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PART I.
INTRODUCTION

DEFINITION OF ETHICS

1. The English word ethics is derived from the Ancient Greek word ēthikós, meaning "relating
to one's character", which itself comes from the root word êthos, meaning "character, moral
nature". This word was transferred into Latin as ethica and then into French as éthique, from
which it was transferred into English.
Rushworth Kidder states that "standard definitions of ethics have typically included such phrases
as 'the science of the ideal human character' or 'the science of moral duty'".
Richard William Paul and Linda Elder define ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that
guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures".
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word "ethics" is "commonly used
interchangeably with 'morality' ... and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral
principles of a particular tradition, group or individual."
Paul and Elder state that most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social
conventions, religious beliefs, the law, and do not treat ethics as a stand-alone concept.
The word ethics in English refers to several things. It can refer to philosophical ethics or moral
philosophy—a project that attempts to use reason to answer various kinds of ethical questions.
As the English moral philosopher Bernard Williams writes, attempting to explain moral
philosophy: "What makes an inquiry a philosophical one is reflective generality and a style of
argument that claims to be rationally persuasive."
Williams describes the content of this area of inquiry as addressing the very broad question,
"how one should live". Ethics can also refer to a common human ability to think about ethical
problems that is not particular to philosophy.
As bioethicist Larry Churchill has written: "Ethics, understood as the capacity to think critically
about moral values and direct our actions in terms of such values, is a generic human capacity."

2. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing,


defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along
with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called
axiology.
Ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil,
right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime.
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3. moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. It includes
terms such as code of ethics, moral code, morals, morality, moral stand, moral principles and the
like.
4. the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.
5. ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and
bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral
values or principles.
It answers questions such as:
How should we live?
Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects?
If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all?
And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause?
Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving?
Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed?
Is it wrong to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research?
What are our obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the
nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet?
Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of
practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the
standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.
The terms ethics and morality are closely related. It is now common to refer to ethical judgments
or to ethical principles where it once would have been more accurate to speak of moral
judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. In
earlier usage, the term referred not to morality itself but to the field of study, or branch of
inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral
philosophy.
Although ethics has always been viewed as a branch of philosophy, its all-embracing practical
nature links it with many other areas of study, including anthropology, biology, economics,
history, politics, sociology, and theology.
Yet, ethics remains distinct from such disciplines because it is not a matter of factual knowledge
in the way that the sciences and other branches of inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with
determining the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of principles to practical
moral problems.
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THREE MAJOR AREAS OF STUDY WITHIN ETHICS


1. Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and
how their truth values can be determined.
2. Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action.
3. Applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do in a specific
situation or a particular domain of action.
1. Meta-ethics
Meta-ethics is the branch of philosophical ethics that asks how we understand, know about, and
what we mean when we talk about what is right and what is wrong. An ethical question
pertaining to a particular practical situation—such as, "Should I eat this particular piece of
chocolate cake?"—cannot be a meta-ethical question (rather, this is an applied ethical question).
A meta-ethical question is abstract and relates to a wide range of more specific practical
questions. For example, "Is it ever possible to have a secure knowledge of what is right and
wrong?" is a meta-ethical question.
Meta-ethics has always accompanied philosophical ethics.
For example, Aristotle implies that less precise knowledge is possible in ethics than in other
spheres of inquiry, and he regards ethical knowledge as depending upon habit and acculturation
in a way that makes it distinctive from other kinds of knowledge.
Meta-ethics is also important in G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica from 1903. In it, he first wrote
about what he called the naturalistic fallacy. Moore was seen to reject naturalism in ethics, in his
open-question argument. This made thinkers look again at second order questions about ethics.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume had put forward a similar view on the difference between
facts and values.
Studies of how we know in ethics divide into cognitivism and non-cognitivism. These take
descriptive and non-descriptive approaches to moral goodness or value. Non-cognitivism is the
view that when we judge something as morally right or wrong, this is neither true nor false. We
may, for example, be only expressing our emotional feelings about these things. Cognitivism can
then be seen as the claim that when we talk about right and wrong, we are talking about matters
of fact.
The ontology of ethics is about value-bearing things or properties, that is, the kind of things or
stuff referred to by ethical propositions. Non-descriptivists and non-cognitivists believe that
ethics does not need a specific ontology since ethical propositions do not refer. This is known as
an anti-realist position. Realists, on the other hand, must explain what kind of entities, properties
or states are relevant for ethics, how they have value, and why they guide and motivate our
actions.
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MORAL SKEPTICISM
Skepticism means an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a
particular object. It is the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is
uncertain. It is the doubt concerning basic religious principles (such as immortality, providence,
and revelation).
Moral skepticism (or moral skepticism) is a class of meta-ethical theories in which all members
entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal
claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly against moral realism
which holds the view that there are knowable and objective moral truths.

Moral skepticism is divided into three sub-classes


1. Moral error theory (or moral nihilism).
Nihilism means the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is
meaningless. In philosophy, it is the extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world
has a real existence.
This is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or wrong. It is distinct from moral
relativism, which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or individual. It is
also distinct from expressivism, according to which, when we make moral claims, "We are not
making an effort to describe the way the world is ... we are venting our emotions, commanding
others to act in certain ways, or revealing a plan of action".
Moral nihilism today broadly tends to take the form of an Error Theory. Error theory and
nihilism broadly take the form of a negative claim about the existence of objective values or
properties. For J.L. Mackie, under traditional views, there are moral properties or methods which
hold objectively in some sense beyond our contingent interests which morally obligate us to act.
For Mackie and the Error Theorists, such properties do not exist in the world, and therefore
morality conceived of by reference to objective facts must also not exist. Therefore, morality in
the traditional sense does not exist.

2. Epistemological moral skepticism


Epistemological moral skepticism is a subclass of theory, the members of which include
Pyrrhonian moral skepticism and dogmatic moral skepticism. All members of epistemological
moral skepticism share two things: first, they acknowledge that we are unjustified in believing
any moral claim, and second, they are agnostic on whether it is true (i.e. on whether all moral
claims are false).
Pyrrhonian moral skepticism holds that the reason we are unjustified in believing any moral
claim is that it is irrational for us to believe either that any moral claim is true or that any moral
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claim is false. Thus, in addition to being agnostic on whether it is true, Pyrrhonian moral
skepticism denies.
Dogmatic moral skepticism, on the other hand, affirms and cites truth as the reason we are
unjustified in believing any moral claim.

3. Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism holds that we can never know that any moral claim is true because moral
claims are incapable of being true or false. Instead, moral claims are imperatives (e.g. "Don't
steal babies!"), expressions of emotion (e.g. "stealing babies: Boo!"), or expressions of "pro-
attitudes" ("I do not believe that babies should be stolen.")
Conclusions
All of these three theories share the same conclusions, which are as follows:
1. we are never justified in believing that moral claims (claims of the form "state of affairs x is
good," "action y is morally obligatory," etc.) are true and, even more so.
2. we never know that any moral claim is true.
However, moral error theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because
(a) all moral claims are false,
(b.) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and
(c.) since we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are not justified
in believing any moral claims.

2. Normative ethics
Normative ethics includes the following fields: 1. Virtue ethics (Stoicism, Contemporary virtue
ethics), 2. Intuitive ethics, 3. Hedonism (Cyrenaic hedonism, Epicureanism), 4. State
consequentialism, 5. Consequentialism (Utilitarianism), 6. Deontology (Kantianism, Divine
command theory, Discourse ethics), 7. Pragmatic ethics, 8. Ethics of care, 9. Feminist matrixial
ethics, 10. Role ethics, 11. Anarchist ethics, and 12. Postmodern ethics.
Normative ethics is the study of ethical behavior and is the branch of philosophical ethics that
investigates the questions that arise regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.
Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics in that the former examines standards for the
rightness and wrongness of actions, whereas the latter, studies the meaning of moral language
and the metaphysics of moral facts.
Likewise, normative ethics is distinct from applied ethics in that the former is more concerned
with 'who ought one be' rather than the ethics of a specific issue (e.g. if, or when, abortion is
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acceptable). Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as the latter is an empirical
investigation of people's moral beliefs.
In this context, normative ethics is sometimes called prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive
ethics. However, on certain versions of the meta-ethical view of moral realism, moral facts are
both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time.

THREE VIEWS ON HOW MORAL QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED IN MORAL


ETHICS
1. Virtue ethics
This is an approach to ethics that treats the concept of moral virtue as central. Virtue ethics,
advocated by Aristotle with some aspects being supported by Saint Thomas Aquinas, focuses on
the inherent character of a person rather than on specific actions. It emphasizes moral virtue to an
extent that other ethical dispositions do not.
Key Concepts on virtue ethics
1. Virtue and vice
In virtue ethics, a virtue is a morally good disposition to think, feel, and act well in some domain
of life. Similarly, a vice is a morally bad disposition involving thinking, feeling, and acting
badly.
Virtues are not everyday habits; they are character traits, in the sense that they are central to
someone’s personality and what they are like as a person. A virtue is a trait that makes its
possessor a good person, and a vice is one that makes its possessor a bad person.
For example, a generous person can reason well about when to help people, and also helps
people with pleasure and without conflict. In this, virtuous people are contrasted not only with
vicious people (who reason poorly about what to do and are emotionally attached to the wrong
things) and the incontinent (who are tempted by their feelings into doing the wrong thing even
though they know what is right), but also the continent (whose emotions tempt them toward
doing the wrong thing but whose strength of will lets them do what they know is right).
2. Phronesis and eudaimonia
Phronesis (prudence, practical virtue or practical wisdom) is an acquired trait that enables its
possessor to identify the thing to do in any given situation. Unlike theoretical wisdom, practical
reason results in action or decision. As John McDowell puts it, practical wisdom involves a
"perceptual sensitivity" to what a situation requires.
Eudaimonia includes the state of 'well-being', 'happiness', 'blessedness', and in the context of
virtue ethics, 'human flourishing'. It characterizes the well-lived life.
According to Aristotle, eudaimonia is the proper goal of human life. It consists of exercising the
characteristic human quality—reason—as the soul's most proper and nourishing activity.
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For the virtue theorist, eudaimonia describes that state achieved by the person who lives the
proper human life, an outcome that can be reached by practicing the virtues. A virtue is a habit or
quality that allows the bearer to succeed at his, her, or its purpose.
The virtue of a knife, for example, is sharpness; among the virtues of a racehorse is speed. Thus,
to identify the virtues for human beings, one must have an account of what is the human purpose.

