FUNDAMENTALS TO ETHICS

Philosophical
✓ the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as
an academic discipline.

Ethics
✓ a system of moral principles. They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives.
✓ comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning “character” or “custom”, and the derivative phrase ta ethika,
which Plato and Aristotle used to describe their own studies of Greek values and ideals
✓ concern for character including what we call being a good person, but it is also a concern for the overall
character of a good society, which is called its ethos
✓ Ethics is participation in, and understanding of an ethos; it is an effort to understand the social rules
that govern and limit our behavior

Rules
1. a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct within a particular activity
or sphere
Rights
2. are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people

ETHOS OF MAN
3. Ethics is that part of philosophy that is concerned of living well, being a good person, doing the right
thing, getting along with other people and wanting the right things in life.

FEELINGS AND REASONS

4. FEELINGS WITHOUT REASONS ARE BLIND
5. What reasons do we give to decide or to judge that a certain way of acting is either right or wrong?
1. Fear of punishment/ Desire for reward
2. Promise of rewards and Fear of Promise
3. Beyond rewards and punishments (based on principles)

⚫ It is not enough to simply do what you are told; it is just as important to know the reason why and to be
able to say no when you think the act is wrong.
⚫ It is important to have reasons, to have a larger vision, to have a framework within which to house and
defend your opinions

Why study ethics?

ethics teaches us to appreciate the overall system of reasons within which having ethics makes sense.
Understanding what you are doing and why is just as essential to ethics as doing the right thing.

MORALITY
- Pre-ordained standards (commandments, rules, traditions); authoritative, unchangeable
- a subset of ethical rules that are of particular importance and transcend the boundaries of any particular
ethos. Morality consists of the most basic and inviolable rules of society.
Ethics Both Morality
Rules from Differentiates Internal principles
external source; right or wrong; regarding right
social system good or bad and wrong;
individual

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Flexibility of Ethics
- dependent on others for definition
- consistent within a certain context; can vary between contexts

Flexibility of Morals
- usually consistent but may change when an individual changes his belief as well

ORIGIN
Ethics - Greek word "ethos" meaning"character“
Morality - Latin word "mos" meaning "custom"

ACCEPTABILITY
Ethics - governed by professional and legal guidelines within a particular time and place
Morality - transcends cultural norms

AMMORAL
- lacking a moral sense ie. Artificial Intelligence
- unconcerned with the rightness and wrongness of things

IMMORAL
- violation of the moral laws, norms, or standards

MORAL STANDARDS
- the rules people have about the actions that they believe to be morally right, good, and valuable

NON-MORAL STANDARDS
- rules unrelated to moral or ethical considerations
- Standards of etiquette by which we judge manners whether good or bad
- Standards we call the law by which we judge what is right or wrong
- Standard of aesthetics
Example:
1. Wearing shorts to a formal dinner
2. Coming in informal dress to the office
3. Attending calls during meetings

MORAL VALUES pertain to MORAL AGENTS

MORAL PRINCIPLES
- Autonomy, justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and fidelity are each absolute truth in and of
themselves. By exploring the dilemma in regards to these principles one may come to a better
understanding of the conflicting issues.

MORAL OBJECTS
- The object of human act that specifies it morally - giving it the species of a good or evil, virtuous or
vicious act of an unjust act, and even more specifically of an act of theft, lying, faithfulness, chastity, etc
- is commonly called the "moral object". The object is called "moral" in order to distinguish it from mere
physical objects which though specifying of an act on its purely natural level do not confer its moral
species.

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MORAL ACT
- must be our own act; must spring from our own will
- driven by personal beliefs or actions
Example: Telling the truth

MORAL COURAGE
6. Is the result of morally developed will
7. It is a virtue that enable one to be ethical not just in thought but, more importantly in deed.
8. Involves deliberation and careful thoughts.
9. A courage to take actions for moral reason despite the risk or adverse consequences

HUMAN ACT
- It is an act that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally
evaluated. They are either good or evil. According to tradition, the moral specification of human acts
occurs primarily and fundamentally through their objectives
- precedes from knowledge, freedom, and freewill
-

ACTS OF MAN
- acts that people perform without considering the possible effects to his or her life, good or bad.
- act of freewill
- involuntary
- blinking, heartbeat

Human Act Characteristics

✓ Knowledge
✓ Freedom
✓ Willfulness

KNOWLEDGE
- an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of reason. It is deliberately performed
means that it is done freely and knowingly

FREEDOM
- A human act is an act determined by the free will and by nothing else.

WILLFULLNESS
- This is the formal essential quality of the human act because both knowledge and freedom are
present.

Natural Law
This law suggest that human laws are derived from eternal and unchangeable principles found in
nature. It points out that people can be aware of these laws by the use of reason.
Examples:
1. Parents should take care of their children.
2. One should try to preserve one’s life.
3. People should do no harm to others.
4. People should help the vulnerable

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Ethical Dimension of Human Existence:
• Value
• Sources of Authority
• Senses of Self

Kinds of Moral Valuation:

➢ Aesthetics
- from the Greek word “aisthesis” which means “sense” or “feeling” and refers to the judgments of
personal approval or disapproval that we make about what we see, hear, smell, or taste

➢ Etiquette
- concerned with right or wrong actions, but those which might be considered not quite grave enough
to belong to a discussion on ethics

➢ Technical
- from the Greek word “techne” and refers to a proper way (or right way) of doing things

Ethics
- can be spoken of as the discipline of studying and understanding ideal human behavior and ideal ways
of thinking.
- an intellectual discipline belonging to philosophy.

Morals
- specific beliefs or attitudes that people have or to describe acts that people perform.

