Subject of Human Speculation – Good life and how to live it

Highlight: Right and Wrong way of doing actions into spending like.

Are there pattern, models and ideals of the good life?

Awaken Intelligence – Could fashion a science of good life.

Nonscientific to Scientific transition – Began in Western Culture, Greeks.

6th century BC- reduced primitive speculations to some sort of order or system and integrated
them into the general body of wisdom called Philosophy

Year of Sophists and Socrates- Turn their insatiable curiosity on themselves, on human life
and society.

NOMINAL DEFINITION - Ethics- examination of all human conduct and is a part of Philosophy,
it can also be called moral philosophy. It is the study of human customs. It is the study of right
and wrong, good and evil, and human conduct. A necessary study with a large and
legitimate field of inquiry.

REAL DEFINITION – ethics is a science (systematic knowdlegde) and art (deals with
quality of human conduct)

The word "ethics" is derived from the Greek word ethos (character), and from the Latin
word mores (customs). Together, they combine to define how individuals choose to interact
with one another

Ethos – means a man’s character

Custom – Mos (latin; plural Mores), the equivalent of the Greek ethos. Permanent type :
Character

Custom –a product of habit

Custom may be morals and manners

From Mos – we can derive moral and morality

Ethics is a science and art, dealing with quality conduct – consist of moral actions that a man
opt to do an opt not do –

Behavior – actions that may (or may not do) have no moral significance

Conscience – decides whether your actions are good or bad

When there is equality of act (legal or illegal) – corresponds whether the quality if good or bad

Everyone has a personal moral standard judge whether an action is good or bad

Begins – as skeptical unless investigation is done

Ethics deals with: value judgements and the validity of all value judgements are questions.

Process Before attempting solution:

1. Identify The commonly held answer to know what is being criticized

2. Identify the recent objections with the subsititues offered
3. Identify an intermediate position that would merge it with other science in such a way that it
would lose its identity and autonomy.

Points considered:

1. What is ethics as commonly understood?

2. What of the emotive theory and allied views?
3. Is a purely philosophical ethics possible?
4. Suggested resolution of the problem.

ETHICS AS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD (Subject matter and Point of View)

HUMAN CONDUCT(actions taken collectively)

Three kinds of acts in ethics:

1. Those that a man ought to do

2. Those that he ought not to do
3. Those that he may either do or not do

Philosophy – cannot afford to overlook a fact of such significance but must investigate it and determine
all that it entails.

Oughtness – the aspect or point of view from which ethics studies human conduct, its rightness or
wrongness.

Note: Ethics is not interested in what a man does, except to compare it with what he ought to do.

Actions are
Right – ought to do
 Wrong – ought not to do
Have moral significance- (actions considered as legal(morality) or illegal)
Behavior – may or may not do
Distinctive feature of ethics – Investigation of the ought
Anthropology
Studies the origin and
development of human customs,
without passing any judgment on
their moral rightness or wrongness.
Testifies to the existence of moral
notions
Psychology
Studies how man actually does
behave
Sociology, economics and political
science
Deals with man’s actual social,
economic and political institutions,
what they are and how they
function
Sociology – traces the action, does
not pass on judgement.
Law
Deals only with the external acts
ETHICS
Borrows the existence of
moral notions from
anthropology, but goes on to
criticize the moral value of
these concepts and customs
Studies how he ought to
behave.
Dependent of psychology for
much information on how
the human mind works
Ethics determines what they
ought to be in terms of
human rights and duties.
Always preserve the
distinctive point of view, the
ought
Ethics makes judgement
Internal acts of the will and
the tribunal of conscience
BOTH
Deals with human customs on
various levels of culture and
civilization
Deals with human behavior with
the abilities and acts of man
Passes on from how man does act
to how he ought to act
Study man’s social life
Hard and fast line between them
and ethics would render all four
studies impractical
Remedy the 3 involves an
application of ethics.
Combination can be calls social,
economic or political philosophy.
Both deal with the ought but civil
and moral law do not always
and positive legality, perfectly corresponds

Philosophy of law- the study of

Actual punishment Conscience how laws ought to be framed an
interpreted, can be called
Requires external act Morality – Considers internal jurisprudence

Legal-Moral
Illegal-Immoral

Law reinforces what is a morally

in desirable action

Guilty – if voluntarily (if there is an interplay of will and intellect)