HISTORY OF VIRTUE
Virtue ethics began with Socrates, and was subsequently developed further by Plato, Aristotle,
and the Stoics. Virtue ethics refers to a collection of normative ethical philosophies that place an
emphasis on being rather than doing.
In virtue ethics, morality stems from the identity or character of the individual, rather than being
a reflection of the actions (or consequences thereof) of the individual. Moral virtues are
intrinsically praiseworthy.
Plato believes virtue is effectively an end to be sought, for which a friend might be a useful
means. Aristotle states that the virtues function more as means to safeguard human relations,
particularly authentic friendship, without which one's quest for happiness is frustrated.
Plato’s four cardinal virtues are wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
ARISTOTLE’S MORAL VIRTUES (GOLDEN MEAN)
SPHERE OF
MEAN: MORAL
ACTION OR EXCESS DEFICIENCY
VIRTUE
FEELING
Fear and Confidence Rashness Courage in the face of fear Cowardice
Licentiousness/S Temperance in the face of
Pleasure and Pain Insensibility
elf-indulgence pleasure and pain
Getting and Liberality with wealth and Illiberality/Meanne
Prodigality
Spending(minor) possessions ss
Getting and Vulgarity/Tastele Magnificence with great Pettiness/Stingines
Spending(major) ssness wealth and possessions s
Honour and Magnanimity with great
Vanity Pusillanimity
Dishonour(major) honors
Honour and Ambition/empty Proper ambition with Unambitiousness/u
Dishonour(minor) vanity normal honors ndue humility
Lack of
Anger Irascibility Patience/Good temper
spirit/unirascibility
Truthfulness with self- Understatement/m
Self-expression Boastfulness
expression ock modesty
Conversation Buffoonery Wittiness in conversation Boorishness
Friendliness in social
Social Conduct Obsequiousness Cantankerousness
conduct
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Modesty in the face of


Shame Shyness Shamelessness
shame or shamelessness
Malicious
Righteous indignation in
Indignation Envy enjoyment/Spiteful
the face of injury
ness

Intellectual virtues
Aristotle identifies the following intellectual virtues:
1. Nous (intelligence), which apprehends fundamental truths (such as definitions, self-evident
principles)
2. Episteme (science), which is skill with inferential reasoning (such as proofs, syllogisms,
demonstrations)
3. Sophia (theoretical wisdom), which combines fundamental truths with valid, necessary
inferences to reason well about unchanging truths.
Aristotle also mentions several other traits:
1. Gnome (good sense) – passing judgment, "sympathetic understanding"
2. Synesis (understanding) – comprehending what others say, does not issue commands
3. Phronesis (practical wisdom) – knowledge of what to do, knowledge of changing truths, issues
commands
4. Techne (art, craftsmanship)

Stoicism
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus posited that the greatest good was contentment and serenity.
Peace of mind, or apatheia, was of the highest value; self-mastery over one's desires and
emotions leads to spiritual peace.
The "unconquerable will" is central to this philosophy. The individual's will should be
independent and inviolate. Allowing a person to disturb the mental equilibrium is offering
yourself in slavery. If a person is free to anger you at will, you have no control over your internal
world, and therefore no freedom. Freedom from material attachments is also necessary.
If a thing breaks, the person should not be upset, but realize it was a thing that could break.
Similarly, if someone should die, those close to them should hold to their serenity because the
loved one was made of flesh and blood destined to death.
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Stoic philosophy says to accept things that cannot be changed, resigning oneself to the existence
and enduring in a rational fashion.
Death is not feared. People do not "lose" their life, but instead "return", for they are returning to
God (who initially gave what the person is as a person).
Epictetus said difficult problems in life should not be avoided, but rather embraced. They are
spiritual exercises needed for the health of the spirit, just as physical exercise is required for the
health of the body.
He also stated that sex and sexual desire are to be avoided as the greatest threat to the integrity
and equilibrium of a man's mind. Abstinence is highly desirable. Epictetus said remaining
abstinent in the face of temptation was a victory for which a man could be proud. 
Contemporary virtue ethics
Modern virtue ethics was popularized during the late 20th century in large part due to a revival
of Aristotelianism, and as a response to G.E.M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy".
Anscombe argues that consequentialist and deontological ethics are only feasible as universal
theories if the two schools ground themselves in divine law. As a deeply devoted Christian
herself, Anscombe proposed that either those who do not give ethical credence to notions of
divine law take up virtue ethics, which does not necessitate universal laws as agents themselves
are investigated for virtue or vice and held up to "universal standards", or that those who wish to
be utilitarian or consequentialist ground their theories in religious conviction.
Alasdair MacIntyre, who wrote the book After Virtue, was a key contributor and proponent of
modern virtue ethics, although some claim that MacIntyre supports a relativistic account of
virtue based on cultural norms, not objective standards.
Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary virtue ethicist, objects to MacIntyre's relativism, among that
of others, and responds to relativist objections to form an objective account in her work "Non-
Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach". However, Nussbaum's accusation of relativism
appears to be a misreading.
One major trend in contemporary virtue ethics is the Modern Stoicism movement.

2. Intuitive ethics (Ethical intuitionism)


Ethical intuitionism (also called moral intuitionism) is the thesis that our intuitive awareness of
value, or intuitive knowledge of evaluative facts, forms the foundation of our ethical knowledge.
The view is at its core a foundationalism about moral knowledge: it is the view that some moral
truths can be known non-inferentially (i.e., known without one needing to infer them from other
truths one believes).
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Such an epistemological view implies that there are moral beliefs with propositional contents; so
it implies cognitivism. As such, ethical intuitionism is to be contrasted with coherentist
approaches to moral epistemology, such as those that depend on reflective equilibrium.

3. Hedonism
Hedonism posits that the principal ethic is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. There are
several schools of Hedonist thought ranging from those advocating the indulgence of even
momentary desires to those teaching a pursuit of spiritual bliss.
In their consideration of consequences, they range from those advocating self-gratification
regardless of the pain and expense to others, to those stating that the most ethical pursuit
maximizes pleasure and happiness for the most people.

Views on Hedonism 
1. Cyrenaic hedonism
Founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, Cyrenaics supported immediate gratification or pleasure. "Eat,
drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Even fleeting desires should be indulged, for fear the
opportunity should be forever lost. There was little to no concern with the future, the present
dominating in the pursuit of immediate pleasure.
Cyrenaic hedonism encouraged the pursuit of enjoyment and indulgence without hesitation,
believing pleasure to be the only good. 
2. Epicureanism
Epicurean ethics is a hedonist form of virtue ethics. Epicurus "presented a sustained argument
that pleasure, correctly understood, will coincide with virtue." He rejected the extremism of the
Cyrenaics, believing some pleasures and indulgences to be detrimental to human beings.
Epicureans observed that indiscriminate indulgence sometimes resulted in negative
consequences. Some experiences were therefore rejected out of hand, and some unpleasant
experiences endured in the present to ensure a better life in the future.
To Epicurus, the summum bonum, or greatest good, was prudence, exercised through moderation
and caution. Excessive indulgence can be destructive to pleasure and can even lead to pain.
For example, eating one food too often makes a person lose a taste for it. Eating too much food
at once leads to discomfort and ill-health.
Pain and fear were to be avoided. Living was essentially good, barring pain and illness. Death
was not to be feared. Fear was considered the source of most unhappiness. Conquering the fear
of death would naturally lead to a happier life.
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Epicurus reasoned if there were an afterlife and immortality, the fear of death was irrational. If
there was no life after death, then the person would not be alive to suffer, fear, or worry; he
would be non-existent in death. It is irrational to fret over circumstances that do not exist, such as
one's state of death in the absence of an afterlife.

4. State consequentialism
State consequentialism, also known as Mohist consequentialism, is an ethical theory that
evaluates the moral worth of an action based on how much it contributes to the basic goods of a
state.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Mohist consequentialism, dating back to the
5th century BC, as "a remarkably sophisticated version based on a plurality of intrinsic goods
taken as constitutive of human welfare".
Unlike utilitarianism, which views pleasure as a moral good, "the basic goods in Mohist
consequentialist thinking are … order, material wealth, and increase in population".
During Mozi's era, war and famines were common, and population growth was seen as a moral
necessity for a harmonious society. The "material wealth" of Mohist consequentialism refers to
basic needs like shelter and clothing, and the "order" of Mohist consequentialism refers to Mozi's
stance against warfare and violence, which he viewed as pointless and a threat to social stability.
Stanford sinologist David Shepherd Nivison writes that the moral goods of Mohism "are
interrelated: more basic wealth, then more reproduction; more people, then more production and
wealth … if people have plenty, they would be good, filial, kind, and so on unproblematically."
The Mohists believed that morality is based on "promoting the benefit of all under heaven and
eliminating harm to all under heaven".

5. Consequentialism
Consequentialism refers to moral theories that hold the consequences of a particular action form
the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action. Thus, from a consequentialist
standpoint, morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view
is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".
The term "consequentialism" was coined by G.E.M. Anscombe.
The defining feature of consequentialist moral theories is the weight given to the consequences
in evaluating the rightness and wrongness of actions. In consequentialist theories, the
consequences of an action or rule generally outweigh other considerations. Apart from this basic
outline, there is little else that can be unequivocally said about consequentialism as such.
However, there are some questions that many consequentialist theories address:
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What sort of consequences count as good consequences?


