ETHICS REVIEWER
In English, adjectives generally precede the
Ethics deals with principles of ethical behavior in
modern society at the level of the person, society, and
in interaction with the environment and other shared
resources. Morality pertains to the standards of right
and wrong that an individual originally picks up from
the community.
The course also teaches students to make moral
decisions by using dominant moral frameworks and
by applying a seven-step moral reasoning model to
analyze and solve moral dilemmas.
RULES AND THEIR IMPORTANCE
• refer to a set of guidelines which have been
put in place in different countries and
communities and have been accepted by all.
• useful tools in guiding and monitoring the
interactions of humans in the society.
• prescribed guide for conduct or action
• help guide actions toward desired results
• when used appropriately, provide a sense of
predictability and consistency for people,
thereby promoting physical, moral, social,
and emotional safety
• specific sets of norms of behavior,
regulations, and laws established on purpose
to regulate the life in the community
• Help people in many aspects of life: enable
people to organize all the processes correctly,
starting from house chores and ending with
more complicated issues as the functioning of
as a whole country.
• Specific modes of behavior that secure a
regulated flow of all processes.
Moral rules assist people in the establishment of
shared values and norms in accordance to which an
honorable member of society can be identified.
RULES ARE DEFINED IN SEVERAL WAYS:
1. Rules are instructions that tell you what you
are allowed to do and what you are not
allowed to do.
Examples:
A. Raise your hand when you want to ask
questions.
B. You are not allowed to go to the canteen
while classes are going on.
2. A rule is a statement telling people what they
should do in order to achieve success or a benefit
of some kind.
Examples:
A. Eat nutritious food to maintain a healthy life,
B. Study your lesson well in order to get high
grades in this Ethics class.
3. Rules are statement that describe the way
things usually happen in a particular situation.
Examples:
A.
noun they modify.
B. In Science, all objects thrown up, go down.
4. Rules tell you the normal state of affairs.
Examples:
A. Schools are established for the education of
the individuals.
B. Policemen have the duties to maintain peace
and order.
5. Rules influence or restrict actions in a way that
is not good for a person.
Examples:
A. It has been found that fear can ruin our lives
and make us ill.
B. Unauthorized persons are not allowed to
enter this room.
6. Rules tell us something that is true or should
happen and then the authority has officially
decided that it is true.
Examples:
A. The court has decided that the respondent is
liable for civil damages.
B. The judge has finally decided that the protest
is in favor of the complainant.
7. Rules are principles or regulations governing
conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, et.
Examples:
A. Fall in line when entering the classroom.
B. Knock before you enter.
RULES
• tend to protect the weaker class in the society
as they might be in a disadvantageous
position if rules are broken
• provide a stable environment and human co-
existence in a society which leads to peace
and development
• peace and order are maintained – an
important ingredient for society’s
development
As a way of maintaining these rules, many
societies have adopted and changed them into
law. These assure that no rules will be broken. If
one violates the rule, a corresponding
punishment is imposed.
RULES: CONCRETE IMPORTANCE
1. Rules organize relations between individuals;
2. Rules make it clear what is right to do/follow
in a society and what are wrong to refrain
from;
3. Rules provide opportunity to achieve
personal and societal goals;
4. Rules regulate various social institutions to
fulfill their integral roles for the common
welfare.
At the heart of ethics is a concern about something 2. DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS
or someone other than ourselves and our own  Asks what do people think is moral
desires and self-interest.  Does not actually claim the things are right or
ETHICS wrong, but simply studies how individuals or
is concerned with other people’s interests, with the societies define their morals
interests of society, with God’s interests, with  Defines morals in terms of cultural or
“ultimate goods” and so on. personal significance
Ethics (moral philosophy) EXAMPLE:
• The scientific study of moral judgments 1. turning in a lost wallet is moral, not judged as
• The discipline concerned with what is right or wrong
morally good and bad, right or wrong.
