Introduction to Ethics

This module presents

Overview introductory discussions to prepare Learning Outcomes:
students for the study of ethics and At the end of this module,
morality. In this module, the students will be introduced to the the students are expected to:
definition of ethics, discussion of the concepts found in the definition
of ethics such as philosophy and morality, key concepts and • Define Ethics, its
terminologies used in the study of ethics, the foundations, and subject matter and its scope.
requirements of morality that made it possible for the study of ethics • Identify the
to exist. This module also introduces moral dilemmas and its significance of studying this
different types as they are very significant and are used often on the subject
succeeding lessons.
.

Content:
Morality is an inevitable reality in our life. We cannot but encounter moral
questions and issues in our life, since the actions that we do are bound to affect
ourselves and other people either positively or negatively. We inevitably face moral
choices that may benefit or harm other people. Our actions may promote the welfare of
other people, just as they may infringe on their rights and violate their dignity.
Every one of us at one time or another has experienced asking about what the
morally right thing to do is, or more generally about what things should be valued. Some
of our moral questions may be straightforwardly practical (Should we take away a
scholarship grant from an underprivileged student due to a low grade she incurred? Is it
right to deceive a friend to spare him from a certain risk?) or more abstract (What is the
ultimate good? What is justice? Is morality relative?) Some moral questions we have
may concern our own actions (Should I reveal the truth? Should I give to this charity?)
or deal with the actions of others (Was it morally permissible for the President to make
those remarks? Should the government legalize divorce or same sex marriage?) These
questions, which vary in kinds, are the concerns of a particular branch of philosophy
called ethics. This philosophical discipline basically deals with humanity's inquiries
about right conduct, the good life, moral values, and other related issues.

1.1 Definition of Ethics

What is Ethics? The nominal definition of Ethics is “character” or “manners”
because it came from the Greek word ‘ethos’. It is also translated as “characteristic or
habitual ways of doings things” in some other references. But the scholarly definition
of Ethics is this: it is a branch of Philosophy that studies the morality of human
actions.
Let us briefly discuss the three important concepts found in the definition of
Ethics.
 1) Ethics is a branch of Philosophy. In fact, Ethics is also called Moral
Philosophy. Just like other branches of Philosophy, the faculty of reasoning is the
instrument we employ.in Ethics unlike other sciences which uses empirical data in their
study.
Consider this argument: “According to the study of 10 countries that enforce
death penalty, the rate of criminality went down after it has been enforced. Therefore, it
is morally right to enforce death penalty.”
The statement above concluded with a moral claim but its premise is factual
statement. It is established by gathering statistical data to arrive to a factual claim. To
make a moral conclusion that death penalty is right needs more than providing factual
statement. It needs to provide a moral principle. Hence this should be the argument:
“Imposing death penalty will lower the rate of criminality and thus will be beneficial to the
greater number of people. An act is right if it promotes the greater good of the greater
number of people. Therefore, imposing death penalty is right.”

The moral principle- an act is right if it promotes the greater good of the greater
number of people.-added as a premise in the argument is not factual statement. It was
not derived from appealing to research or experiment but it makes the argument
justified morally speaking. It is a moral principle.
Moral principles are products of reasoning. Hence it clarifies that Ethics as
philosophy employs reasoning and not dependent from an empirical data. Although
there is a branch of ethics which is scientific by nature and it is called Descriptive Ethics.
This branch of ethics incorporates the sciences that deal with human conduct and
behavior which is not philosophical by nature. These sciences simply involve describing
how people behave and/ what sorts of moral standards they claim to follow, that’s why it
is called Descriptive ethics and it incorporates research from the fields of anthropology,
psychology, sociology and history as part of the process of understanding what people
do or have believed about moral norms. This kind of ethics is not our subject matter
here for we are concerned of the philosophical approach of ethics. This study does not
simply describe human conduct (descriptive ethics) for it examines what man must do.