Who is the primary beneficiary of moral action?
How are the consequences judged and who judges them?
One way to divide various consequentialisms is by the many types of consequences that are
taken to matter most, that is, which consequences count as good states of affairs.
According to utilitarianism, a good action is one that results in an increase and positive effect,
and the best action is one that results in that effect for the greatest number.

Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that argues the proper course of action is one that maximizes a
positive effect, such as "happiness", "welfare", or the ability to live according to personal
preferences.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are influential proponents of this school of thought.
Bentham says that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right
and wrong”, and describes this as a fundamental axiom. He calls it as "the greatest happiness
principle".
Utilitarianism is the example of a consequentialist moral theory. This form of utilitarianism holds
that the morally correct action is the one that produces the best outcome for all people affected
by the action.
John Stuart Mill proposed a hierarchy of pleasures, meaning, that the pursuit of certain kinds of
pleasure is more highly valued than the pursuit of other pleasures.
The major division within utilitarianism is between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. In
act utilitarianism, the principle of utility applies directly to each alternative act in a situation of
choice. The right act is the one that brings about the best results (or the least bad results).
In rule utilitarianism, the principle of utility determines the validity of rules of conduct (moral
principles). A rule like promise-keeping is established by looking at the consequences of a world
in which people break promises at will and a world in which promises are binding.
Right and wrong are the following or breaking of rules that are sanctioned by their utilitarian
value.
A proposed "middle ground" between these two types is Two-level utilitarianism, where rules
are applied in ordinary circumstances, but with an allowance to choose actions outside of such
rules when unusual situations call for it.

6. Deontology
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Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek deon, "obligation, duty"; and logia) is an
approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, or the rules and
duties that the person doing the act strove to fulfill.
This is in contrast to consequentialism, in which rightness is based on the consequences of an
act, and not the act by itself.
Under deontology, an act may be considered right even if it produces a bad consequence, if it
follows the rule or moral law. According to the deontological view, people have a duty to act in
ways that are deemed inherently good ("truth-telling" for example), or follow an objectively
obligatory rule (as in rule utilitarianism).
Views on Deontology
1. Kantianism
Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several different reasons. First,
Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act from duty. Second, Kant argued
that it was not the consequences of actions that make them right or wrong but the motives of the
person who carries out the action.
Kant's argument that to act in the morally right way, one must act purely from duty begins with
an argument that the highest good must be both good in itself and good without qualification.
Something is "good in itself" when it is intrinsically good, and "good without qualification",
when the addition of that thing never makes a situation ethically worse.
Kant argues that those things that are usually thought to be good, such as intelligence,
perseverance and pleasure, fail to be either intrinsically good or good without qualification.
Pleasure, for example, appears not to be good without qualification, because when people take
pleasure in watching someone suffer, this seems to make the situation ethically worse. He
concludes that there is only one thing that is truly good:
Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived,
which could be called good without qualification except a good will.
Kant then argues that the consequences of an act of willing cannot be used to determine that the
person has a good will; good consequences could arise by accident from an action that was
motivated by a desire to cause harm to an innocent person, and bad consequences could arise
from an action that was well-motivated.
Instead, he claims, a person has goodwill when he “acts out of respect for the moral law”.
People “act out of respect for the moral law” when they act in some way because they have a
duty to do so. So, the only thing that is truly good in itself is goodwill, and goodwill is only good
when the willer chooses to do something because it is that person's duty, i.e. out of "respect" for
the law.
Kant's three significant formulations of the categorical imperative are:
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1. Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal
law.
2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person
of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
3. Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member
in a universal kingdom of ends.
Kant argued that the only absolutely good thing is a good will, and so the single determining
factor of whether an action is morally right is the will, or motive of the person doing it.
If they are acting on a bad maxim, e.g. "I will lie", then their action is wrong, even if some good
consequences come of it.
According to Kant, a lie is defined as an intentionally untruthful declaration to another man. For
a lie always harms another; if not some human being, then it nevertheless does harm to humanity
in general, inasmuch as it vitiates the very source of right. All practical principles of right must
contain rigorous truth.

2. Divine command theory


Although not all deontologists are religious, some belief in the 'divine command theory', which is
actually a cluster of related theories which essentially state that an action is right if God has
decreed that it is right.
According to Ralph Cudworth, an English philosopher, William of Ockham, René Descartes, and
eighteenth-century Calvinists all accepted various versions of this moral theory, as they all held
that moral obligations arise from God's commands.
The Divine Command Theory is a form of deontology because, according to it, the rightness of
any action depends upon that action being performed because it is a duty, not because of any
good consequences arising from that action. If God commands people not to work on Sabbath,
then people act rightly if they do not work on Sabbath because God has commanded that they do
not do so. If they do not work on Sabbath because they are lazy, then their action is not truly
speaking "right", even though the actual physical action performed is the same. If God
commands not to covet a neighbor's goods, this theory holds that it would be immoral to do so,
even if coveting provides the beneficial outcome of a drive to succeed or do well.
One thing that clearly distinguishes Kantian deontologism from divine command deontology is
that Kantianism maintains that man, as a rational being, makes the moral law universal, whereas
divine command maintains that God makes the moral law universal.
3. Discourse ethics
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has proposed a theory of discourse ethics that he states is
a descendant of Kantian ethics.
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He proposes that action should be based on communication between those involved, in which
their interests and intentions are discussed so they can be understood by all. Rejecting any form
of coercion or manipulation, Habermas believes that agreement between the parties is crucial for
a moral decision to be reached.
Like Kantian ethics, discourse ethics is a cognitive ethical theory, in that it supposes that truth
and falsity can be attributed to ethical propositions. It also formulates a rule by which ethical
actions can be determined and proposes that ethical actions should be universalizable, in a
similar way to Kant's ethics.
Habermas argues that his ethical theory is an improvement on Kant's ethics. He rejects the
dualistic framework of Kant's ethics.
Kant distinguished between the phenomena world, which can be sensed and experienced by
humans, and the noumena, or spiritual world, which is inaccessible to humans. This dichotomy
was necessary for Kant because it could explain the autonomy of a human agent: although a
human is bound in the phenomenal world, their actions are free in the noumenal world.
For Habermas, morality arises from discourse, which is made necessary by their rationality and
needs, rather than their freedom.

7. Pragmatic ethics
Associated with the pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and especially John
Dewey, pragmatic ethics holds that moral correctness evolves similarly to scientific knowledge:
socially over the course of many lifetimes. Thus, we should prioritize social reform over attempts
to account for consequences, individual virtue or duty.
Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics and meta-ethics. Ethical
pragmatists such as John Dewey believe that some societies have progressed morally in much the
way they have attained progress in science.
Scientists can pursue inquiry into the truth of a hypothesis and accept the hypothesis, in the sense
that they act as though the hypothesis were true; nonetheless, they think that future generations
can advance science, and thus future generations can refine or replace (at least some of) their
accepted hypotheses. Similarly, ethical pragmatists think that norms, principles, and moral
criteria are likely to be improved as a result of inquiry.

8. Ethics of care
Care ethics contrasts with more well-known ethical models, such as consequentialist theories
(e.g. utilitarianism) and deontological theories (e.g., Kantian ethics) in that it seeks to incorporate
traditionally feminized virtues and values that—proponents of care ethics contend—are absent in
such traditional models of ethics. These values include the importance of empathetic
relationships and compassion.
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Care-focused feminism is a branch of feminist thought, informed primarily by ethics of care as


developed by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings.
This body of theory is critical of how caring is socially assigned to women, and consequently
devalued. They write, "Care-focused feminists regard women's capacity for care as a human
strength," that should be taught to and expected of men as well as women.
Noddings proposes that ethical caring has the potential to be a more concrete evaluative model of
moral dilemma than an ethic of justice. Noddings’ care-focused feminism requires practical
application of relational ethics, predicated on an ethic of care.

9. Feminist ethics
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical
theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely
male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist
approach to transform it.
Feminist ethics was first developed from Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of
Women' published in 1792. With the new ideas from the Enlightenment, individual feminists
being able to travel more than ever before, generating more opportunities for the exchange of
ideas and advancement of women's rights.
Concept
Feminist philosophers critique traditional ethics as pre-eminently focusing on men's perspective
with little regard for women's viewpoints. Caring and the moral issues of private life and family
responsibilities were traditionally regarded as trivial matters.
Generally, women are portrayed as ethically immature and shallow in comparison to men.
Traditional ethics prizes masculine cultural traits like "independence, autonomy, intellect, will,
wariness, hierarchy, domination, culture, transcendence, product, asceticism, war, and death,"
and gives less weight to culturally feminine traits like "interdependence, community, connection,
sharing, emotion, body, trust, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace, and
life."
Should women embody or use any traditionally masculine cultural traits they are seen as other or
as an attempt to be more like men. Traditional ethics has a "male" orientated convention in which
moral reasoning is viewed through a framework of rules, rights, universality, and impartiality
and becomes the standard of a society. The "female" approaches to moral reasoning emphasizes
relationships, responsibilities, particularity, and partiality.
10. Role ethics
Role ethics is an ethical theory based on family roles. Unlike virtue ethics, role ethics is not
individualistic. Morality is derived from a person's relationship with their community. Confucian
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ethics is an example of role ethics. Confucian roles center around the concept of filial piety or
xiao, a respect for family members.
According to Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, "Confucian normativity is defined by living
one's family roles to maximum effect."
Morality is determined through a person's fulfillment of a role, such as that of a parent or a child.
Confucian roles are not rational, and originate through the xin, or human emotions.

