The Moral

Agent
Moral Agent

• A moral agent is a person who has the ability to

discern right from wrong and to be held
accountable for his or her own actions. Moral
agents have a moral responsibility not to cause
unjustified harm.
• Traditionally, moral agency is assigned only to
those who can be held responsible for their
actions. Children, and adults with certain mental
disabilities, may have little or no capacity to be
moral agents. Adults with full mental capacity
relinquish their moral agency only in extreme
situations, like being held hostage.
 How DOES culture shape moral behavior?

• Culture describes a collective way of life, or way of doing

things. It is the sum of attitudes, values, goals, and practices
shared by individuals in a group, organization, or society.
Cultures vary over time periods, between countries and
geographic regions, and among groups and organizations.
Culture reflects the moral and ethical beliefs and standards that
speak to how people should behave and interact with others.
• Cultural norms are the shared, sanctioned, and integrated systems of
beliefs and practices that are passed down through generations and
characterize a cultural group. Norms cultivate reliable guidelines for
daily living and contribute to the health and well-being of a culture.
They act as prescriptions for correct and moral behavior, lend meaning
and coherence to life, and provide a means of achieving a sense of
integrity, safety, and belonging. These normative beliefs, together with
related cultural values and rituals, impose a sense of order and control
on aspects of life that might otherwise appear chaotic or unpredictable
• This is where culture intersects with ethics. Since interpretations of what
is moral are influenced by cultural norms, the possibility exists that what
is ethical to one group will not be considered so by someone living in a
different culture. According to cultural relativists this means that there is
no singular truth on which to base ethical or moral behavior for all time
and geographic space, as our interpretations of truths are influenced by
our own culture. This approach is in contrast to universalism, which holds
the position that moral values are the same for everyone. Cultural
relativists consider this to be an ethnocentric view, as the universal set of
values proposed by universalists are based on their set of values. Cultural
relativism is also considered more tolerant than universalism because, if
there is no basis for making moral judgments between cultures, then
cultures have to be tolerant of each other.
 CULTURE
• REFLECTS THE MORAL VALUES AND ETHICAL
NORMS GOVERNING PEOPLE SHOULD BEHAVE
AND INTERACT WITH OTHERS.
• REFERS TO THE OUTLOOK, ATTITUDE, VALUES,
GOALS, AND PRACTICES SHARED BY GROUP,
ORGANIZATION OR SOCIETY.
• VARY OVER TIME PERIODS BETWEEN COUNTRIES
AND GEOGRAPHIC REGIONS, AMONG GROUPS AND
ORGANIZATIONS.
 MORAL BEHAVIOR

• Actions or actions that produce good outcomes for the individuals as

members of a community or society. It can be applied to the whole
global society. Schuman defines moral behavior as “Act intended to
produce kind and/or fair outcomes.
• To act according to one moral values and standards. Children
demonstrate prosocial and moral behavior when they share, help co-
operate, communicate, sympathize or in otherwise they demonstrate
ability to care about others.
 Why should culture not be the ultimate
determinant of values?
1Because culture at any particular moment can go wrong. For example,
the culture of German Nazis, the Holocaust was legal, the death camps
were legal. Opposing the persecution of Jews, Gypsies, communists,
gays and so on was a state crime. Was this a moment of culture you
would want to determine value?
You're forgetting about politics and power relations.
There is no perfect culture. We are living in diverse societies even if it is
wrong in our culture, maybe in other culture it is right. All we can do is
to respect them.
Is there a Filipino understanding of right and
wrong? Why this interpretation? What are its
influences?
• There is a fFlipino version of "karma". Filipino believes in two kinds of
karma: the good karma and the bad karma. They know that if they did
something right, it will go back to them rightfully, meaning, they could expect
good things to happen to them. Meanwhile, if they do something bad, bad
things may happen to them as well. People will treat them differently because
of their previous action. This will determine the rightness and wrongfulness of
their actions.
• Filipino understandings now about right and wrong are based on influence by
different cultures and religions. But the example above is an original filipino
concept.
 Key terms
• behavior: The way a living creature acts.
• ethics: The study of principles relating to right and
wrong conduct.
• values: A collection of guiding principles; what one
deems to be correct, important, and desirable in life,
especially regarding personal conduct.
 Culture and its moral behavior
• The most visible level of culture is behavior. Behaviors are shaped by
personal philosophies, vision and values, as well as the shared “common
sense” norms and practices of the organization. These “norms” prevent
people from questioning their culture’s assumed structure — the leadership
types, communication, and group dynamics within the organization. The
employees perceive the culture as quality of work life — which directs
their degree of motivation. These perceptions drive their final performance
behavior, individual satisfaction, and personal growth. Over time, these
habitual behaviors are fed back to influence the overall organizational
culture.
 Cultural Relativism
• Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a culture
on its own terms and not to make judgments using the
standards of one’s own culture. The goal of this is
promote understanding of cultural practices that are not
typically part of one’s own culture. Using the perspective
of cultural relativism leads to the view that no one culture
is superior than another culture when compared to
systems of morality, law, politics, etc
 Two different categories of Cultural
Relativism
1.  Absolute: Everything that happens within a culture must and should
not be questioned by outsiders. The extreme example of absolute
cultural relativism would be the Nazi party’s point of view justifying
the Holocaust.

2. Critical- Creates questions about cultural practices in terms of who is

accepting them and why. Critical cultural relativism also recognizes
power relationships
Why cultural relativism is not tenable in
ethics?

•Cultural Relativism is not tenable in

ethics because cultural relativism denies
the meaning/principle of ethics.
 Why cultural relativism is not tenable in
ethics?
Because of this ethicists believe that the concept of cultural relativism
threatens the discipline of ethics since, if values are relative to a given
culture than this must mean that there are no universal moral absolutes by
which the behavior of people can be judged. Therefore, "if there is no
observable control transcending all cultures, no eternal book of rules, then
right and wrong are a matter of opinion and it doesn't matter what we do:
anything goes!
 Why cultural relativism is not tenable in
ethics?
Thus, we can't go around passing judgment on what other people do. For,
"if all morality is relative, then what moral objection could one make to the
Nazi holocaust, to the economic deprivation of a Latin American
underclass, or to a militaristic nation's unleashing nuclear devastation on
others? And what would be wrong with conducting painful experiments on
young children, using them for case studies on the long-term psychological
effects of mutilation? In a world where no moral court of appeals exists,
might makes right. The only appeal can be to power" (Holmes, 1984, pp.
17,18). But it is such a position that cultural relativism seeks to challenge.
And the reason why cultural relativism has come under fire is "because it
has been subject to divergent interpretation“
Asian and a Filipino understanding of
moral behavior

•See the powerpoint of

Filipino Values and Moral
Development
 Asian and a Filipino understanding of
moral behavior
• The term “Asian Values” was coined in the 1990s by
then-Singaporean prime minister Lee Kwan Yew and
supported by Malaysian prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad. They trumpeted that the success of their
countries at the time was due to particular indigenous
values held by Asians. They implied that Asian Values
are superior to western values.