2) Ethics is the study of morality. Morality and Ethics are

closely related and sometimes they are being used
interchangeably. For clarification, let us discuss these two
terms. What is morality? When we speak of morality, we
refer to the set of standards a person has about what is right
and wrong. How we judge whether an act is good or bad,
whether someone is virtuous or not, whether we ought to do
this or not, depends largely on these standards. It is for this
reason we can say that people can have different morality,
that is, we can have different standards, views, or
perspectives by which we understand what is right and wrong. Such differences can be
attributed to how our moral standards originate. As a child, each person has been
taught and influenced by his/her family, friends, and elders to accept some actions or
behaviors as right and some as wrong. The church and the school the person went to,
the books he/ she read, the films he/she watched, the organizations he/she joined,
contributed to the formation of one's basic ideas of morality. Since people vary in terms
of the social influences that we have in life, we also differ in the morality we espouse.
Some people think that homosexual marriage and death penalty as immoral while
others think it is morally justified. Our judgments and beliefs on these matters are
influenced by the moral standards that pervade in our life.
Morality, however, pertains not just to a person's standards, but to a particular
society's standards of what is right and wrong. As a social, cultural, or religious group,
people share certain standards of actions or behaviors that guide them in what they
accept or practice. In Islamic societies, Muslims refrain from eating pork; in some
European societies, homosexual relationships are acceptable; in Eskimos communities,
infanticide is permissible. There are social norms that pervade in every society that
serve as the basis of its members to decide on what is right or wrong.
Given this understanding of what morality is, how does Ethics differ from
morality? Although sometimes used to refer to one's set of moral beliefs and practices,
strictly speaking, Ethics is the discipline that examines the moral standards (morality) of
an individual or a society. In a sense, ethics is a study of morality. It looks into the
soundness, reasonableness, and appropriateness of the moral standards a person or a
society espouses. It is one thing to accept or adopt a set of moral standards, it is
another thing to reflect on and examine these standards. Thus, a person engages in
ethics when he/she reflects on the moral standards he/she has imbibed from his/her
family, church, and friends, and asks: "Are these standards reasonable? Are these
practices morally permissible? Are we justified to do this or that?"
As mentioned above, morality begins to form in childhood, which is a time when
we usually unquestioningly and mechanically accept what is taught to us with regard to
what is right and wrong. Thus, it is important that, as we mature in reason, we subject
our moral beliefs and practices to a reflective analysis. We ought to question those
moral standards that we simply acquired in the past without any critical inquiry. We
need to espouse only those standards which are supported by good reasons. It is here
where the enterprise of ethics comes in. Just as what other philosophical disciplines do,
it invites us to exercise self-awareness and self-criticism with regard to our own
fundamental views and beliefs about morality.
In guiding us in evaluating our own moral beliefs and standards, ethics aims to
shed light on the basic questions such as what is right conduct, what principles should
govern our moral decision-making, and what basically is a good life Ethics is not limited
to particular moral actions and practices, but it concerns itself with the whole of moral
ideals and behaviors,"
3) Ethics is the study of human acts.
Lastly, ethics is concerned with human acts. Only the actions of human being are
the concern of Ethics. Human actions are product of human beings who has the faculty
of free will and reason.
 Free will-Without the existence of free will, there can be no study of morality.
Morality is a question of choice and choosing is impossible without freedom. There can
be no study of standard of morality, determining the right or wrong actions, if in the first
place human being has no capacity to choose and act on his moral choice. There is no
point in judging a person for his acts if that person has no control to his body just like a
computer or a robot that does only what is commanded to it and is not even aware that
he did a certain thing. That is why we cannot judge animals for their murderous acts
towards fellow animals or to some people because they do not have rationality and
freedom; they are just governed by their instincts, but not human persons.
Reason-Human reason is imperative in studying human actions. There are
actions that are not bounded by his reason, his capacity to think. Man has also instincts
and some biological functions. These actions of man are called “acts of man” which is
different from human acts. Examples of acts of man is perspiration. This action does not
need deliberation and the faculty of reasoning.

1.2 Branches of Ethics

1. Metaethics also known as analytic Ethics looks into the nature, meaning, scope
and foundations of moral values. The term meta means beyond. This is a branch
of ethics that question what is morality itself. Other fundamental queries n
morality that are part of this ethics are: What is the nature of moral claims? Is
morality objective? Who have moral rights?
2. Normative Ethics is the branch of ethics that studies how man ought to act. As
the name suggests, it examines ethical norms, that is, those guidelines about
what is right, worthwhile, virtuous, or just. It evaluates standards for the rightness
and wrongness of actions and determines a moral course of action.
Its concern is to determine what moral principles and norms ought to
govern our lives. The well-known normative ethical theories will be discussed in
our class. They are: Deontology is the normative theory that takes some acts to
be inherently wrong or right, regardless of the consequences. Consequentialism
is another theory that takes the consequences of an act to be the arbiter whether
an act is good or bad. Virtue theory puts human character or virtue to be the
highest consideration. For virtue theory, it is not enough to perform an action, we
have to know what character does the person possess for doing it. Lastly, natural
law theory states that we can determine the rightness or wrongness of an action
based on human nature. If a certain act violates the purpose for which human
nature is made, then it is wrong. If another act fulfills the function for which
human nature is designed, then it is right. The over-arching theme for normative
ethics then is: how should we actually live our lives?