11. Anarchist ethics


Anarchist ethics is an ethical theory based on the studies of anarchist thinkers. The biggest
contributor to anarchist ethics is Peter Kropotkin.
Starting from the premise that the goal of ethical philosophy should be to help humans adapt and
thrive in evolutionary terms, Kropotkin's ethical framework uses biology and anthropology as a
basis – in order to scientifically establish what will best enable a given social order to thrive
biologically and socially – and advocates certain behavioral practices to enhance humanity's
capacity for freedom and well-being, namely practices which emphasize solidarity, equality, and
justice.
Kropotkin argues that ethics itself is evolutionary, and is inherited as a sort of a social instinct
through cultural history, and by so, he rejects any religious and transcendental explanation of
morality. The origin of ethical feeling in both animals and humans can be found, he claims, in
the natural fact of "sociality" (mutualistic symbiosis), which humans can then combine with the
instinct for justice (i.e. equality) and then with the practice of reason to construct a non-
supernatural and anarchistic system of ethics. Kropotkin suggests that the principle of equality at
the core of anarchism is the same as the Golden rule:
This principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it but the very same
principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And how can anyone manage to
believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very
fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody? We do not wish to be deceived, we
wish always to be told nothing but the truth. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we
ourselves do not wish to deceive anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but
the truth, the whole truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by
that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others' labor? By what right indeed
can we demand that we should be treated in one fashion, reserving it to ourselves to treat others
in a fashion entirely different? Our sense of equality revolts at such an idea.

12. Postmodern ethics


Postmodernism (a late 20th-century movement) is a mode of discourse that is characterized by
philosophical skepticism toward the grand narratives offered by modernism; that rejects
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epistemological certainty and the stability of meaning; and rejects the emphasis on ideology as
the means of maintaining political power.
Postmodernism dismisses claims that facts are objective as naïve realism, given the conditional
nature of knowledge.
The investigative perspective of Postmodernism is characterized by self-reference,
epistemological relativism, and moral relativism, pluralism, irony, and eclecticism; and dismisses
the universal validity of the principles of binary opposition, the stability of identity, hierarchy,
and categorization.
Postmodernism emerged from literary criticism and developed in the mid-twentieth century as an
intellectual rejection of modernism, and has been observed across many disciplines.
Postmodernism is associated with the disciplines deconstruction and post-structuralism.
Postmodernism is criticized as promoting obscurantism, as abandoning the intellectualism of the
Age of Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries movement) and thus contributing no new
knowledge.
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse which challenges worldviews
associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century.
Postmodernism is associated with relativism and a focus on ideology in the maintenance of
economic and political power. Postmodernists are "skeptical of explanations which claim to be
valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of
each person".
It considers "reality" to be a mental construct. Postmodernism rejects the possibility of
unmediated reality or objectively-rational knowledge, asserting that all interpretations are
contingent on the perspective from which they are made; claims to objective fact are dismissed
as naive realism.
Proponents include anti-humanists such as Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and structuralists
such as Roland Barthes, challenged the possibilities of individual agency, and the coherence of
the notion of the 'individual' itself. This was on the basis that personal identity was, in the most
part, a social construction.
Jacques Derrida argued that access to meaning and the 'real' was always deferred, and sought to
demonstrate via recourse to the linguistic realm that "there is no outside-text/non-text".
At the same time, Jean Baudrillard theorized that signs and symbols or simulacra mask reality
(and eventually the absence of reality itself), particularly in the consumer world.
Post-structuralism and postmodernism argue that ethics must study the complex and relational
conditions of actions. A simple alignment of ideas of right and particular acts is not possible.
There will always be an ethical remainder that cannot be taken into account or often even
recognized. Such theorists find narrative to be a helpful tool for understanding ethics because
narrative is always about particular lived experiences in all their complexity, rather than, the
assignment of an idea or norm to separate and individual actions.
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Zygmunt Bauman says postmodernity is best described as modernity without illusion, the
illusion being the belief that humanity can be repaired by some ethic principle. Postmodernity
can be seen in this light as accepting the messy nature of humanity as unchangeable.
In this postmodern world, the means to act collectively and globally to solve large-scale
problems have been all but discredited, dismantled or lost. Problems can be handled only locally
and each on its own. All problem-handling means building a mini-order at the expense of order
elsewhere, and at the cost of rising global disorder as well as depleting the shrinking supplies of
resources which make ordering possible.
He considers Emmanuel Levinas's ethics as postmodern. Levinas work is based on the ethics of
the Other or, in Levinas's terms, on "ethics as first philosophy". For Levinas, the Other is not
knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics
(which Levinas called "ontology"). Levinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of
love" rather than the "love of wisdom". In his view, responsibility towards the Other precedes
any "objective searching after truth."
Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other.
For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with
another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person's proximity and distance are both
strongly felt. "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but
as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness." At the same time, the revelation of the face makes
a demand, and this demand is before one can express or know one's freedom to affirm or deny.
One instantly recognizes the transcendence and heteronomy of the Other. Even murder fails as
an attempt to take hold of this otherness.
David Couzens Hoy describes Levinas's account as "not the attempt to use power against itself,
or to mobilize sectors of the population to exert their political power; the ethical resistance is
instead the resistance of the powerless".
Hoy concludes that the ethical resistance of the powerless others to our capacity to exert power
over them is therefore what imposes unenforceable obligations on us. The obligations are
unenforceable precisely because of the other's lack of power. That actions are at once obligatory
and at the same time unenforceable is what put them in the category of the ethical. Obligations
that were enforced would, by the virtue of the force behind them, not be freely undertaken and
would not be in the realm of the ethical.

3. Applied ethics

Applied ethics include the following fields: 1. Bioethics, 2. Business ethics, 3. Machine ethics, 4.
Military ethics, 5, Political ethics, 6. Public sector ethics, 7. Publication ethics, 8. Relational
ethics, 9. Ethics of nanotechnologies, 10. Ethics of quantification, 11. Animal ethics, 12. Ethics
of technology.
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Applied ethics is concerned with what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do in a specific
situation or a particular domain of action.
Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect 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.
For example, the bioethics community is concerned with identifying the correct approach to
moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or
the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues
such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics
includes questions regarding the duties or duty of 'whistleblowers' to the general public or their
loyalty to their employer.

History
Applied ethics has expanded the study of ethics beyond the realms of academic philosophical
discourse. The field of applied ethics, as it appears today, emerged from debate surrounding
rapid medical and technological advances in the early 1970s, and is now established as a sub-
discipline of moral philosophy.
However, applied ethics is, by its very nature, a multi-professional subject because it requires
specialist understanding of the potential ethical issues in fields like medicine, business or
information technology.
Nowadays, ethical codes of conduct exist in almost every profession.

Specific questions
Applied ethics is used in some aspects of determining public policy, as well as by individuals
facing difficult decisions. The sort of questions addressed by applied ethics include: "Is getting
an abortion immoral?"; "Is euthanasia immoral?"; "Is affirmative action right or wrong?"; "What
are human rights, and how do we determine them?"; "Do animals have rights as well?"; and "Do
individuals have the right of self-determination?"
A more specific question could be: "If someone else can make better out of his/her life than I
can, is it then moral to sacrifice myself for them if needed?"
Without these questions, there is no clear fulcrum on which to balance law, politics, and the
practice of arbitration—in fact, no common assumptions of all participants—so the ability to
formulate the questions are prior to rights balancing.
But not all questions studied in applied ethics concern public policy. For example, making
ethical judgments regarding questions such as, "Is lying always wrong?" and, "If not, when is it
permissible?" is prior to any etiquette.
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People, in general, are more comfortable with dichotomies (two opposites). However, in ethics,
the issues are most often multifaceted and the best-proposed actions address many different areas
concurrently.
In ethical decisions, the answer is almost never a "yes or no" or a "right or wrong" statement.
Many buttons are pushed so that the overall condition is improved, and not to the benefit of any
particular faction.
And it has not only been shown that people consider the character of the moral agent (i.e. a
principle implied in virtue ethics), the deed of the action (i.e. a principle implied in deontology),
and the consequences of the action (i.e. a principle implied in utilitarianism) when formulating
moral judgments, but moreover that the effect of each of these three components depends on the
value of each component.

Underpinning theory
Applied ethics is distinguished from normative ethics, which concerns standards for right and
wrong behavior, and from meta-ethics, which concerns the nature of ethical properties,
statements, attitudes, and judgments.
While these three areas of ethics appear to be distinct, they are also interrelated. The use of an
applied ethics approach often draws upon certain normative ethical theories, like the following:
1. Consequentialist ethics, or theories holding that normative properties of acts depend only on
consequences. The paradigm consequentialist family of theories is utilitarianism, which holds
that whether an act is morally right depends on whether that act maximizes some sort of net
good.
This theory's main developments came from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who
distinguished between an act and rule utilitarianist morality.
Later developments have also adjusted the theory, most notably Henry Sidgwick who introduced
the idea of motive or intent in morality, and Peter Singer who introduced the idea of preference
in moral decision-making.
2. Deontological ethics, notions based on 'rules' i.e. that there is an obligation to perform the
'right' action, regardless of actual consequences. This approach is epitomized by Immanuel
Kant's notion of the categorical imperative, which was the center of Kant's ethical theory based
on duty.
Another key deontological theory is natural law, which was heavily developed by Thomas
Aquinas and is an important part of the Catholic Church's teaching on morals. Threshold
deontology holds that rules ought to govern up to a point despite adverse consequences; but
when the consequences become so dire that they cross a stipulated threshold, consequentialism
takes over.
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3. Virtue ethics, derived from Aristotle's and Confucius' notions, which asserts that the right
action will be that chosen by a suitably 'virtuous' agent.
Sometimes, these normative ethical theories clash, which poses challenges when trying to
resolve real-world ethical dilemmas. One approach which attempts to overcome the seemingly
impossible divide between deontology and utilitarianism (of which the divide is caused by the
opposite takings of an absolute and relativist moral view) is case-based reasoning, also known as
casuistry.
Casuistry does not begin with theory, rather it starts with the immediate facts of a real and
concrete case. While casuistry makes use of ethical theory, it does not view ethical theory as the
most important feature of moral reasoning.
Casuists, like Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin challenge the traditional paradigm of applied
ethics. Instead of starting from theory and applying theory to a particular case, casuists start with
the particular case itself, and then ask what morally significant features (including both theory
and practical considerations) ought to be considered for that particular case.
In their observations of medical ethics committees, Jonsen and Toulmin note that a consensus on
particularly problematic moral cases often emerges when participants focus on the facts of the
case, rather than on ideology or theory. Thus, a Rabbi, a Catholic priest, and an agnostic might
agree that, in this particular case, the best approach is to withhold extraordinary medical care,
while disagreeing on the reasons that support their individual positions. By focusing on cases and
not on theory, those engaged in moral debate increase the possibility of agreement.
Applied ethics was later distinguished from the nascent applied epistemology, which is also
under the umbrella of applied philosophy. While the former was concerned with the practical
application of moral considerations, the latter focuses on the application of epistemology in
solving practical problems.

