The Need to Study Ethics

• Ethics makes clear to us why one act is better than the other.
• Ethics contributes to an orderly social life by providing humanity some basis for agreement and
understanding some principles or rules of procedure.
• Moral conduct and ethical systems both past and of the present, must be intelligibly appraised and
criticized.
• Ethics seeks to point out to men the true values of life.

Assumptions of Ethics
• Man is a Rational Being
• Man as Free

Definition of Ethics
Etymological: The word ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” ,meaning : custom, a habitual way of
acting character, a meaning that the Latin terms “mos” , “moris” also connote. Among the Greeks , “ethics”
meant what concerns human conduct/human action.
• Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. - “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and
with moral duty and obligation.”
• Chambers Encyclopedic English Dictionary - “the study or science of morals”
• An ethics of care should encompass larger systems of relationship leading to a “communitarian ethic”.
• An ethics of care provides a corrective to other ethical principles that emphasize impartiality and
universality.
• used synonymously with “morality” but it is not quite the same with morality.
• The term "ethics" originates from the Greek word "ethos," meaning customs or character.
• "Ethics" and "morals" are often used interchangeably, both referring to the values and proper ways of
living within a community.
• Different standards exist within a community for what is considered "good," "right," or proper.
• A general idea of morality from the perspective of the relationship between reli-gious faith and morality.
• Framework for moral reasoning and the minimum requirement for moral action.
• Ethics is a branch of philosophy (moral philosophy) that examines the moral standards of an individual or
society, and asking how these standards apply to our lives and whether these are reasonable or
unreasonable.
• “Morality” refers to the standards that an individual or group has about what is right and wrong conduct,
good and evil, and the values embedded, fostered or pursued in the act.
• “Moral standards include the norms we have about the kinds of actions we believe are morally right and
wrong as well as the values we place on the kinds of objects we believe are morally good and morally
bad.” (Velasquez, Business Ethics, p. 9)

Classification of Human Acts

• Moral or Ethical Acts: These are human acts that observe or conforms to the standards or norms of
morality.
• Immoral or unethical Acts: These are human acts that violate or deviate from the standards or norms of
morality.
o Components of Moral Acts
▪ Intention: or motive of the act.
▪ The means of the act: this is the act, object or person employed to carry out the intent of
the act.
▪ The end: The intent of the act is always assumed to be directed towards the desired end
or perceived good.
• Human Will: Moral acts stem from the human will that controls or influences the internal and external
actions of man. The will stirs a person to act or hampers him from acting. It colors the motives for his
 engaging or disengaging in a certain action. Living against all odds, hoping in he midst of hopelessness,
finding meaning in great loss, selfless sacrifice for others-these are just few cases that demonstrate the
power of the will to motivate the human soul for goodness, hope and determination or the reverse. It is
this art of the soul that affects the freedom and reasoning of the individual The will is the agency of
choice. The will may prompt reason to overpower passion or on the other extreme, arouse passion and
allow it to overrun reason. As such, the will is a potential force for both good and evil. The strength and
weakness of the will determines the strength and weakness of a person’s character. Thus, the will affects
one’s action, and that therefore, it must be brought closer to reason and to the proper sense of morality
and goodness. It is morality which directs the will to its proper choice through the instruction of the moral
sense which is borne out of human experience.

Classification of Ethics / Basic Concepts of Ethics (?)

Values
• Values are qualities that are of worth, of importance.
• “Moral values can usually be expressed as statements describing objects or features of objects that have
worth, such as ‘Honesty is good,” “Injustice is bad.” (Velasquez, p. 9)
• Max Scheler: values are objects of our intentional feeling.
• “values are caught, not taught”
• Question: are values objective or subjective? Whether value reposes in the object or is a matter of how
we feel towards it. Scheler: values are objective, a priority.

Good And Evil

• Good and evil in ethics are to be distinguished from physical/natural good or evil, because they
presuppose freedom and responsibility.
• Scheler: good and evil are moral values. Positive: good. Negative: evil.

Freedom
• Freedom and responsibility are correlatives.
• Two meanings of freedom and responsibility:
o Free choice (horizontal freedom) and accountability
o Fundamental option (vertical freedom) and response-ability.

Freedom Of Choice
• I am the source of my action. • Choice of goods
• I am free from external coercion
•

Responsibility
• Because I am the source of my action, I am accountable or answerable for it.
• This does not mean though that my action is a responsible one.

Fundamental Option
• Refers to the direction of my choices • Option of love: higher values. Option of
• Towards values that form a hierarchy egoism: lower values
• Freedom from internal constraints.

Response-Ability
• The ability to give a response that meet the • Answers the call of higher values.
objective demands of the situation • I become a responsible person.

