Chapter Two

Approaches to Ethics
Prepared by Befekadu Dhaba

April 10, 2020

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
 2.2. Non –Normative Ethics

• Ethics whose objective is to establish what

factually or conceptually is the case, not what
ethically ought to be the case.
Two types : descriptive ethics & Meta ethics.

• Descriptive ethics: a type of non-normative ethics

that simply reports what people believe, how they
reason, & how they act.
• Meta Ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to
understand the nature, scope, & meaning of moral
judgment.
 Meta ethics
• It studies the meanings of such ethical terms as right,
obligation, virtue, principle, justification, sympathy,
morality, & responsibility.
• Analysis of the language, concepts, & methods of reasoning
in ethics.
• It includes study of moral epistemology (the theory of moral
knowledge) & the logic & patterns of moral reasoning &
justification.
Difference of Non-normative ethics from normative ethics:
• Non normative ethics just states facts as they are & does
not say whether an action or a particular theory about morals
is right or wrong.
• Normative ethics is based on standards of what is right &
judges all actions as right or wrong based on those standards.
 Meta ethics cont…

• Normative ethics has three types of theories: teleological

theories, deontological theories &. virtue theories
• While normative ethics addresses such questions as
"What should I do?", evaluating specific practices &
principles of action, meta-ethics addresses questions
such as "What is goodness?" & "How can we tell
what is good from what is bad?", seeking to
understand the assumptions underlying normative
theories.
• Meta ethics involves an attempt to step back from
particular substantive debates within morality to ask
about the views, assumptions, & commitments that are
shared by those who engage in the debate.
 Absolutism /Objectivism
Objectivism -the tendency to emphasize what is external to or
independent of the mind.
• The belief that certain things, esp. moral truths, exist
independently of human knowledge or perception of them.
• Is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn
Rand (1905-1982).
• In novels such as The Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged, Rand
dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his own
effort & does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors
achievement & rejects envy.
• Includes a view of the nature of reality, of man's means of
knowledge .
• Any of various theories asserting the validity of objective
phenomena over subjective experience.
 Absolutism /Objectivism cont…

Moral absolutism is an ethical view that all actions

are intrinsically right or wrong. Stealing, might be
considered to be always immoral, even if done for the
well-being of, & even if it does in the end promote
such a good.
• Holds merely that what is right or wrong is
independent of custom or opinion, but not
necessarily that what is right or wrong is
independent of context or consequences.
• Ethical theories which place strong emphasis on
rights & duty, such as the deontological ethics of
Immanuel Kant, are often forms of moral
absolutism, as are many religious moral codes.
 Ethical Relativism

• Believe that moral values & principles are created by, or, are relative
to, the people who hold the belief .
• Morality is conventionally constructed by the human beings & hence
varies from society to society.
There are two main types of ethical relativism; ethical subjectivism &
cultural relativism.
Both claims that humans, either individually or collectively, are the
ultimate measure of what is right & what is wrong.
• Ethical subjectivism states that morality is simply the expression of
individual opinions. What is right for you may be wrong for me,
depending on our respective feelings.
• Cultural Relativism claims that societal norms, rather than the
opinion of isolated individuals, form the basis of morality. According
to this view, morality not only differs from culture to culture but may
also change within a culture over time.
• In order to know what is right & wrong, we only need to ask what are
the norms & customs of our culture.
 Ethical relativism cont…

• Maintains that all moral judgments have their origins

either in societal or in individual standards, & that no
single standard exists by which one can objectively
assess the truth of a moral proposition.
• Meta-ethical relativists believe that the descriptive
properties of terms such as "good", "bad", "right", &
"wrong" do not stand subject to universal truth
conditions, but only to societal convention & personal
preference.
• Given the same set of verifiable facts, some societies or
individuals will have a fundamental disagreement about
what one ought to do based on societal or individual
norms, & one cannot adjudicate these using some
independent standard of evaluation.
 Ethical Universalism/universalism

• Is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or

a universal ethic, applies universally, that is to all
intelligent beings regardless of culture, race, sex, religion,
nationality, sexuality, or other distinguishing feature.
• Moral principles exist independently of cultural context
of societies. It assumes that moral value & principles are
not culture specific, rather it is argued that moral
principles transcends across societies.
• Kant believes that moral duties & rights are inherent to
human nature regardless of particular culture.
• For Kant it is reason, the will, which makes human moral
& obligates them to act morally irrespective of their
cultural backgrounds.
 ethical universalism cont…
• Kant goes on identifying categorical/ absolute/ moral rules that
guides human beings as: not killing, not stealing, not harming
human beings, respecting & treating human beings with
dignity, not lying & the like.
• Some of the universal moral principles include: Respect,
Ethical tolerance, principles of justice/ fairness/, equality,
respecting human rights, accepting majority rule & minority
right protection principles are most required for individuals to
live with differences.
• The source or justification- human nature, shared vulnerability
to suffering, the demands of universal reason, what is common
among existing moral codes, or the common mandates of
religion .
• Is the opposing position to various forms of moral relativism.
Universalist theories are generally forms of moral realism.
 Naturalism
• Is the "idea or belief that only natural laws & forces operate in
the world."
• Natural laws are the rules that govern the structure & behavior
of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage
is a product of these laws.
• Is a literary genre that started as a movement in late 19 th C. in
literature, film, theater, & art.
• Literary & artistic naturalism aims at accuracy & objectivity .
• Action, inclination, or thought based only on natural desires &
instincts.
• This m’ment suggested the roles of family, social conditions, &
envi’ment in shaping human character.
• Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it.
• Is the belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world.
Instead of using supernatural or spiritual explanations.
 Ethical non-naturalism
Is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
• Ethical sentences express propositions.
• Some such propositions are true.
Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world,
independent of human opinion.
• These moral features of the world are not reducible to any set of non-
moral features.
• This makes ethical non-naturalism a non-definist form of moral realism,
which is in turn a form of cognitivism.
• Stands in opposition to ethical naturalism, which claims that moral terms
& properties are reducible to non-moral terms & properties, as well as to
all forms of moral anti-realism, including ethical subjectivism (which
denies that moral propositions refer to objective facts), error theory
(which denies that any moral propositions are true), & non-cognitivism
(which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all).

• Branch of ethics seeking to understand ethical properties

 Ethnical non-naturalism cont…
• Non-naturalist views see morality as presupposing, or being committed to,
properties over & above those that would be countenanced by natural
science.
Non-naturalism comes with two distinctive burdens:
(i) accounting for how the realm of moral properties fits in with familiar
natural properties , &
(ii) explaining how it is that we are able to learn anything about these moral
properties.
• Naturalism, in contrast, avoids these metaphysical & epistemological
burdens.
Despite its advantages, naturalism has difficulty capturing well what people
take to be the true nature of morality.
In saying something is good or right or virtuous we seem to be saying
something more than, or at least different from, what we would be saying in
describing it as having certain natural features.
Correspondingly, no amount of empirical investigation seems by itself,
without some moral assumption(s) in play, sufficient to settle a moral
question.