Fields of application
1. Bioethics
Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine.
Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life
sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy. It also includes the study of the
more commonplace questions of values ("the ethics of the ordinary") that arise in primary care
and other branches of medicine.
Bioethics also needs to address emerging biotechnologies that affect basic biology and future
humans. These developments include cloning, gene therapy, human genetic engineering,
astroethics and life in space, and manipulation of basic biology through altered DNA, RNA and
proteins, e.g. "three parent baby, where baby is born from genetically modified embryos, would
have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor.
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Correspondingly, new bioethics also need to address life at its core. For example, biotic ethics
value organic gene/protein life itself and seek to propagate it. With such life-centered principles,
ethics may secure a cosmological future for life.

2. Business ethics
Business ethics (also corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that
examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment,
including fields like medical ethics.
Business ethics represents the practices that any individual or group exhibits within an
organization that can negatively or positively affect the businesses core values. It applies to all
aspects of business conduct and is relevant to the conduct of individuals and entire organizations.
Business ethics has both normative and descriptive dimensions. As a corporate practice and a
career specialization, the field is primarily normative.
Academics attempting to understand business behavior employ descriptive methods. The range
and quantity of business ethical issues reflect the interaction of profit-maximizing behavior with
non-economic concerns. Interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically both within major
corporations and within academia. For example, today most major corporations promote their
commitment to non-economic values under headings such as ethics codes and social
responsibility charters.
Adam Smith said, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and
diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to
raise prices." Governments use laws and regulations to point business behavior in what they
perceive to be beneficial directions.
Ethics implicitly regulates areas and details of behavior that lie beyond governmental control.
The emergence of large corporations with limited relationships and sensitivity to the
communities in which they operate accelerated the development of formal ethics regimes.
Business ethics also relates to unethical activities of inter-organizational relationships, such as
strategic alliances, buyer-supplier relationships, or joint ventures. Such unethical practices
include, for instance, opportunistic behaviors, contract violations, and deceitful practices.

3. Machine ethics
In Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen
conclude that issues in machine ethics will likely drive advancement in understanding of human
ethics by forcing us to address gaps in modern normative theory and by providing a platform for
experimental investigation.
The effort to actually program a machine or artificial agent to behave as though instilled with a
sense of ethics requires new specificity in our normative theories, especially regarding aspects
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customarily considered common-sense. For example, machines, unlike humans, can support a
wide selection of learning algorithms, and controversy has arisen over the relative ethical merits
of these options. This may reopen classic debates of normative ethics framed in new (highly
technical) terms.

4. Military ethics
Military ethics are concerned with questions regarding the application of force and the ethos of
the soldier and are often understood as applied professional ethics. Just war theory is generally
seen to set the background terms of military ethics. However individual countries and traditions
have different fields of attention.
- Military ethics involves multiple subareas, including the following among others:
- what, if any, should be the laws of war.
- justification for the initiation of military force.
- decisions about who may be targeted in warfare.
- decisions on choice of weaponry, and what collateral effects such weaponry may have.
- standards for handling military prisoners.
- methods of dealing with violations of the laws of war.

5. Political ethics
Political ethics (also known as political morality or public ethics) is the practice of making moral
judgements about political action and political agents. It covers two areas. The first is the ethics
of process (or the ethics of office), which deals with public officials and their methods. The
second area is the ethics of policy (or ethics and public policy), which concerns judgments
surrounding policies and laws.
The concept of political morality can be easily understood when the roots of the term and its
gradual development are assessed. The core values and expectations of political morality have
historically derived from the principles of justice. However, John Rawls defends the theory that
the political concept of justice is ultimately based on the common good of the individual rather
than on the values one is expected to follow.
While trying to make moral judgments about political issues, people also leverage their own
perceived definition of morality. The concept of morality itself derives from several moral
foundations. Morality, seen through the lens of these foundations, shapes peoples' judgments
about political actions and political agents.
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Ethics of process
Niccolò Machiavelli is one of the most famous political theorists who spoke on, and later
subverted, the matters of political ethics. Unlike Aristotle, he believed that a political leader may
be required to behave in evil ways if necessary to maintain his authority.
In contemporary democracies, a variant of this idea has been reframed as the problem of dirty
hands, described most influentially by Michael Walzer, who argues that the problem creates a
paradox: the politician must sometimes "do wrong to do right". The politician uses violence to
prevent greater violence, but his act is still wrong even if justified. However, Walzer's view has
been criticized.
Some critics object that either the politician is justified or not. If justified, there is nothing wrong,
though he may feel guilty. Others say that some of the acts of violence that Walzer would allow
are never justified, no matter what the ends. Dennis Thompson has argued that in a democracy
citizen should hold the leader responsible, and therefore, if the act is unjustified their hands are
dirty too.
In large organizations, it is often not possible to tell who is actually responsible for the
outcomes—a problem known as the problem of many hands.
Political ethics not only permits leaders to do things that would be wrong in private life but
requires them to meet higher standards than would be necessary for private life. For example,
they may have less of a right to privacy than do ordinary citizens, and no right to use their office
for personal profit. The major issues here ultimately concern the concept of conflict of interest.
As stated above, personal or private morality and political morality are often viewed as a conflict
of interest. However, it is important to know that these two concepts of morality can also
maintain a common positive relationship between the two. Whether an individual is involved in
the political domain as an authority or as an active civic participant, these values bleed through
to the personal sector of morality as well. An individual that learned the skills necessary in the
political sector may apply these learned qualities in a setting outside of politics, often viewed as
a private everyday setting.
In contrast, one that is entering the political setting may have already held the qualities and
virtues that are expected in the professional setting. Therefore, the values already held will then
be applied to the new political setting, as anticipated.
Reciprocity, as in the context of deriving those traits are commonly present when entering the
field if the qualities were not already learned. Both concepts of morality include different
expectations, but to say the least, there is a correlation present between the two. Whether the
virtues and values were acquired or previously held, they simply factor in and apply to both
settings.
Those that have emerged into the intense political sphere, knowing that virtues and morals can
certainly be an influence, but building one's character can be substantially beneficial prior to the
entrance.
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Ethics of policy
Personal morality is also factored into public morality. Given the Liberal democracy, public
morality is often referred to as 'formal'. Abiding by the order of law, in addition maintaining
respect are simply two critical factors in order to achieve the concept of public morality. These
elements are expected when an individual is actively participating in the political sphere and
ultimately required for the behavior of political authorities.
Each citizen has their own belief and morals toward a particularly controversial topic,
nonetheless, it is the political authorities' duty to respect others' beliefs and advocate for the
beliefs of their constituents while following the law and constitution.
In the other area of political ethics, the key issues are not the conflict between means and ends
but the conflicts among the ends themselves. For example, in the question of global justice, the
conflict is between the claims of the nation state and citizens on one side and the claims of all
citizens of the world.
Traditionally, priority has been given to the claims of nations, but in recent years thinkers known
as cosmopolitans have pressed the claims of all citizens of the world.
Political ethics deals not mainly with ideal justice, however, but with realizing moral values in
democratic societies where citizens (and philosophers) disagree about what ideal justice is. In a
pluralist society, how if at all can governments justify a policy of progressive taxation,
affirmative action, the right to abortion, universal healthcare, and the like?
Political ethics is also concerned with moral problems raised by the need for political
compromise, whistleblowing, civil disobedience, and criminal punishment.
Criticisms
Some critics (so-called political realists) argue that ethics has no place in politics. If politicians
are to be effective in the real world, they cannot be bound by moral rules. They have to pursue
the national interest. However, Walzer points out that if the realists are asked to justify their
claims, they will almost always appeal to moral principles of their own (for example, to show
that ethics is harmful or counterproductive).
Another kind of criticism comes from those who argue that we should not pay so much attention
to politicians and policies, but should instead look more closely at the larger structures of society
where the most serious ethical problems lie.
Advocates of political ethics respond that while structural injustice should not be ignored, too
much emphasis on structures neglects the human agents who are responsible for changing them.