3. Applied Ethics- its thrust examines specific, controversial moral issues using
philosophical methods, this area of concern in ethics attempts to determine
the ethically correct course of action in specific realms of human action. It
examines certain actions that are considered ethically relevant such as death
penalty, abortion, pornography, euthanasia, suicide, same-sex marriage, legal
ethics, business ethics and professional ethics. Indeed, without applied ethics,
talks about the nature and norms of morality seem shallow. All talks about the
technicalities of moral terms and concepts would have little value if they cannot
 bear to enlighten us in certain matters and issues that call for rational moral
deliberation and action.

1.3 Ethics and other Normative Subjects

Ethics is the study of morality of human acts. But its study does not only
describes human action (descriptive ethics) for its concern is what man must do. The
perennial question is what we ought to do. However, there are also subjects that tell
man what he must do. In this section we will discuss these subjects.

Morality and Etiquette

Etiquette refers to the set of rules of customs that determine the accepted
behaviors in a particular social group. Following these rules makes us show respect and
courtesy to others. In eating our, for example, one should wait until all the people on the
table have been served before he/she starts eating. Of course, there are various areas
in our social life where our courtesy to others is expected. Aside from dining, we have
etiquette at certain occasions such as baptism and funeral, we have etiquette on riding
a public transportation, doing business, and even communicating (thus, we need to also
observe certain rules in the more modern ways of communicating such as sending
emails and posting in social media.) But these so-called rules of etiquette vary from one
culture to another. What may be an accepted behavior in one culture may not be in
another.

Etiquette is different from morality in that the former is concerned with proper
behavior while the latter with right conduct. Etiquette is also more arbitrary and culture
based than morality. To get others' approval of our action, to be thought of well by
people, and to show respect to them, we try to observe common rules of etiquette.
Violating the rules can lead society to consider you ill-mannered, impolite, or even
uncivilized-but not necessarily immoral. Making loud slurping sound when taking
noodles ori your mouth as you chew your food may result to being called impolite or
being perceived as lacking in manner, but they are not basis for claiming that one is
acting immorally.

In the same way, it does not necessarily mean that following what etiquette
demands is acting morally. Shaw (2002) pointed out that scrupulous observance of
rules of etiquette can camouflage moral issues. Before the laws against racial
discrimination were enacted in the America, it was thought that it is bad manners for
blacks and whites to eat together or to sit side by side in a bus. But for one who
believed that such rule of etiquette is rooted in racial discrimination and human
degradation, promoting or simply conforming to such rule does not amount to doing the
moral thing. Such was the point shown by a 42-year-old black woman named Rose
Parks when she was asked to give up her seat for a white man and refused. Though
she may not comply with the social expectation, she stood her ground knowing that she
has not done anything immoral. On the contrary, she believed she was doing the
morally right thing to do as she fought for equality and fairness.
 Though morality and etiquette are not synonymous with each other, there is a
relationship between the two since both concern human action. For example,
disregarding or scoring etiquette can be considered immoral in certain circumstances.
There can be different ways of greeting a person among various cultures. In Japan
people greet each other by bowing, and their bows differ in angle and duration
depending on the person they are greeting. In Oman, men greet each other by pressing
their noses together. In Thailand, people greet each other by pressing their hands
together in the fashion of a prayer and slightly bowing their heads. But as pointed out by
Pojman (1999), once the custom is adopted, the practice takes on the importance of a
moral rule, subsumed underthe wider principle of showing respect to people. In Islamic
societies, standards of modesty call for a woman to cover her body, particularly her
chest. Thus, some Muslim women wear hijab or a scarf that covers the head and neck
and falls below the level of the shoulders to cover the upper chest arca. Muslims who
follow this practice believe that it proteas women's dignity and promote modesty.
Although there is nothing immoral for a not Muslim woman to wear sleeveless blouse or
skimpy clothes, appearing in such an outfit in a Muslim community may well be so
offensive that it is morally insensitive or scandalous

Morality and Law

Like etiquette. law also regulates human conduct, which is why it is often confused with
morality. We ought not to exploit the weak, deceive another person, or take what is not
ours because these acts are morally and legally wrong. The moral imperative not to kill
a person coincides with the legal imperative not to commit murder or homicide.

