The Moral Agent

General Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the students
will be able to:
1. Recall rules they have to follow;
2. Explain why they have to follow rules;
3. Explain the difference between moral
and non-moral standards;
4. Detect a moral dilemma; and
5. Explain why only human beings can
be ethical.
Orientation of the Course
CHAPTER 1.1
Introduction
• Life can’t be organized without
rules.
• People always need rules and laws
to be able to live and deal together.
• If there are no rules and everyone is
free to do whatever they want, most
people will probably behave
selfishly.
• All the rules and laws have the
same purpose.
• They are designed to ensure
Rules and Its Importance
• Rules refer to as et of guidelines which
have been put in place in different
countries and communities and have
been accepted by all.
• Rules are useful tools in guiding and
monitoring the interactions of humans
in the society.
• Ethics is concerned with other people’s
interests, with the interests of society,
with God’s interests, with “ultimate
goods”, and so on.
• Rules are specific set of norms of
Why Do We Have Rules?
• Rules help people in many aspects of
life.
• They enable people to organize all the
process correctly, starting from house
chores and ending with more
complicated issues as the functioning
of as whole country.
• Rules are specific modes of behavior
that secure a regulated flow of all
process
• Law dictate what is proper and what is
wrong.
Importance of Rules
• Rules are important because they tend
to protect the weaker class in the
society as they might be in
disadvantageous position if rules are
broken. When rules are used in the
right way.
• They provide a stable environment and
human co-existence in a society which
leads to peace and development
• Rules are vital in one’s life because
peace and order are maintained, an
important ingredient for society’s
The Subject: Ethics
• Ethics or moral philosophy, may
be defined in a provisional way,
as the scientific study of moral
judgements.
• Ethics is the discipline concerned
with what is morally good and
bad, right and wrong.
• Ethics consists of the
fundamental issues of practical
decision making, and its major
concerns include the nature of
ultimate value and the standards
The Subject: Ethics
• Ethics is a system of moral
principles.
• Derived from a Greek word ethos
which can mean custom, habit,
character, or disposition.
• Virtue Ethics is particularly
concerned with the moral
character of human being.
Branches of Ethics
1. Normative Ethics
- In which actions are judged by
their merits, allowing societies
to develop codes of conduct of
behavior.
- Normative ethics try and define
how people should act.
- Normative ethics defines what is
right or wrong.
Branches of Ethics
2. Descriptive Ethics
- Descriptive ethics ask what do
people thinks is moral.
- Does not actually claim the
things are right or wrong, but
simply studies how individuals or
societies define their morals.
- Descriptive ethics defines morals
in terms of their cultural or
personal significance.
Why Study Ethics?
• His understanding of moral problems
will be widened, as he becomes
acquainted with the thoughts of other
men upon problems of good and evil,
justice and injustice, virtue and vice,
the right and duties of the individual.
• His critical faculties will be trained
• Study of ethics will enable a person
to understand better what his
conscience is, how he acquired it,
how far he is likely to be able to
trusts to its deliverances with safety,
The Moral Agent
CHAPTER 1.2
Introduction
• Philosophers often disagree
about which of these and other
conditions are vital; the term
moral agency is used in
different degrees of stringency
depending upon what one
regards as its qualifying
conditions.
• The Kantian sense is the most
stringent.
Morality
• Morality can be defines as the standards
that an individual or a group has about what
is right or wrong, or good and evil.
• Morality is not imposed from outside, but
innate and can even be unconscious.
• Morality is an informal public system
applying to all rational persons, governing
behavior that affects others, and has the
lessening of evil or harm as its goal.
• Morality is a complex of concepts and
philosophical beliefs by which an
individual determines whether his or her
Morality
• One reason for this is that “morality” seems
to be used in two distinct broad senses:
1. Descriptively to refer to certain codes of
conduct put forward by a society or a
group, or accepted by an individual with
their behavior.
2. Normatively to refer toa code of conduct
that, is given specified conditions, would
be put forward by all rational persons.
Key Features of Morality
1. People experience a sense of
moral obligation and
accountability.
- One cannot doubt successfully a
phenomenon of his own
experience---namely, his moral
experience.
2. Moral values and moral
absolutes exist
- it’s hard to deny the objective
reality of moral values—actions
like rape torture, and child abuse
are not just socially unacceptable
behavior but are moral
abomination. (Craig, 1994)
Key Features of Morality
3. Moral law does exist
- When we accept the existence of
goodness, we must affirm a
moral law on the basis of which
to differentiate between good
and evil
4. Moral law is know to
humans
- Moral Law is also called Law of
Nature because early
philosophers thought that
generally, everybody knows it by
nature.
Key Features of Morality
5. Morality is objective
- Morality is absolute--- there is a
real right and real wrong that is
universally and immutably true,
independent of whether anyone
believes it or not.
6. Moral judgements must be
supported by reasons
- Moral judgements are different
from mere expressions of
personal preference—they
require backing by reasons, and
in the absence of such reasons,
they are merely arbitrary. (James,
1999)
Man as a Moral Agent
• A moral agent is a being that is “capable
of acting with reference to right and
wrong”
• Moral agent is anything that can be held
responsible for behavior or decisions.
• Moral agent is an intelligent being who
has the power of choosing, and scope to
act according to his choice.
• A being capable of moral agency is one
who possesses the means of judging,
rightly, and power to act accordingly;
but whether he will do so or not,
Aristotle and Moral Responsibility
• Aristotle was the first to discuss moral
responsibility.
• He stated that it is “sometimes appropriate
to respond to an agent with praise or blame
in the basis of his actions and/or
dispositional traits of character”.
• He discusses that “only a certain kind of
agent qualifies as a moral agent and is thus
properly subject to ascriptions of
responsibility, namely, one who possesses a
capacity for decisions.
• For him, “a decision is a particular kind of
Standards and Dilemmas
CHAPTER 1.3
Introduction
• To call something “right” in the abstract
tells us little.
• To tell what the criteria are for making
that assessment, we need a context.
• The point is, from the practical activities
of evaluating and directing conduct ,
different frames of reference have
emerged that contain criteria for
appraising conduct as right or wrong in
different areas. Theses frames of
reference include etiquette, the law;
economics, religion, self-interest,
Differences Between Moral and Non-Moral
Standards
1. Moral standards 2. Non-Moral standards
- Refers to the norms which - Refers to the rules that are unrelated to
we have about the types moral and ethical considerations.
of action which we - Either theses standards are not
believe to be morally necessarily linked to morality or by
acceptable and morally nature lack ethical sense.
unacceptable.
Etiquette refers to the norms of correct
- Deal with matters which conduct in polite society or, more
can be either seriously generally, to any special code of social
harm or seriously benefit behavior or courtesy.
human being
Statutes are law enacted by the legislative
How are Moral Standards Formed?
There are some moral standards that many of
us share in our conduct in society. These moral
standards are influenced by a variety of factors
such as:
• The moral principles we accept as part of our
upbringing;
• Values passed on to us through heritage and
legacy;
• The religious values that we have imbibed
from childhood;
• The values that were showcased during the
Characteristics of Moral Standards
1. Moral standards involve serious wrongs
or significant benefits
2. Moral standards ought to be preferred
to other values
3. Moral standards are not established by
authority figures
4. Moral standards have the trait of
universalizability
5. Moral standards are based on impartial
considerations
6. Moral standards are associated with
Moral Dilemmas
• Is a conflict in which you have to
choose between two or more actions
and have moral reasons for choosing
each action.
• The crucial features of a moral
dilemma are these:
- The agent is required to do each two or
more actions;
- The agent can do each action;
- But the agent cannot do both or all of
the actions.