Dimensions of Ethics (Descriptive VS Prescriptive)

• Descriptive (Comparative): Largely a concern of cultural anthropologists and sociologists. Its task is to
describe how some person, members of a culture or society address all sorts of moral issues, what
customs they have, and so, how they are accustomed to behave.
• Met-ethics: Concerns itself with the meanings of moral terms: like good and bad, right and wrong, duties
and rights, etc. Hence the concern is with the understanding of the use of these terms, their logical forms
and the objects to which they refer. Sometimes the concern of meta-ethicist is even more fundamental:
What is the possibility of moral philosophy.
• Normative (Prescriptive): Ethics is normative, not in the way that logic is, namely. With regard to the
correctness of our thinking, but with regard to the goodness of our living, the right orientation of our
existence. It is a practical science, not simply because it treats human action, but also because it aims at
guiding this. Moralists are not content to describe human conduct: they intend to judge and rectify it.
They propose rules and give warning, they provide counsels and issue precepts, so as to make clear to
men the path of right living and to help them walk upon it.
o Normative can be understood in two ways:
▪ Teleological (Telos) End, Goal, Fulfillment, Realization. It puts more emphasis on
morality as the attainment of man’s end, fulfillment and happiness. One can have in
mind the art of living, the technique for acquiring happiness. The terms good and bad
has the teleological connotation of that which is in conformity or not with the
goal.Therefore good and bad signify fulfillment completion, perfection or not.
▪ Deontological: (Deon)They put more stress on the aspect of moral duty and obligation. It
can be understood as the science which is concerned what is worthy of a Human Being.
To liver rightly will not then be the equivalent of: to live happily, but: to live as one should.
Thus, right and wrong has a deontological implications which refer to morally binding
and obligatory. Therefore, the right action is that which we ought to do or ought to have
done, the wrong action that which we ought to refrain from or ought to have refrained
from doing.

Definition of Moral Dilemma

• Ethics entails a reflective distance to critically examine standards (WHAT)
o It looks at values beneath these moral standards (What or Why) e.g. We take for granted that we
should marry in church. But have we asked why? If we do, this will affect our attitude to divorce,
etc. Value: lifelong commitment?
• It looks at the agent who makes the moral decision: Mature? Level of moral development; (WHO)
• It is about the moral decision making process (HOW)
• Ethics is not about theoretical knowledge but application of that knowledge, transforming it to action in
everyday life.

Dilemmas
• Signaled by being “bothered”- nababagabag
• Why am I bothered?
• When did you last have that “bothered” feeling?
• Dilemmas are experiences where an agent is confused about the right decision to make because there
are several competing values that are seemingly equally important and urgent.
• Feelings and Dilemmas
o Strong feelings signal the presence of a dilemma.
o But many people don not always “catch” the dilemma behind the feeling.
o One can be conditioned to be indifferent so that what used to be NAKAKABAGABAG is no longer
a dilemma.
• Dilemmas are not about competing solutions
o We normally handle the “pagkabagabag” by immediately offering solutions instead of
articulating the competing values or issues. e.g. Should I cheat or not cheat?
Elements of Moral Dimension
• Action: It is the moving of oneself and taking concrete means in view of the goal or end, which is not yet
but which somehow ought to be. It requires man to take the means and to set into motion a course of
events, starting from himself and moving into the world, toward what ought to be , toward some future
state of being, which eventually includes himself and the world. Tis moral end or goal needs to be made
m0ore precise, but in any case, morality is primarily man taking up action, doing something, realizing
something which ought to be.
• Freedom: Morality requires man to act , to realize what he must be and what his very being ought to be.
Morality therefore, presupposes freedom of action. Freedom of choiceof the means, Freedom of choice
of intermediate goals, Freedom to follow or not man’s ultimate end, the freedom to determine onself to
be truly he is.
• Judgment: Action can be judge as good or bad; right or wrong, which can be classified as the norms of
morality, which refers to some ideal vision of man, an ideal stage or perfection of man, which serves as
the ultimate goal and norm. In this light, the good seems to be the kind of ultimate norm, the measure of
the ultimate meaning and worth of man’s existence. ( Norms: Technical, societal, Aesthetic,
Ethical/Moral)
• Universality: The law of universality: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will
that it should become a universal law, that is: Action is moral in so far as one can say that any man in
one’s place should act in the same way. Morality therefore, of its very nature, is infinitely open and
inclusive of any and every human person, placing man in the context of the community of all fellow
human beings. For this reason, equality and justice are the direct corollaries of moral experience.
• Obligation: The state of being bound or required to do or not to do, a categorical imperative. In this sense,
the good is universally binding and obligatory on man so that his being is an “ought-to-be” and an “ought
to act” in view of his very being. That is the “good”.

Objects of Ethics
• Physical: The doer of the act.
• Non Physical: The act done by doer. Human acts- are said to be the formal objects of ethics because they
have moral value.
o Acts of man: Involuntary natural acts, Voluntary natural acts, Amoral and Neutral Acts.