ETHICS AS SCIENCE AND ART

Positivism – by Auguste Comte

eliminates all metaphysics philosophy and restricts scientific knowledge to facts and relations
between fast

- Scientific method is one of the exact mathematical measurement, but virtue and vice can never
be measure in this way.
- Science proceeds by prediction based on Hypothesis and followed by experimental verification
but human conduct, especially if regarded as free, is too unpredictable
- Science deal with facts and the laws governing them
- Engages in the hardheaded pursuit of wresting from nature her secrets

Ethics

- Deals with opinions only on what ought to be and never wholly is

- Is lost in a nebulous quest for ever-beckoning yet ever escaping ideals and aspirations/

Note: If science is so defined as to apply to the physical and experimental sciences only, then ethics will
not be a science.
Correlation: Science as the certain knowledge of things in their causes in traditional among
philosophers; ethics preeminently fulfills this definition because it studies the purpose or final cause of
human life, the principles and laws governing the use of means to this and, and like science, tries to
establish its conclusions with demonstrative thoroughness.

Ethics and science will have its disputed points, but tese will be shown to revolve around a solid core of
the established trith.

There is a need of science of the ought, for the ought itself is a fact demanding explanation wuite
insistenly as the physical universe.

Ethics as a science discovers, explains and demonstrates the rules of conduct. As an art in a very broad
sense of this term, it applies these rules to the conduct of an individual man and results in the good life
actually lived.

Note: the art of ethics must be practiced by each person for himself, as the shaper of his destiny and the
sculptor of his soul.

Ethics can only give him the principles and so comes under the heading of science.

Sciences are either theoretical or practical. Theoretical if their purpose is the mere contemplation of
truth. Practical if they are also directed to action.

Practical Science- Ethics being directed to enable a man to act and live rightly

ETHICS AND METAETHICS

Normative Ethics - The setting up of a code of rules for moral living

Meta-Ethics – the critical examination of concepts, judgement and reasoning processes used in ethics.

Meta (Greek) – beyond

- Ethic’s own reflection on itself where ethics, passing beyond itself and turning back to take a
critical look at itself, judges its own worth as a science
- Necessary for ethics to become introspective and self-conscious.
- Concern itself with logic and language since these are the means by which ethical knowledge is
developed and expressed.

POSSIBILITY OF A SCIENCE OF ETHICS

Davude Hume ends his Inquiry concerning human understanding with his theoretica outburst (Sophistry
the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving., and illusion0
Logical Positivisim – began with Vienna Circle in the early 1920’s (empiricism and pragmatism had
prepared for it a congeial home)

- Analyzes the meaning of proposition

Meaningful Kinds of statements

- Verifiable statements of fact – verified by experience

 Can contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge

- Tautologous/ identity statements - a statement that is necessarily true under any

interpretation and cannot be denied without introducing logical inconsistencies
- true but impractical
- -predicate is essentially part of the subject
Domain is that of pure logic and pure mathematics

Noted: Metaphysical assertions do not belong to either class and must be discarded as
neither true nor false, but meaningless.

Value judgements – are neither tautologies nor statements of fact but are NORMATIVE , laying
down rules, expressing the ought. They are not cognitive but EMOTIVE, WISHES, WCHOTATIONS
OR COMMANDS, but not general propositions.

Grammatical form – indicative, they are veiled optatives and imperatives.

Analytics Philosophy – continues the same attitude in a more conciliatory form

- Suites our purpose better to look at the older logical positivism which represents this position
in its uncompromising purity.

Fundamental ethical concepts are unanalyzable because they are pseudo-concepts.

- The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content.

Emotive statement – used to express feelings about certain objects but not to make any assertion about
them. (based from subjective decision)

Ethical statement – Objective

NOTE: Ethical terms do not serve only to express feeling. They are calculated also to arouse feeling, ans
so to stimulate action.
Ethical judgement are used to influence action in others

- Developed by CL Stevenson – he who lays stress on ethical disagreements and makes extensive
use of the persuasive definition
- > He objects to calling ethical judgements MEANINGLESS or NEITHER TRUE NOR FALSE
- > Thinks that their only truth is in the descriptive part, that the speaker has such or such an
attitude, not in the emotive part, that this attitude Is branded good or bad, right or wrong. The
latter part alone is the concern of ethics, which is therefore but a way of persuading others to
agree with me or at least to tolerate my view.

