Ethics

Foundation of Moral Valuation

Chapter 1: The Ethical Dimension of

Human Existence
 Learning Objectives
At the end of the lesson the students will be able to:

• identify the ethical aspect of human life and the scope of ethical thinking:
• define and explain the terms that are relevant to ethical thinking and,
• evaluate the difficulties that are involved in maintaining certain commonly
held notions on ethics.
 01 5

VALUE Issue, Decision, Judgment,

02 and Dilemma

Kinds of Valuation 6
03
Reasoning
Ethics and Morals 7
4 Plato (427-347 BCE)
Descriptive and Normative
Introduction
In August 2007, newspapers' reported what
seemed to be yet another sad incident of
fraternity violence. Cris Anthony Mendez, a
twenty-year-old student of the University of the
Philippines (UP).
 VALUE
Ethics as a subject is about determining
the grounds for the values with particular
and special significance to human life.
CLARIFICATIONS Recognizing the notions of
AND good and bad, and right
TERMINOLOGY and wrong, are the primary
of ethics in order to start it
would be useful to clarify
the following points.
 Kinds of Valuation

Aesthetics life and death

capital punishment or abortion

Etiquette poverty

inequality
Technical
sexual identity
 Ethics and Morals
Morals Ethics

acceptable and unacceptable

may be used to refer to
behaviors are also generally
specific beliefs or
described as ethical and
attitudes that people have
unethical
or to describe acts that
people perform
 Descriptive and Normative
Descriptive
Study of ethics reports how people,
particularly groups, make their
moral valuations without making
any judgment either for or against
these valuations
Normative
Study of ethics, as is often done in
philosophy or moral theology,
engages the question: What could or
should be considered as the right
way of acting?
 Issue, Decision, Judgment, and
Dilemma
'issue' is also often used to refer to those particular situations that are often
Issue the source of considerable and inconclusive debate

When one is placed in a situation and confronted by the choice of what

Decision act to perform, she is called to make a moral decision

When a person is an observer who makes an assessment on the actions or

Judgment behavior of someone, she is making a moral judgment

We have a moral dilemma when an individual can choose only one from
Dilemma a number of possible actions, and there are compelling ethical reasons for
the various choices.
 REASONING
The promise of rewards and the fear of
punishments can certainly motivate us act, but are
not in themselves a determinant of the rightness or
wrongness of a certain way of acting or of the good
or the bad in a particular pursuit.
 Plato (427-347
BCE)
●The Greek thinker Plato is credited as
one of the pioneers of philosophy as his
various writings bring up and discuss
carefully and creatively some of the
questions that later thinkers will find to
be of lasting significance to humankind
 Thanks!
Do you have any questions?