• Any system or theory of moral values or 3. META-ETHICS
principles  Concerns with the theoretical meaning and
The subject of Ethics reference of many propositions, and how
• Consists of the fundamental issues of their truth values (if any) can be determined.
practical decision making and its major  Answers the questions: What is morality?
concerns include the nature of ultimate value What is justice? Is there truth? How can I
and the standards by which human actions justify my belief as better than the beliefs
can be judged right or wrong held by others?
• System of moral principles 4. APPLIED ETHICS
• Greek word “ethos” – custom, habit,  Concerns with what a person is obligated (or
character or disposition; characteristic way of permitted) to do in a special situation or a
doing things particular domain of action
• Also about the goodness of individuals and  Answers the question: Should we lie to help a
what it means to live a good life. friend or co-worker?
• Practical science which is meant to teach how
human ought to leave MORAL EXPERIENCE
IMPERATIVE OF ETHICS • Any encounter wherein a person understands
“SINE QUA NON” OF ETHICS – (QUITO, 2008) that the values he or she believes to be
• Human Freedom important are either realized or thwarted
• Existence of God (Hunt & Carnevale, 2011).
• Immortality of Souls • You take actions based on your moral
• Truthfulness/honesty standards.
• Loyalty • Example: When you decide to give a poor
• Respect person some money because you feel that it is
• Fairness the right thing to do.
• Integrity
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Ethics ensures a generally agreed standard of
• Truthfulness/honesty work-related behavior that empowers
• Loyalty professionals to foster moral values through their
• Respect work.
• Fairness • Ethics gives a sense of justification in one’s
• Integrity judgment and helps ensure the decisions at
BRANCHES OF ETHICS work are not made based on purely
1. NORMATIVE ETHICS subjective factors.
• Actions are judged by their merits, allowing • Without the study of ethics, the practice of
societies to develop codes of conduct for one’s profession will fall prey to vastly
behavior conflicting individual interpretations.
• Answers the question: What we ought to do?
EXAMPLES: IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS (Ariola, 2018)
1. Golden rule 1. It satisfies basic human needs.
2. Helping someone who is lost 2. It creates credibility.
3. Finding a wallet and turning it in to the lost 3. It unites people and leaders.
and found 4. It improves decision-making.
5. It brings long term gains.
6. It secures the society.
WHY STUDY ETHICS? (Leano & Gubia-on,
2018)
1. Your understanding of moral problems will
be widened.
2. Your critical faculties will be trained.
3. You will understand better what your
conscience is, how you acquired it, how far
you are likely to be able to trust to its
deliverances with safety, and how you can
improve it and make it more intelligent.
4. You are proffered some considerations, from
the standpoints of self-realizations, self-
sacrifice, and service, that ought to help you
in making decisions.
WHY STUDY ETHICS? (Panza & Potthast, cited
in Palean et. Al., 2019)
1. Ethics allows you to live an authentic and
meaningful life.
2. Ethics makes you successful.
3. Ethics allows you to cultivate inner peace.
4. Ethics provides for a stable society.
5. Ethics may help out in the afterlife.
ETHICS OR MORAL
ETHICS AND MORAL
• When Ethics represents the judgment of right
and wrong, Morality helps support it by
refinements.
• Ethics studies behavior, and Morality
provides the practical guidance of that
behavior.
• Both terms are used to indicate a fine line
between what activities should be considered
good and what should be considered bad.
• Both ethics and morality work side by side to
make the learning of good activities faster.
• Both concepts help any individual to be a
better person.
• Both terms are interconnected in the way that
Morality helps keep alive the essence of ethics
and its value.
Generally, the term ethics and morality are
used interchangeably, although few different
communities (academic, legal, religious, for
example) will occasionally make a distinction
(Agdalpen & Francisco, 2018).
PPT2
MORALITY - Morality can be defined as the
standards that an individual or a group has about
what is right and wrong, or good and evil.
• Morality is not imposed from outside, but
innate and can even be unconscious.
MORAL AGENT - “We are capable of making
judgments about our own and other people’s
behavior, and have the capacity consciously to
change the way we behave and society as a whole.”