Persuasive arguments of the Emotive theory

1. Philosophers, though by no means the only offenders, have engaged in much abstract and
apparently meaningless jargon. They can be dazzled with word, which often appear to represent
some thing, but which actually refer to nothing but other word clusters equally detached from
reality. Ethical as well as other statements can suffer from this disease.
2. The analysis of every statement, both in itself ans in its connection with other statements, is a
needed corrective for man’s tendency to disguise emptiness of thought

Normative Ethics Meta(beyond) ethics

Code of conducts Examines moral judgement of code of ethics etc.
There is a prescription and enumeration of actions
you ought to do and not to do Being analytical
We extend judgement
Ex. 10 commandments
Asking “why”

Religious Ethics
We are taught and told Our way of discovering and deciding whether our
actions are good or bad because we are rational
human beings.
Conduct may be
voluntary (human acts) – there is an interplay of will and intellect, we are the master of our actions

- It has a corresponding responsibility or liability

- We are aware and we know the act (we will the act)
- Has full capacity

Psychological Background (elements)

- Liking – you perceive the act as good. There is something good

- Desire – when the act does something good for you
- Intention – There is a possibility of attaining your desire.
- Deliberation – You weigh the pros and cons of your intended desire. In all acts, there are always
positive and negative points, requires reflexive knowledge. You must be aware that you are
deliberating.
- Practical judgement – Last practical judgement or rendering decision
1. Consent – approval to the judgement of the intellect, if the intellect decides, present if there
is one but no choice, approval to the judgement of the intellect
2. Choice – preference of one over the other – implies that there are 2 or more choices,
preferring one without the other
THERE CANNOT BE CHOICE WITHOUT CONSENT
- Command – If only willingness to do the act, there is no execution – directing the parts of the
body to execute the act. A voluntary act is a commanded act
- Enjoyment- satisfaction once you have completed the act

Freedom adds to the voluntariness actions

there is Determinism – something that stops you from being truly free

1. Fatalism – determined by faith and destiny (man is a master of his own destiny)
2. Theological determinism – determined by God or influenced by God (god id omniscient)
3. Hard determinism - Physical laws or laws of nature, rigid application of
4. Indeterminism – free act, none is liable
5. Self determinism – attempt to compromise hard determinism. Externally, we are determined by
laws of nature, internally we are.
6. Self determinism – ( violently reacting) Compromise indeterminism – determined by own
responsibility/ actions

involuntary (acts of man) – there is a presence of ignorance and compulsion

- Consent is not freely given

- Insanity
- Forced
- One cannot be held liable
 - Caught in the act

Levels of intentions in voluntary actions

1. Actual Intention
- While doing the act, you are also aware of you intention

2. Virtual Intention
- Act is influenced by prior intention

3. Habitual Intention
- Made a prior intention but the action is not influenced by the intention
- No intention at all

4. Interpretative Intention
- Intention was made after the act

Full knowledge and Full Consent = Full Responsibility

Responsibility correspond to the certain degree of knowledge and consent one has

Factors that will modify Responsibility and Knowledge

Modifiers of Responsibility –

1. Ignorance
- Lack of knowledge
- Invincible ignorance – lack of knowledge that cannot be overcome (you don’t know that you
don’t know ; even if you know that you do not know but you don’t have the means of
overcoming the ignorance)

- Vincible Ignorance – lack of knowledge that can be overcome

- Affected Ignorance – You are not ignorant but you are making ignorance as an excuse

2. Passion
- Antecedent passion – before the will is acted , you are already carried by emotion, no amount of
deliberation, simultaneously overwhelmed by emotions
- Consequent Passion – After an action you Nurturing feeling, there is already planning , there is
already premeditation (More responsibility)

-
3. Fear
- Doing it from fear (mitigate responsibility)

4. Force – mitigate responsibility

5. Habit – Constant weigh of acting obtained by the repetition of the same act

Anything that will push us to do an act

Principle of Double effect – states that it is morally justifiable despite of bad consequences

Conditions:

1. The act to be done must be good in itself or at least indifferent (neither good nor bad)
2. The good intended must not be obtained by means of the evil effect
3. The evil effect must not be intended for itself but only permitted
4. There must be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect.

We are held responsible if

1. Occasion of evil- we intend his evil act as an end or as means

2. Cooperation in evil
a. Material cooperation – Cooperated in the execution of the act but without prior knowledge
of the plan
b. Formal cooperation – Full knowledge of the evil design
CONSCIENCE