Law and morality, however, are different. Breaking the law is not always an immoral a
just as following the law is not necessarily doing what is morally right. Let us take an
example to illustrate this point, Suppose your mother suffered a heart attack and she
needed to be brought to the hospital immediately. You took her in your car and rushed
her to the hospital driving at a speed of 100 kph. Although you are prohibited by law to
drive at more than 60 kph on that road, it does not seem morally right for you to follow
the law and drive at that speed limit knowing that doing so will jeopardize the life of your
mother, Driving the car at that speed may break the law, but is morally right.

It can also be said that an action that is legal can be morally wrong. For instance,
abortion may be legal in a particular country, but the question whether it is morally tight
to commit an abortion remains an issue: thus, some of its citizens may stage a
demonstration urging the state to respect the right to life of the unbom. Or when Janet
Napoles, the alleged mastermind behind the Priority Development Assistance Fund
(PDAF) scams, repeatedly invoked the right to self-incrimination, thus evading the
questions and being mum on what she knew about the politicians who were involved in
corruption. It may be legal to remain silent rather than to tell the truth, but such act
jeopardizes truth and justice, and thus is morally questionable. In those cases, it is clear
that certain actions may be in accordance to the law, but not morally right.
Despite their differences, how are law and morality related to each other? We can say
that in many cases, laws are based on morality. We determine what laws to adopt or
enact on the basis of certain moral principles. RA 9211 or the Tobacco Regulation Act
of 2003 which prohibits people from smoking in public places is based on the moral
principle of the greater good for the greater number. Since law is derived from morality,
people tend to equare what is lawful with what is moral. To a significant degree, law
codifies a society's moral ideals and values. But we should not see what is lawful and
what is moral as identical for, as pointed out by Shaw (2002), "law cannot cover the
wide variety of possible individual and group conduct, and in many situations it is too
blunt an instrument to provide moral guidance." (p. 6). Laws may be enacted, amended,
or repealed by legislators to protect their vested interests, and may not really be
beneficial to the general welfare. One may wonder why the Anti-Political Dynasty bill
which aims to remove the concentration of political power within a particular clan has
been proposed in the Philippine Congress several times already, but has not gotten the
nod of the legislarors. It can be surmised that enacting such law will be detrimental to
the interests of those political personalities in the Congress.

Morality and Religion.

Despite their difference, morality is often identified with religion. In various societies
around the world, religion has so much influenced the moral life of the people so as to
be seen as indistinguishable from morality, A Christian forgiving those who offended
him/ her mindful of Christ's commandment of love; a Jew preparing and consuming food
based on the law of Kosher: a Muslim giving alms to the needy according to the fourth
pillar of Islam-these moral practices of most of humanity throughout the ages are
testaments to how morality has become identified with conformity to God's command.

Indeed, religion, like law, is related to morality. But unlike law which is often based on
morality, religion is generally perceived to be the basis of morality. People tend to think
that what is right can be derived from religious beliefs and teachings. Because this line
of thinking is anchored on the idea that God is the source of goodness, living a moral
life, then, is achieved by adhering to God' will, while acting immorally is basically
disobeying God.

We will have a separate topic regarding morality and religion. for now, we must
realize that we are not rational beings if we simply base our judgment of right and wrong
on what our religion dictates. We ought not to think or reason anymore if morality is
dependent on the teachings of the Church. We merely have to know what our religion
says about a certain moral issue and conform to it. But are we leading a rational life if
this is how we view morality? What is our faculty of reason for.
Moral Standards
We can judge manner as good or bad. We can speak of right and wrong from the
perspective of aesthetics There are illegal and legal actions. There are actions that can
be categorized outside morality. But those actions are categorized outside morality.
They are non-moral standards. Now, how are moral standards different from non-moral
standards?

Moral Standards include actions that will greatly affect the well-being of a person.
• Actions that have direct or indirect effects to another person or to one’s self
that will cause either significant benefit and joy or serious injury, sadness, and
anger for a long period of time.

Moral Standards tend to or ought to out-weigh other norms and standards.

