LESSON 2: The Moral

Dimension of Human
Existence
Learning Outcomes
During the learning engagement, you should be able to
 differentiate among moral and nonmoral standards, moral standards
and etiquette, policy, law, and commandment;
 cite situations justifying whether the actions are moral or nonmoral,
and
 simulate the characteristics of moral principles.
Activity 1: Individual
Direction: Answer the following questions briefly:
 How are moral standards different from nonmoral standards?
 How do moral standards differ from etiquette, policy, law, and
commandment?
Activity 2: Collaborative Group
Discussion
 Instructions:
1. Form a group with five to six members.
2. Discuss your answer in your individual learning to your group.
Come up with 1 group output to be presented.
3. Furthermore, according to Velasquez (2012), moral standards have
six characteristics (Gallinero, pp. 6) as provided below. Each group
will be assigned one moral standard to be discussed and presented.
 Six Characteristics of Moral Standards (group)
1) Group 1- Moral standards involve behaviors that seriously affect other
people’s well-being.
2) Group 2- Moral standards take a more important consideration than other
standards, including self interest.
3) Group 3- Moral standards do not depend on any external authority but in
how the person perceives the reasonableness of the action.
4) Group 4- Moral standards are believed to be universal.
5) Group 5- Moral standards are based on objectivity.
6) Group 6- Moral standards are associated with vocabulary that depicts
emotion or feelings
Activity 3: (group)
Instructions:
1. Working in a group, give five examples (life-situations) on moral
standards and nonmoral standards. (See Gallinero, pp. 6-7.)
2. List down five specific actions that can be considered as belonging
to the domain of morality and another same number that do not.
3. Provide a justification why you consider them as moral and
nonmoral actions respectively.
Activity 4: Simulation
 Instructions:
1. Working in groups, you will be assigned a particular characteristic of moral principles by your
teacher from among the eight characteristics provided below.
Eight Characteristics of Moral Principles
1. Group 1- Reasonability
2. Group 1- Impartiality
3. Group 2- Prescriptivity
4. Group 3- Overridingness
5. Group 4- Autonomous from Arbitrary Authority
6. Group 5- Publicity
7. Group 6- Practicability
8. Group 6- Universalizability
2. Your group will be asked to create a real-life situation applying the characteristic(s) assigned to
you. Afterwhich, an explanation will be purveyed.
Processing
(Adapted from Fernandez, pp. 17–18)
 When can one truly say that “something (an
act/conduct/behavior) or someone is moral or
immoral, ethical or unethical?” Are there clear and
neat rules that govern morality that can easily be
accessed in practically all situations of human
existence?
 Moga - two basic positions
 The first position is what he calls the “A-Morality” position.
Here, morality is understood as occupying just one area
among the many diverse areas in human life. The other
areas, which are termed as nonmoral “have their own
meanings, rules and goals and are said to be free and
independent from any form of moral or ethical evaluation.
Morality’s scope is simply confined to a specific and limited
area in human existence. Hence, the rest of the other areas
in human experience are not subject to ethics or morality.
 The second position is quite the opposite of the
previous position. This position claims that practically
all of human life is under the domain of morality. That
morality is “ever present and is necessary for man to
be truly human.”
 Afterevaluating these two extreme positions, and taking
into account their respective value to human life, Moga
offers a third position.
 The third position is what he considers as a “middle”
ground to the previous two positions. He says that
“morality is not just limited to a few select areas of man’s
life but is found in every situation in various ways as there
are situations in life where the focus of human experience
is a moral obligation or value, when we are concentrating
on what should be done.”
 Inconclusion, Moga contends that “if we are to be
fully human we must somehow manage to
maintain a sort of balance in all of these areas of
our lives without neglecting any.” We have to
avoid, according to him, to simply focus in one or
on a few limited areas and fail to give justice to the
others. Human existence is too rich and complex to
confine ourselves to a single or few dimensions
only.
Formation
Life challenges us to live fully in all areas,
balancing a mature moral sensitivity with a well-
rounded involvement in other areas of life.
Synthesis
 Inthis lesson, we have established the scope and the
rationale for a discussion of ethics. We explored
various domains of valuation in order to distinguish
what makes a particularly grave type of valuation a
moral or ethical one.