(Gulberg, 2011)
MAN AS MORAL AGENT
• A moral agent is a being that is “capable of
acting with reference to right and wrong.”
• A moral agent is anything that can be held
responsible for behavior or decisions.
• “It is moral agents who have rights and
responsibilities, because it is moral agents
whom we take to have choices and the power
to choose.”
• A moral agent is an intelligent being who has
the power of choosing, and scope to act
according to his choice; one to whom the
Supreme Governor has given a cognizable
law, with its proper sanction, by which to
regulate his volitions and actions, and who is
placed in circumstances which present no
physical obstruction, either to obedience or
disobedience.
• Being a moral agent means that they can be
held responsible for their decisions and
behaviors, whether they are good or bad.
• A moral agent must have “self-
consciousness, memory, moral principles,
other values, and the reasoning faculty,
which allows him to devise plans for
achieving his objectives, to weigh
alternatives, and so on”.
KEY FEATURES OF MORALITY
1. People experience a sense of moral obligation and
accountability.
2. Moral values and moral absolutes exist.
Moral values: actions like rape, torture, and child
abuse are not just socially unacceptable behavior but
are moral abominations; Moral absolutes: love and
respect are truly good – truths that exist and apply to
everyone.
3. Moral law does exist.
4. Moral law is known to humans (Law of Nature).
5. Morality is objective.
Examples: genocide, murder of babies for feast, rape
6. Moral judgments must be supported by reasons.
ARISTOTLE AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
• the first to discuss moral responsibility;
stated that it is “sometimes appropriate to
respond to an agent with praise or blame on
the basis of his/her actions and/or
dispositional traits of character”
• discusses that “only certain kind of agent
qualifies as a moral agent and is thus properly
subject to ascriptions of responsibility,
namely, one who possesses a capacity for
decision”
• “a decision is a particular kind of desire
resulting from deliberation, one that
expresses the agent’s conception of what is
good”
MORAL AND NON-MORAL STANDARDS
MORAL STANDARDS
• Those moral actions which are within the
moral sphere and are thus objects of moral
judgments (Ariola, 2018).
• These are set of norms in society in accord
to moral principles that supposed to
determine about the kind of actions people
believe are morally right and deter them from
doing what is considered as wrong (Agdalpen
& Francisco, 2018).
• Those laws or commands that allow specific
actions to be committed or those that
disallow actions contrary to these norms.
• Precepts to follow based on mores or
traditional norms and practices that allow
actions as good in specific time and place.
• Serve as our compass, a sort of light in our
path, keeping us on our toes, thus, allowing us
to check if our actions behooves ethical and
moral ideals.
• Ethical principles that we live by and
believe; important blueprints of our behavior,
which we abide by daily; and are influenced
by our society, or by certain ethical universals
(Palean, et.al, 2019).
Examples:
1. Pirating movies from the internet.
2. Lying to save one’s dignity.
3. Killing people.
4. Loving your neighbor.
NON-MORAL STANDARDS
• Those actions devoid of moral quality and
thus excluded from the scope of moral
judgment (Ariola, 2018).
• Those unwanted principles, which are in
opposition to everything that we are expected
to be and do; are influenced largely by the
constructs prescribed in our society
(Palean et.al, 2019).
• Rules that are unrelated to moral or
ethical considerations; either these
standards are not necessarily linked to
morality or by nature lack ethical sense.
Examples:
1. Rules of etiquette
2. Fashion standards
3. Rules in games
4. House rules
Six Characteristics of Moral Standards which
Further differentiate them from non-moral
standards (Velasquez, 2012)
1. Moral standards involve serious wrongs or
significant benefits.
Moral standards deal with matters which can
seriously impact, that is, injure or benefit human
beings. It is not the case with many non-moral
standards. For instance, following or violating
some basketball rules may matter in basketball
games but does not necessarily affect one’s life or
well-being.
Other examples:
1. lying, stealing, and killing (hurt people)
2. treating people with respect and kindness
(uplifts people)
2. Moral standards ought to be preferred to other
values.