• Actions that we can consider good and the morally right thing to do even if for
some other norms those same actions are considered wrong. Such as giving
alms to the poor even if your country deems it illegal because you think it is a
moral thing to do.

Moral Standards come from the immediate judgment of a person and not just
dictated by sources of authority.
• Moral actions can come from an individual’s own perception and
understanding of good and bad even without the guidance the sources of
authority such as the religion, the law, and the culture of a person.

Moral Standards can be agreed universally.

• The idea and judgment regarding what is morally right and wrong does not
only exist in just one specific group of people. There are some actions that
people with different race, religion, culture and belief would agree that are
right or wrong. Killing is universally regarded as wrong and respecting one’s
parents is also universally regarded as good.
Moral Standards are based from impartiality.
• Actions we regard as morally right and morally wrong remains the same
regardless of the persons who do those actions. Being impartial means that
our judgments are not biased and are absolute.

1.4 Moral Dilemmas

In studying ethics, a person delving into the morality
or immorality of a human act will often encounter
dilemmas such as in case analysis whi ch are frequently
encountered in the study of morality. Basically, dilemmas
are instances wherein a person or a group is confronted
by a problem that requires courses of action that are
contradicting with each other and that produce different
results; such as a group of students preparing to make a
research. These students, upon brainstorming, might
argue what to research about considering many factors and might ended up unable to
decide. This is an example of a dilemma, is it a moral one? Or not?

A moral dilemma is almost the same thing with a dilemma, it is also a situation or
an instance wherein a person or a group is presented with a problem and that a difficult
choice has to be made between or among two or more courses of action. The only thing
that might be the only difference of a moral dilemma to a non-moral dilemma is that
among the choices to answer the dilemma, each of them entails violating a moral
principle. In its simplest sense, moral dilemmas are conflicts between moral principles.

For example, a family is in a dilemma where a family member is in a hospital,

incurable, and is attached with life support, without this life support this family member
is sure to die. The family’s resources are nearly running out and might endanger the
whole family as their bill in the hospital is growing. They are left with the question how
far can they go? Will they exhaust their resources even if their patient is incurable or
shall they give up the life support to preserve the well-being of the family? If they give
up the life support, they will transgress the moral principle of “killing/mercy killing is
immoral”. If they don’t give up, they will transgress the principle of “well-being of the
many”.
The common thing between moral and non-moral dilemmas is that they both
have conflicts. A person in a moral dilemma sees that s/he has the reasons to do either
of the courses of action but it is not possible to do both. These are the features of a
moral dilemma: (a) a person is ought to perform a solution to a dilemma; (b) a
person can perform either of the choices to solve the dilemma but cannot do
them both; (c) a person, no matter what course of action s/he chooses, will fulfill
a moral principle and transgress another moral principle at the same time just like
the example above.

1.5 Significance of Studying Ethics

“From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning… the foundation of morality
has been accounted the main problem in the speculative thought…”
-John Stuart mill
• As rational beings, we are capable of acting freely rather than merely driven by
instinct. Our actions are preceded by an understanding of the value of such acts, their
consequence, and their rightness or wrongness. And because of our rationality, we are
inclined to think about and try to understand the basis of what we believe in, or what we
should pursue in life. We do not want to simply depend on what authorities say or what
social conventions and norms prescribe as right and wrong. As Socrates once said,
"The unexamined life is not worth living." In the same spirit of this classical statement, it
can also be said that the morally examined life is truly worth living. It is, indeed,
worthwhile to engage in ethics for it provides us with the opportunity to look into the
reasons and justifications behind our own actions and the actions of others, the bases
and principles of our decision-making, and the goals of our moral life in order to find
clearer answers to the various moral issues and problems that we encounter in life.
 • “The collapse of standards of morality observed in contemporary societies,
which is also the concern of today’s sociologist and social philosophers, prompt the
need to reassess and rebuild the dominant edifices of morality. Building edifices of
morality requires constructing a reasonable a reasonable superstructure of morality.”
We hope though studying this subject, we will elevate our sense of morality, a
generation who has concern of raising our moral standards.
• “Ethics furnishes the norm by which relations
among men (juridical, political, professional, social) are regulated. It shows what such
relations must be, and indicates the reasons that require them to be so. Thus, ethics is
fundamental to the sciences of law, medicine, political economy, sociology, etc. It is, in
consequence of this fact, a very important science.”