Moral Judgement
- is how you feel or think about a matter as you consider the activity weighed against your internal value
systems.

Moral Decision
- is when you have determined what your course of action will be in connection to the matter under
consideration

Moral Issues
- involve a difference of belief and not a matter of preference.
Example:
whether it is right that one speaks truthfully in a particular circumstance or whether one obeys the law
in a particular circumstance, as these issues as the rightness or wrongness of the action are assumed to
be factually determinable through empirical inquiry.

Moral Dilemma
- is a situation or event that questions the morals of a person in a temporary situation. The person can
return to those morals after the event, but for the duration of the event they must choose one moral
that over rules another. Complicated situations between one of two goods or choosing between the
lesser two evils.

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DESCRIPTIVE
- A descriptive study of ethics reports how people, particularly groups, make their moral valuations without
making any judgment either for or against these valuations.

NORMATIVE
- often done in philosophy or moral theology
- engages the question: What could or should be considered as the right way of acting?
- prescribes what we ought to maintain as our standards or bases for moral valuation.

METAETHICS
- deals with the nature of moral judgment. It looks at the origins and meaning of ethical principles.

APPLIED ETHICS
- refers to the practical application of moral considerations.
- It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and
public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership.

CASUISTRY
- is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules
from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. It is also criticized for the use of
inconsistent—or outright specious— application of rule to instance.

THREE SCHOOLS OF ETHICS:

1. Virtue ethics
- broad term for theories that emphasize the role of character and virtue in moral philosophy
rather than either doing one's duty or acting in order to bring about good consequences.

2. Consequentialist ethics
2 broad categories of ethical theories concerning the source of value:

A. CONSEQUENTIALIST
- judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based on the consequences of the action
Example:
utilitarianism--``that action is best that produces the greatest good for the greatest
number'' (Jeremy Bentham)

B. NON-CONSEQUENTIALIST
- judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based on properties intrinsic to the
action, not on its consequences.

LIBERTARIANISM
- People should be free to do as they like as long as they respect the freedom of others to do the
same.

PRINCIPLES OF UTILITY
- Is about our subjection to these sovereign masters: pleasure and pain
- On one hand, the principle refers to the motivation of our actions as guided by our avoidance of
pain and our desire for pleasure.
- On the other hand the principles refers to pleasure as good if, and only if, they produce more
happiness than unhappiness

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3. Deontological ethics
- (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty")
- is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action
itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action

SOURCES OF AUTHORITY:

1. LAW
- It is supposed that law is one’s guide to ethical behavior. In the Philippines, Filipinos are constrained
to obey the laws of the land as stated in the country’s criminal and civil codes. The law cannot tell us
what to pursue, only what to avoid.

2. RELIGION
- The divinity called God, Allah, or Supreme Being commands and one is obliged to obey his/her
Creator (Divine Command Theory).

3. CULTURE
- Our exposure to different societies and their cultures makes us aware that there are ways of thinking
and valuing that are different from our own, that there is in fact a wide diversity in how different
people believe it is proper to act. Therefore, what is ethically acceptable or unacceptable is relative
to, or that is to say, dependent on one’s culture. This position is referred to as cultural relativism.

SENSES OF THE SELF

1. SUBJECTIVISM
- starting point is the recognition that the individual thinking person (the subject) is at the heart of all
moral valuations. From this point, subjectivism leaps to the more radical claim that the individual is
the sole determinant of what is morally good or bad, or right or wrong.

2. PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
- “Human beings are naturally self-centered, so all our actions are always already motivated by self
interest.”
- It points out that there is already an underlying basis for how one acts. The ego or self has its
desires and interests, and all his/her actions are geared toward satisfying these interests.

3. ETHICAL EGOISM
- It prescribes that we should make our own ends, our own interests, as the single overriding
concern. We may act in a way that is beneficial to others, but we should do that only if it ultimately
benefits us.

Socrates
- The first to redirect the focus of philosophy from the natural world to the human person.

Moral Determinants
1. Object - act itself
2. End - consequence
3. Purpose - motive/intention

Moral Determinants as strengthened by Double Effect Principle

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PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT
- aims to provide specific guidelines for determining when it is morally permissible to perform an action in
pursuit of a good end in full knowledge that the action will also bring about bad results.
example of double-effect reasoning:
Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica (treatment of homicidal self-defense)
- This set of criteria states that an action having foreseen harmful effects practically in separable from the
good effect is justifiable if the following are true:

1. THE ACT IS GOOD

• The nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral; an unintended side effect.

2. EFFECT IS DIRECTLY PROCEEDED FROM GOODNESS

• The agent intends the good effect and does not intend the bad effect either as a means to
the good or as an end in itself;

3. THE INTENTION MUST BE SUFFICIENT

- The intention must be the achieving of only the good effect, with the bad effect being only.

4. GOOD RESULTS HAS GREATER VALUE COMPARED TO BAD RESULTS

- The good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing
the bad effect

Moral standard
- involves the rules people have about the kinds of actions they believe are morally right and wrong, as
well as the values they place on the kinds of objects they believe are morally good and morally bad

Non-moral
- not moral standards refer to rules that are not seriously (unrelated) to moral or ethical considerations
example: wearing shorts to a formal dinner, coming in informal dress to the office, attending calls
during meetings

Why is freedom crucial in making moral decisions?

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What is the advantage of owning moral standards?

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Act of man
- involuntary (heartbeat)

Human Act
- voluntary
- 3 factors:
• Object
• act
• circumstance
- peeing and pooping are voluntary. Prior to such feeling, you have knowledge of what you’re capable of
feeling and what you’re supposed to do.
Example: you should’ve went to the comfort room earlier.