6. Public sector ethics


Public sector ethics is a set of principles that guide public officials in their service to their
constituents, including their decision-making on behalf of their constituents. Fundamental to the
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concept of public sector ethics is the notion that decisions and actions are based on what best
serves the public's interests, as opposed to the official's personal interests (including financial
interests) or self-serving political interests.
In the public sector, ethics addresses the fundamental premise of a public administrator's duty as
a "steward" to the public. In other words, it is the moral justification and consideration for
decisions and actions made during the completion of daily duties when working to provide the
general services of government and nonprofit organizations.
Ethics is defined as the entirety of rules of proper moral conduct corresponding to the ideology
of a particular society or organization.
Public sector ethics is a broad topic because values and morals vary between cultures. Despite
the differences in ethical values, there is a growing common ground of what is considered good
conduct and correct conduct with ethics.
Ethics are an accountability standard by which the public will scrutinize the work being
conducted by the members of these organizations. The question of ethics emerges in the public
sector on account of its subordinate character.
Decisions are based upon ethical principles, which are the perception of what the general public
would view as correct. Ensuring the ethical behavior in the public sector requires a permanent
reflection on the decisions taken and their impact from a moral point of view on citizens. Having
such a distinction ensures that public administrators are not acting on an internal set of ethical
principles without first questioning whether those principles would hold to public scrutiny. It
also has placed an additional burden upon public administrators regarding the conduct of their
personal lives. Public sector ethics is an attempt to create a more open atmosphere within
governmental operations.
Government ethics constitutes the application of ethical rules to government. It is that part of
practical jurisprudence, or the philosophy of law, that governs the operation of government and
its relationship with the people that it governs. It covers issues of honesty and transparency in
government, dealing with matters such as bribery, political corruption, police corruption,
legislative ethics, regulatory ethics, conflict of interest, avoiding the appearance of impropriety,
open government, and legal ethics.
Government officials serve the people, managing the resources of others. Along with this
stewardship, there is an expectation from the public that in conducting daily activities, the
officials will practice fairness and equality. They are also expected to maintain openness in their
workings to ensure that they are operating within the public's perception of what is "right."
In the Philippines, the governing agency that takes care of the ethical behaviors of government
employees is the Civil Service Commission.
Regulatory ethics is a body of law and practical political philosophy that governs the conduct of
civil servants and the members of regulatory agencies. It addresses issues such as bribery and the
relationship of civil servants with the businesses in the industries they regulate, as well as
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concerns about transparency, freedom of information and sunshine laws, and conflict of interest
rules.
A government agency that takes care of the actions of professionals in the country is the
Philippine Regulatory Commission.

7. Publication ethics
Publication ethics is the set of principles that guide the writing and publishing process for all
professional publications. To follow these principles, authors must verify that the publication
does not contain plagiarism or publication bias.
As a way to avoid misconduct in research, these principles can also apply to experiments that are
referenced or analyzed in publications by ensuring the data is recorded honestly and accurately.
Plagiarism is the failure to give credit to another author's work or ideas, when it is used in the
publication. It is the obligation of the editor of the journal to ensure the article does not contain
any plagiarism before it is published.
If a publication that has already been published is proven to contain plagiarism, the editor of the
journal can retract the article. Another critical publication ethics issue pertains to citation
plagiarism when researchers copy and paste citation entries from other published works without
reading the original source.
Publication bias occurs when the publication is one-sided or "prejudiced against results". In best
practice, an author should try to include information from all parties involved, or affected by the
topic. If an author is prejudiced against certain results, then it can "lead to erroneous conclusions
being drawn".
Misconduct in research can occur when an experimenter falsifies results. Falsely recorded
information occurs when the researcher "fakes" information or data, which was not used when
conducting the actual experiment. By faking the data, the researcher can alter the results from the
experiment to better fit the hypothesis they originally predicted.
When conducting medical research, it is important to honor the healthcare rights of a patient by
protecting their anonymity in the publication. Respect for autonomy is the principle that
decision-making should allow individuals to be autonomous; they should be able to make
decisions that apply to their own lives. This means that individuals should have control of their
lives.
Justice is the principle that decision-makers must focus on actions that are fair to those affected.
Ethical decisions need to be consistent with the ethical theory. There are cases where the
management has made decisions that seem to be unfair to the employees, shareholders, and other
stakeholders. Such decisions are unethical.
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8. Relational ethics
Relational ethics are related to an ethics of care. They are used in qualitative research, especially
ethnography and auto-ethnography. Researchers who employ relational ethics value and respect
the connection between themselves and the people they study, and between researchers and the
communities in which they live and work. Relational ethics also help researchers understand
difficult issues such as conducting research on intimate others that have died. and developing
friendships with their participants. Relational ethics in close personal relationships form a central
concept of contextual therapy.

9. Ethics of nanotechnologies
Ethics of nanotechnology is the study of the ethical issues emerging from advances in
nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic,
molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes.
The earliest description of nanotechnology is referred to the particular technological goal of
manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products.
A more generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established by the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, which defined nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at
least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm).
This definition reflects the fact that quantum mechanical effects are important at this quantum-
realm scale, and so the definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research
category inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with the special properties
of matter which occur below the given size threshold. It is therefore common to see the plural
form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the broad range of
research and applications whose common trait is size.
Nanotechnology includes fields of science as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry,
molecular biology, semiconductor physics, energy storage, engineering, microfabrication, and
molecular engineering. The associated research and applications are equally diverse, ranging
from extensions of conventional device physics to completely new approaches based upon
molecular self-assembly from developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale to
direct control of matter on the atomic scale.

10. Ethics of quantification


Ethics of quantification is the study of the ethical issues associated to different forms of visible
or invisible forms of quantification.
It studies ethical issues associated to different forms of visible or invisible forms of
quantification. These could include algorithms, metrics/ indicators, statistical and mathematical
modelling.
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According to Espeland and Stevens, an ethics of quantification would naturally descend from a
sociology of quantification, especially at an age where democracy, merit, participation,
accountability and even ‘‘fairness’’ are assumed to be best discovered and appreciated via
numbers.
Theodore M. Porter notes how numbers meet a demand for quantified objectivity, and may for
this be used by bureaucracies or institutions to gain legitimacy and epistemic authority.
For Sareen et al., ethical issues arise when social actors may abuse quantification by strategically
illuminating those aspects that can be socially legitimated, while complicating those that cannot.
For Sally Engle Merry, studying indicators of human rights, gender violence and sex trafficking,
quantification is a technology of control, but whether it is reformist or authoritarian depends on
who has harnessed its power and for what purpose. She notes that in order to make indicators
less misleading and distorting some principles should be followed:
- democratize the production of indicators
- develop in parallel qualitative research to verify the validity of assumptions
- keep it the indicators simple
- test or adopt multiple framings
- admit the limits of the various measures
Moving from indicators to mathematical models, a group of 22 authors propose five principles
for making models serve society, moving from the premise that modelling is a social activity.
The principles, which resonate with those above for indicators, are:
- take care to frankly assess the uncertainties and sensitivity of models;
- avoid confusing complexity;
- make clear the normative values chosen by the models' developers;
- avoid spurious precision, and
- acknowledge ignorance.
The principles are addressed to modelers, to model users, and ultimately to society.

11. Animal ethics


Animal ethics is a term used in academia to describe human-animal relationships and how
animals ought to be treated. The subject matter includes animal rights, animal welfare, animal
law, speciesism, animal cognition, wildlife conservation, the moral status of nonhuman animals,
the concept of nonhuman personhood, human exceptionalism, the history of animal use, and
theories of justice.
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Animal rights
The protection of animals in the Philippines is regulated by the originally passed Republic Act
No. 8485, otherwise known as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in 1998.
In 2012, the Republic Act No. 10631 was passed to amend certain sections of the original
legislation. The purpose of the AWA of the Philippines is to “protect and promote the welfare of
all terrestrial, aquatic and marine animals in the Philippines by supervising and regulating the
establishment and operations of all facilities utilized for breeding, maintaining, keeping, treating
or training of all animals either as objects of trade or as household pets,” whereas the Act
recognizes birds as pet animals. Section 6 of the AWA prohibits torture of any animal, neglect to
provide adequate care, sustenance, maltreatment of any animal, subjecting any dog or horse to
fights, as well as killing or causing or procuring to be tortured or deprived of adequate care,
sustenance or shelter, or maltreatment or using the same in research or experiments not
authorized by the Committee on Animal Welfare.

Animal testing
Animal testing for biomedical research dates to the writings of the ancient Greeks where
experiments were carried out on living animals.
Experiments were carrying out on living animals to improve on the knowledge of anatomy,
physiology, pathology, and pharmacology.
Animal testing since has evolved considerably and is still being carried out in the modern-day,
with millions of experimental animals being used around the world.
However, during recent years it has come under severe criticism by the public and animal activist
groups. Those against, argue that the benefits that animal testing provides for humanity are not
justifiable for the suffering of those animals. Those for, argue that animal testing is fundamental
for the advancement of biomedical knowledge.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the Philippines, formerly the Bureau of Food and
Drugs is a health regulatory agency under the Department of Health created on 1963 by Republic
Act No. 3720, amended on 1987 by Executive Order 175 otherwise known as the “Food, Drugs
and Devices, and Cosmetics Act”, and subsequently reorganized by Republic Act No. 9711
otherwise known as “The Food and Drug Administration Act of 2009”.
The agency is responsible for licensing, monitoring, and regulation of cosmetics, drugs, foods,
household hazardous products, medical devices and electromagnetic radiation emitting devices,
pesticides, tobacco and related products, and vaccines for safety, efficacy, and quality in the
Republic of the Philippines.
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The 3 Rs
The Three Rs (3Rs) are guiding principles for more ethical use of animals in product testing and
scientific research. They were first described by W. M. S. Russell and R. L. Burch in 1959. The
3Rs are:
1. Replacement: Avoiding using an animal for testing by switching out the animal for
something non-living, such as a computer model, or an animal which is less susceptible to pain
in relation to the experiment.
2. Reduction: Devising a plan to use the fewest animals possible; a combination of using fewer
animals to gain sufficient data, and maximizing the amount of data from each animal to use
fewer animals.
3. Refinement: A decrease in any unnecessary pain inflicted on the animal; adapting
experimental procedures to minimize suffering.
The Three Rs principles are now widely accepted by many countries and are used in any
practices that involve the experimentation of animals.
Ethical guidelines for animal research
There is a wide range of ethical assessments regarding animals used in research. There are
general opinions that animals do have a moral status and how they are treated should be
subjected to ethical consideration; some of the positions include:
1. Animals have intrinsic values that must be respected.
2. Animals can feel pain and their interests must be taken into consideration.
3. Our treatment of all animals/lab animals reflects on our attitudes and influences us on our
moral beings.

