe it is proper to act.
Therefore, what is ethically acceptable or
unacceptable is relative to, or that is to say,
dependent on one’s culture. This position is
referred to as cultural relativism
MORAL JUDGEMENT: THE ABILITY TO MAKE
THE RIGHT ETHICAL DECISIONS
SENSES OF THE SELF
● Subjectivism
 The starting point of subjectivism is the
recognition that the individual thinking
person (the subject) is at the heart of all
moral valuations. From this point,
subjectivism leaps to the more radical claim
that the individual is the sole determinant of
what is morally good or bad, or right or
wrong
● Psychological Egoism
 “Human beings are naturally self-
centered, so all our actions are always
already motivated by self-interest”
 It points out that there is already an
underlying basis for how one acts. The ego
or self has its desires and interests, and all
his/her actions are geared toward satisfying
these interests
● Ethical Egoism
 It prescribes that we should make our
own ends, our own interests, as the single
overriding concern. We may act in a way
that is beneficial to others, but we should do
that only if it ultimately benefits us
● Socrates – the first to redirect the focus of
philosophy from the natural world to the human
person
MORAL DETERMINANTS:
1. Object – act itself
2. End – consequence
3. Purpose – motive/ intention
● Moral Determinants as strengthen by Principle of
Double Effect Principle
● PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT
 This principle aims to provide specific guidelines 3. Lack of specific or
for determining when it is morally permissible to sufficient provocation
perform an action in pursuit of a good end in full on the part of the
knowledge that the action will also bring about bad person defending
results himself
● The first known example of double-effect
 Exhausted all
reasoning is Thomas Aquinas’ treatment of
homicidal self-defense, in his work Summa
remedies to save
Theologica
his life

 You are allowed or permissible to do anything as

long as it brings a good result/ in the pursuit of
good ends
 You can do a mistake in order to prevent
something worse to happen (Ex: Police killing
criminals)
1) THE ACT IS GOOD - the nature of the act itself
good, or at least morally neutral; an unintended
side effect
2) EFFECT IS DIRECTLY PROCEEDED FROM
GOODNESS – the agent intends the good effect
and does not intend the bad effect either as a
means to the good or as an end in itself
3) THE INTENTION MUST BE SUFFICIENT – the
intention must be the achieving of only the good
effect, with the bad effect being only
● Moral Determinants as strengthen by Principle of
Double Effect Principle
● Self-defense – theory of natural law, maybe a
person can do wrong, it can be exempted
 justifying, no criminal liability
 There must be a real danger to life and to our
personal property

Double effect

 Morally good, intended effect and

morally bad unintended
 Perform action in pursuit of good
end
 Self-defense: natural law
 Hostage taking kill hostage taker to
save innocent
 Permitted to do wrong action in
pursuit of good end

Self-defense

 Not law
 A person does intrinsically wrong
 Eyes of natural law he is accepted
 Elements (contentions of St.
Thomas Aquinas)

1. Unlawful aggression

 Unprovoked or
unjustified

2. Reasonable necessity
of means employed to
prevent or repel an
action