Moral standards have overriding character or
hegemonic authority. If a moral standard states
that a person has the moral obligation to do
something, then he/she is supposed to do that
even if conflicts with other non-moral standards,
and even with self-interest.
Example:
1. Because trust is important to you than revenge,
you refuse to expose your friend’s terrible secret
even though she offended you.
• Moral standards are not the only rules or
principles in society, but they take
precedence over other considerations,
including aesthetic, prudential, and even legal
ones.
Examples:
• A person may be aesthetically justified in
leaving behind his family in order to devote
his life to painting, but morally, all things
considered, he/she probably was not
justified.
• It may be prudent to lie to save one’s dignity,
but it probably is morally wrong to do so.
• When a particular law becomes seriously
immoral, it may be people’s moral duty to
exercise civil disobedience.
3. Moral standards are not established by
authority figures.
Moral standards are not invented, formed or
generated by authoritative bodies or persons
such as nations’ legislative bodies. Ideally instead,
these values ought to be considered in the
process of making laws. In principle therefore,
moral standards cannot be changed nor nullified
by the decisions of particular authoritative body.
Moral standards do not depend on any
external authority but in how a person perceives
the reasonableness of the action.
Example:
• You will not copy your classmate’s answers
during the exam not because your teacher
will fail you if you do, but because you
personally believe cheating is wrong and
demeaning to you as a student.
4. Moral standards have the trait of
universalizability.
Moral principles must apply to all who are in
the relevantly similar situation. When you truly
believe an act is wrong, you also will not agree or
consent when other people commit what you
consider a wrongful act. If you believe an action is
morally right, then you will also support other
people doing such acts.
Examples:
1. Golden rule.
2. You believe lying is wrong, therefore you will
also not agree when someone is not telling
the truth.
3. You tend to trust the person whom you know
as someone who is true to his/her word.
5. Moral standards are based on impartial
considerations.
Impartiality is usually depicted as being free
of bias or prejudice. Impartiality in morality
requires that we will equal and/or adequate
consideration to the interests of all concerned
parties.
Moral standards are based on objectivity.
This means what you consider as right or wrong
does not depend on whether the action advances
the interest of a particular person or group, but
your action depends on a universal standpoint
where everyone’s interest is counted as equal.
6. Moral standards are associated with special
emotions and vocabulary.
This feature is used to evaluate behavior, to
assign praise and blame and to produce feelings
of satisfaction or of guilt.
Example:
If a person violates a moral standard by telling a
lie even to fulfill a special purpose, it is not
 surprising if he/she starts feeling guilty or being possible moral requirements, the person fails on
ashamed of his behavior afterwards. others.” – Benjamin Labastin
On the contrary, no much guilt is felt if one goes
against the current fashion trend.
Other Example:
When you go against your moral standards,
you will feel guilty, remorseful, or ashamed. You
may describe your behavior as immoral or sinful.
If you see other people against your moral
standards, you feel indignant or perhaps
disgusted with that person.
MORAL DILEMMA is a situation where:
• You are presented with two or more actions,
all of which you have the ability to perform.
• There are moral reasons for you to choose
each of the actions.
• You cannot perform all of the actions and
have to choose which action, or actions when
there are three or more choices to perform.
• A difficult situation in which an individual is
confronted to choose between two or more
alternative actions, neither of which resolves
the situation in a morally acceptable manner.
• Something or someone will suffer no matter
what choice you make.
• For example: Gina will suffer if you will tell
the truth and you will lose your friendship.
But if you don’t tell the truth, you will be a liar
and possibly a lawbreaker, and Kyla will get
arrested for a crime she did not commit.
Three conditions that must be present in moral
dilemmas:
• The person or the agent of moral action is
obliged to make a decision about which
course of action is better.
• There must be different courses of action to
choose from.
• No matter what course of action is taken,
some moral principles are always
compromised.
In moral dilemmas, the moral agent “seems to have
fated to commit something wrong, which implies that
she is bound to morally fail because in one way or
another, she will fail to do something which she
ought to do. In other words, by choosing one of the