12. Ethics of technology


The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the
Technology Age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent
devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the
application of ethical thinking to the growing concerns of technology as new technologies
continue to rise in prominence.
The topic has evolved as technologies have developed. Technology poses an ethical dilemma on
producers and consumers alike.
The subject of technoethics, or the ethical implications of technology, have been studied by
different philosophers such as Hans Jonas and Mario Bunge.
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Technoethics
Technoethics (TE) is an interdisciplinary research area that draws on theories and methods from
multiple knowledge domains (such as communications, social sciences, information studies,
technology studies, applied ethics, and philosophy) to provide insights on ethical dimensions of
technological systems and practices for advancing a technological society.
Technoethics views technology and ethics as socially embedded enterprises and focuses on
discovering the ethical uses for technology, protecting against the misuse of technology, and
devising common principles to guide new advances in technological development and
application to benefit society.
Typically, scholars in technoethics have a tendency to conceptualize technology and ethics as
interconnected and embedded in life and society. Technoethics denotes a broad range of ethical
issues revolving around technology – from specific areas of focus affecting professionals
working with technology to broader social, ethical, and legal issues concerning the role of
technology in society and everyday life.
Techno-ethical perspectives are constantly in transition as technology advances in areas unseen
by creators and as users change the intended uses of new technologies. Humans cannot be
separated from these technologies because it is an inherent part of consciousness. The short term
and longer term ethical considerations for technologies engage the creator, producer, user, and
governments.
With the increasing impact emerging technologies have on society, the importance of assessing
ethical and social issues constantly becomes more important. While such technologies provide
opportunities for novel applications and the potential to transform the society on a global scale,
their rise is accompanied by new ethical challenges and problems that must be considered.
This becomes more difficult with the increasing pace at which technology is progressing and the
increasing impact it has on the societal understanding by seemingly outrunning human control.
The concept of technoethics focuses on expanding the knowledge of existing research in the
areas of technology and ethics in order to provide a holistic construct for the different aspects
and sub-disciplines of ethics related to technology-related human activity like economics,
politics, globalization, and scientific research.
It is also concerned with the rights and responsibilities that designers and developers have
regarding the outcomes of the respective technology. This is of particular importance with the
emergence of algorithmic technology capable of making decisions autonomously and the related
issues of developer or data bias influencing these decisions.
To work against the manifestation of these biases, the balance between human and technology
accountability for ethical failure has to be carefully evaluated, and has shifted the view from
technology as a merely positive tool towards the perception of technology as inherently neutral.
Technoethics, thus, has to focus on both sides of the human technology equation when
confronted with upcoming technology innovations and applications.
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With technology continuing to advance over time, there are new Technoethical issues that come
into play. For instance, discussions on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have brought
about a huge concern for technology, ethics, and safety. There is also a huge question of whether
or not artificial intelligence (AI) should be trusted and relied upon. These are just some examples
of how the advancements in technology will affect the ethical values of humans in the future.
Technoethics finds application in various areas of technology. The following key areas of
technology are the following:
1. Computer ethics: Focuses on the use of technology in areas including visual technology,
artificial intelligence, and robotics.
2. Engineering ethics: Dealing with professional standards of engineers and their moral
responsibilities to the public.
3. Internet ethics and cyberethics: Concerning the guarding against unethical Internet activity.
4. Media and communication technoethics: Concerning ethical issues and responsibilities
when using mass media and communication technology.
5. Professional technoethics: Concerning all ethical considerations that revolve around the role
of technology within professional conduct like in engineering, journalism, or medicine.
6. Educational technoethics: Concerning the ethical issues and outcomes associated with using
technology for educational aims.
7. Biotech ethics: Linked to advances in bioethics and medical ethics like considerations arising
in cloning, human genetic engineering, and stem cell research.
8. Environmental technoethics: Concerning technological innovations that impact the
environment and life.
9. Nanoethics: Concerning ethical and social issues associated with developments in the
alteration of matter at the level of atoms and molecules in various disciplines including computer
science, engineering, and biology.
10. Military technoethics: Concerning ethical issues associated with technology use in military
action.
Fundamental Problems
Technology is merely a tool like a device or gadget. With this thought process of technology just
being a device or gadget, it is not possible for technology to possess a moral or ethical quality.
Going by this thought process, the tool maker or end user would be the one who decides the
morality or ethicality behind a device or gadget.
"Ethics of technology" refers to two basic subdivisions:
1. The ethics involved in the development of new technology—whether it is always, never, or
contextually right or wrong to invent and implement a technological innovation.
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2. The ethical questions that are exacerbated by the ways in which technology extends or curtails
the power of individuals—how standard ethical questions are changed by the new powers.
In the former case, ethics of such things as computer security and computer viruses asks
whether the very act of innovation is an ethically right or wrong act. Similarly, does a scientist
have an ethical obligation to produce or fail to produce a nuclear weapon? What are the ethical
questions surrounding the production of technologies that waste or conserve energy and
resources? What are the ethical questions surrounding the production of new manufacturing
processes that might inhibit employment, or might inflict suffering in the third world?
In the latter case, the ethics of technology quickly break down into the ethics of various human
endeavors as they are altered by new technologies. For example, bioethics is now largely
consumed with questions that have been exacerbated by the new life-preserving technologies,
new cloning technologies, and new technologies for implantation.
In law, the right of privacy is being continually decreased by the emergence of new forms of
surveillance and anonymity. The old ethical questions of privacy and free speech are given new
shape and urgency in an Internet age. Such tracing devices as RFID, biometric analysis and
identification, genetic screening, all take old ethical questions and amplify their significance.
As you can see, the fundamental problem is as society produces and advances technology that we
use in all areas of our life from work, school, medicine, surveillance, etc. we receive great
benefits, but there are underlying costs to these benefits.
As technology evolves even more, some of the technological innovations can be seen as
inhumane and those same technological innovations can be seen by others as creative, life
changing, and innovative.

Part 2.
VALUES AND FILIPINO VALUES

Some values—those that serve as the foundation for moral judgments—seem to have a more
visceral impact on judgment, affecting how people feel about a subject, circumstance, or option
apart from their cognitive assessment of the subject, circumstance, or option. As a result, values
can trigger both emotional (feeling) and cognitive (thinking) reactions. Whether a value is
consciously considered during decision-making still impacts judgments and behavior. In other
words, a value can be connected to a decision without being explicitly connected.
Sociologists use this term in a more precise sense to mean “the generalized end which has the
connotations of rightness, goodness or inherent desirability”.
It is important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good
or bad and desirable or undesirable.
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It has a major influence on a person’s behavior and attitude and serves as broad guidelines in all
situations.
Actually, the value represents basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of
existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-
state of existence.

Values Defined
According to M. Haralambos, “A value is a belief that something is good and desirable”.
According to R.K. Mukherjee, “Values are socially approved desires and goals that are
internalized through the process of conditioning, learning or socialization and that become
subjective preferences, standards, and aspirations”.
According to Zaleznik and David, “Values are the ideas in the mind of men compared to norms
in that they specify how people should behave. Values also attach degrees of goodness to
activities and relationships”
According to I. J. Lehner and N.J. Kube, “Values are an integral part of the personal philosophy
of life by which we generally mean the system of values by which we live. The philosophy of
life includes our aims, ideals, and manner of thinking and the principles by which we guide our
behavior”
According to T. W. Hippie, “Values are conscious or unconscious motivators and justifiers of the
actions and judgment”
A value is a shared idea about how something is ranked in terms of desirability, worth or
goodness. Sometimes, it has been interpreted to mean “such standards by means of which the
ends of action are selected”.
Sometimes, it has been interpreted to mean “such standards by means of which the ends of action
are selected”.
Thus, values are collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper or bad,
undesirable, and improper in a culture.
Familiar examples of values are wealth, loyalty, independence, equality, justice, fraternity and
friendliness.

Lexical Definitions
1. Values are guides to human behavior. In philosophy, values are crucial for ethical decision-
making. In psychology, they’re the core of what makes a life meaningful, moving away from
short-term satisfaction to long-term fulfillment.
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2. It is a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.


3. A value is a shared idea about how something is ranked in terms of desirability, worth or
goodness. Sometimes, it has been interpreted to mean “such standards by means of which the
ends of action are selected”. Sometimes, it has been interpreted to mean “such standards by
means of which the ends of action are selected”.
4. The moral principles and beliefs or accepted standards of a person or social group.
5. A value has been taken to mean moral ideas, general conceptions or orientations towards the
world or sometimes simply interests, attitudes, preferences, needs, sentiments and dispositions.

Characteristics of Values
Values are different for each person.
These can be defined as ideas or beliefs that a person holds desirable or undesirable.
The variability in that statement is, first, what a person could value, and second, the degree to
which they value it.
Values may be specific, such as honoring one’s parents or owning a home or they may be more
general, such as health, love, and democracy. ‘Truth prevails”, “love thy neighbor as yourself,
“learning is good as ends itself are a few examples of general values.
Individual achievement, personal happiness, and materialism are major values of modem
industrial society.
It is defined as a concept of the desirable, an internalized creation or standard of evaluation a
person possesses.
Such concepts and standards are relatively few and determine or guide an individual’s
evaluations of the many objects encountered in everyday life.

The characteristics of values


1. They are extremely practical, and valuation requires not just techniques but also an
understanding of the strategic context.
2. They can provide standards of competence and morality.
3. They can go beyond specific situations or persons.
4. Personal values can be influenced by culture, tradition, and a combination of internal and
external factors.
5. They are relatively permanent.
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6. They are more central to the core of a person.


