Morality refers to set of standards an
individual person or society uses to judge
whether an act is good or bad
Ethics aka moral philosophy
Refers to moral beliefs and practices
3 general areas of ethics
1. metaethics
- looks into nature, meaning, scope,
and foundations of moral values,
beliefs, and jusdgement.
- concerned with what morality itself
is.
- (meta = above/beyond)
2. Normative ethics
- concerned with formulation of
moral standards, rules, or principles
to distinguish right from wrong
conduct.
3. Applied ethics
- determines the moral permissibility
of actions and practices in specific
areas
- Areas: business ethics, bioethics,
environmental ethics, computer
ethics, social and media ethics.
4. Descriptive ethics
Moral statement as normative statements
- Moral statements are normative or
prescriptive, not descriptive or
factual. They are concerned with
how things should be rather than
what things are.
Normative statements vs. Factual
statements
Appeal to certain standards in validating
Appeal to results of research, experiments,
or observations in validation
normative statements may involve matters
concerning morality, aesthetic, grammar,
legality, and etiquette.
● Moral statement is normative rather
than factual statement
MODULE 2: Moral personhood and
accountability
Lesson 1
Moral persons: the appropriate objects of
moral concern
● Entities who have moral status or
standing
● Either doers or recipients of action
● A bearer of moral rights
● All moral person have moral rights,
but some (not all) have moral duties.
Moral rights
RIGHTS - are entitlements; interest one is
allowed to pursue, actions one is allowed to
do.
DUTIES - are obligations
- correlation: one’s right impose
duties on other people: and one’s duties are
intended to respect the rights of other
people.
Classifying rights according to:
(1) The duties they impose (on other
people)
(2) The manner of their acquisition
 LESSON 5

LESSON 2

Moral person are either sources or receivers

of moral concerns

MORAL AGENTS
- Sources of morally evaluable actions
- Possess both moral rights and
duties
- Morally accountable for their actions

MORAL PATIENTS
- Receivers of morally evaluable
actions
- Possess moral rights only
- Cannot be morally accountable for MODULE 3: CONSEQUENTIALISM
their actions
Lesson 1
All moral agents are moral patients, but not Normative ethical theories are generally
all moral patients are moral agents based on three morally relevant features of
acitions -
- If moral persons can be both moral
patients and agents, then they are The longest running
called Agentive Moral Person (AMP) People who have significant…? Have
happiness?
LESSON 3

1. Social theory - a social construct.

Decided by the society
2. Gradient theory - comes in degrees.
Possessed in greater or lesser
degrees.

LESSON 4

Accountability in general…
- Natural product of a person’s
rationality
- The deservingness of blame or
punishment for doing what is right
and wrong