7. Most of our core values are learned early in life from family, friends, neighborhood school, the
mass print, visual media and other sources within the society.
8. Values are loaded with effective thoughts about ideas, objects, behavior, etc.
9. They contain a judgmental element in that they carry an individual’s ideas as to what is right,
good, or desirable.
10. Values can differ from culture to culture and even person to person.
11. Values play a significant role in the integration and fulfillment of man’s basic impulses and
desire stably and consistently appropriate for his living.
12. They are generic experiences in social action made up of both individual and social responses
and attitudes.
13. They build up societies, integrate social relations.
14. They mold the ideal dimensions of personality and depth of culture.
15. They influence people’s behavior and serve as criteria for evaluating the actions of others.
16. They have a great role to play in the conduct of social life. They help in creating norms to
guide day-to-day behavior.
17. The values of a culture may change, but most remain stable during one person’s lifetime.
18. Socially shared, intensely felt values are a fundamental part of our lives. These values
become part of our personalities. They are shared and reinforced by those with whom we
interact.
19. Since values often strongly influence both attitude and behavior, they serve as a kind of
personal compass for employee conduct in the workplace.
20. These help to determine whether an employee is passionate about work and the workplace,
which in turn can lead to above-average returns, high employee satisfaction, strong team
dynamics, and synergy.

Types of Values
The values that are important to people tend to affect the types of decisions they make, how they
perceive their environment, and their actual behaviors.
There are two types of values;
1. Terminal Values.
2. Instrumental Values.
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Terminal Values
These are values that we think are most important or most desirable.
These refer to desirable end-states of existence, the goals a person would like to achieve during
his or her lifetime.
They include happiness, self-respect, recognition, inner harmony, leading a prosperous life, and
professional excellence.
Instrumental Values
Instrumental values deal with views on acceptable modes of conductor means of achieving the
terminal values.
These include being honest, sincere, ethical, and being ambitious. These values are more focused
on personality traits and character.
There are many typologies of values. One of the most established surveys to assess individual
values is the Rokeach Value Survey.
This survey lists 18 terminal and 18 instrumental values in alphabetical order.
They are given below:

Terminal Values Instrumental Values


A comfortable life (a prosperous life) Ambitious (hardworking)
An exciting life (a stimulating, active life) Broadminded (open-minded)
A Sense of accomplishment (lasting contribution) Capable (competent, efficient)
A world of peace (free of war and conflict) Cheerful (Lighthearted, joyful)
A world of beauty (the beauty of nature and the
arts) Clean (neat, tidy)
equality (brotherhood, equal, opportunity for all) Courageous (standing up for your beliefs)
Family security (taking care of loved ones) Forgiving (willing to pardon)
Helpful (working for the welfare of
Freedom (independence, free choice) others)
Happiness (contentedness) Honest (sincere, truthful)
Inner harmony (freedom from inner conflict) Imaginative (daring, creative)
Mature love (sexual and spiritual intimacy) Independent (self-reliant, self-sufficient)
National security (protection from attack) Intellectual (intelligent, reflective)
Pleasure (an enjoyable, leisurely life) Logical (consistent, rational)
Salvation (saved, eternal) Loving (affectionate, tender)
Self-respect (self-esteem) Obedient (dutiful, respectful)
Social recognition (respect, admiration) Polite (courteous, well-mannered)
A true friend (close companionship) Responsible (dependable, reliable)
Self-controlled (restrained, self-
Wisdom (a mature understanding of life) disciplined)
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FILIPINO VALUES
Filipino values are social constructs within Filipino culture which define that which is socially
considered to be desirable. The Filipino value system describes "the commonly shared and
traditionally established system of values underlying Filipino behavior" within the context of the
larger Filipino cultural system. These relate to the unique assemblage of consistent ideologies,
moral codes, ethical practices, etiquette and personal and cultural values that are promoted by
Filipino society.

Value enumeration
1. Family oriented
The basic and most important unit of a Filipino's life is the family. Young Filipinos who turn 18
are not expected to move out of their parents' home. When a Filipino's parents are old and cannot
take care of themselves, they are cared for in their children's homes, and are very rarely brought
by their children to homes for the aged. The practice of separating the elderly from the rest of the
family, while common in Western countries, is often looked down upon in Filipino society.
Family lunches with the extended family of up to 50 people, extending until the line of second
cousins, are not unusual. The Filipino culture puts a great emphasis on the value of family and
being close to one's family members.
2. Humor and positivity
This famous trait is the ability of Filipinos to find humor in everything. It sheds light on the
optimism and positivity of Filipinos in whatever situation they are in so as to remain determined
in going through struggles or challenges. It serves as a coping technique, the same way a child
who has fallen laughs at himself/herself to hide his/her embarrassment.
3. Flexibility, adaptability, discipline, and creativity
Filipinos adapt to different sets of standardized rules or procedures. They are known to follow a
"natural clock" or organic sense of time—doing things in the time they feel is right. They are
present- and future-oriented: one attends to a task or requirement at the time, and, often, in
preparation for future engagements. Filipinos do not tend to dwell in the past unless it serves to
help them understand the present and future. This allows the Filipino to adapt and integrate well
into different cultures, and create effective case-by-case schedules.
4. Education and multilingualism
Filipinos place a high value on holistic child education with a belief in parental involvement in
their children's success. Filipinos believe in the importance of multilingualism and
multiculturalism. in the Philippines, there are over 120 distinct languages based in different
regions spoken by different tribes and ethnic groups.
At school, children are educated foremost in their regional language. There are eight most
widely-spoken Filipino regional languages: Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon or Ilonggo,
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Bikol, Waray, Kapampangan, and Pangasinense. Next, children learn their country's two national
languages: Filipino (Tagalog) and English. Effectively, by adulthood, children are often at least
proficiently bilingual or trilingual.
5. Religious adherence
The Philippines is approximately 85 percent Christian (mostly Roman Catholic) and 10 percent
Muslim, with the remaining 5 percent belonging to other religions including Taoism, Buddhism
and the Dayawism of the highlands. The combined percentages of Christian and Muslim faithful
are indicative of the strong or at least nominal faith most Filipinos have in the existence, agency
and power of a creator deity.
With regard to the Catholic majority, it observes numerous Church holidays, notwithstanding the
fewer holy days of obligation compared to the faithful of other countries. Attendance of Mass is
high not only on Sundays, but also, on national and regional feast days, and abstention from
Communion is almost unheard of.
Catholicism also provides the basis for many citizens' positions on moral, ethical and everyday
issues. Extreme practices, officially frowned upon by the clergy, take place during Holy Week.
6. Ability to survive and thrive
The Filipinos have survived the rule of numerous colonial and imperial countries of their time
such as the United States, Spain, and Japan. Consequently, Filipinos have developed a sense of
resourcefulness or the ability to survive and thrive irrespective of the political context. They have
an extraordinary ability to thrive despite perceived or actual material, social, or political
limitations.
7. Hard work and industriousness
Filipinos are very determined and persevering in accomplishing whatever they set their minds to.
Filipinos over the years have proven time and time again that they are a people with an
industrious attitude. This is also present in the country’s workforce particularly the farmers. Even
with little support, technological weaknesses, and the country’s seasonal typhoons, the Filipino
farmer still strives to earn their daily meal.
8. Hospitality
Foreigners who come to visit the Philippines speak of Filipinos going out of their way to help
them when lost, or the heartwarming generosity of a Filipino family hosting a visitor in their
home.
Gender-specific values
In relation to parenthood, bearing male and female children depends on the preferences of the
parents based on the expected roles that each gender would assume once grown up. Both genders
are expected to become responsible members of the family and their society. Women in the
Philippines are expected to become caring and nurturing mothers for their own children.
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Female Filipinos are also expected to lend a hand in household work. They are even anticipated
to offer assistance after being married. On the other hand, Filipino men are expected to assume
the role of becoming the primary source of income and financial support of his family.

PART 3
CHRISTIAN VIRTUES

Traditionally, the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues combine the four classical cardinal
virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage (or fortitude) with the three theological
virtues of faith, hope, and charity. These were adopted by the Church Fathers as the seven
virtues.
Cardinal virtues
The four cardinal virtues were first defined by 4th-century theologian Ambrose as "temperance,
justice, prudence, and fortitude". These were also named as cardinal virtues by Augustine of
Hippo, and were subsequently adopted by the Catholic Church. They are described as "human
virtues" in the Catholic Catechism.
Prior to Ambrose, these four qualities were identified by the Greek philosopher Plato as the
necessary character traits of a good man, and were discussed by other ancient authors such as
Cicero. They can also be found in the Jewish Book of Wisdom, which states that wisdom
"teaches moderation and prudence, righteousness and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful
than these."
Theological virtues
The theological virtues are those named by Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13: "So faith, hope,
love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love." The word "love" (agape in Greek) is
translated in the King James Bible as "charity".
The traditional understanding of the difference between cardinal and theological virtues is that
the latter are not fully accessible to humans in their natural state without assistance from God.
Thomas Aquinas believed that while the cardinal virtues could be formed through habitual
practice, the theological virtues could only be practiced by divine grace.
In modern times, the capital virtues are commonly identified as the following with their
corresponding opposites (sin): chastity (lust), temperance (gluttony), charity (greed), diligence
(sloth), kindness (envy), patience (wrath), humility (pride).
Virtues in Christianity, to be “virtuous”, in the eyes of the Christian faith means to have a
consistent and unwavering desire to do right. As Christians, we are obligated to cultivate and
apply the virtues in our life.
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Selected Biblical Readings


1. The Tree and its Fruits (Matthew 7:16; Luke 6:43-49)
2. The Mustard Seed (Matt13:31f.; Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18 f.)
3. The Birds of Heaven (Matthew 6:26; Luke 12:24)
4. The Weather Signs (Luke 12:54-56; cf. Matthew 26:2 f.; Mark 8:11-13)
5. The Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21)
6. The Unforgiving Official or The Unmerciful Servant (Matthew 18:23-35
7. The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)
8. The Prodigal Son or The Loving Father (Luke 15:11-32)
9. The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
10. The Great Assize or The Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46)
11. The Thief in the Night and the Faithful Servants (Matthew 24:42-51.; Luke 12:32-48.)
12. The Money in Trust or The Talents (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-27)

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REFERENCE SOURCES ARE FROM THE VIA INTERNET

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