ethics week1

• The term ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, which originally means custom or character.
• Any moral and legal principle which privileges one interest over another is not only viewed with suspect but will ultimately lose in the moral test.
• Impartiality, then, is a fundamental requirement for morality.
• Ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies the rightness or wrongness of a human action.
• Ethics is concerned with questions of how human persons ought to act, and the search for a definition of a right conduct and the good life.
• The attempt to seek the "good" through the aid of reason is the traditional goal of ethicists.
• There is no single, absolute definition of ethics as a discipline because it is constantly evolving as a result of a change in socio-cultural and political context.
• In the Greek tradition, ethics was conceived as relating to the concept of the "good life" and the search for happiness.
• Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics presents a theory of happiness and provides ways in which happiness is attained.
• In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the ideals of righteousness before God and the love of God and neighbor, not the happy or pleasant life, constitute the substance of ethics.
• Ethics undertakes the systematic study of the underlying principles of morality.
• Morality is more prescriptive in nature as it tells us what we ought to do and exhorts us to follow the right way.
• According to Terrance McConnell, morality is characterized as an 'end-governed rational enterprise' whose object is to equip people with a body of norms (rules and values) that make for peaceful and collectively satisfying coexistence by facilitating their living together and interacting in a way that is productive for the realization of the general benefit.
• Normative ethics is prescriptive in nature as it seeks to set norms or standards that regulate right and wrong or good and bad conduct.
• In the first sense, morality refers to "code[s] of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior".
• Morality is about rules of conduct with which individuals seek counsel to live a life of virtue.
• Normative ethics urges us to do good at all times, while metaethics asks the question "What is good?".
• Moral philosophy asks questions about the nature and origin of moral facts, as well as the way in which we learn and acquire moral beliefs.
• Applied ethics is the actual application of ethical or moral theories for the purpose of deciding which ethical or moral actions are appropriate in a given situation.
• Casuists, the adherents of applied ethics, are concerned with individual moral problems, such as abortion or euthanasia, and attempt to resolve the conflicting issues that surround these particular moral problems.
• In the second sense, morality refers to "a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons".
• The difference between the three major types of ethics can be illustrated in the following situation: A police officer shoots a terrorist who is about to blow up a crowded shopping mall.
• If a moral philosopher attempts to address the questions "What is good?", "What is justice?", "Why should I be moral?", then that moral philosopher is doing metaethics.
• Ethics is about the quest to live a good life through cultivating a virtuous character by doing and acting what is right and what is good.
• Applied ethics is usually divided into different fields, such as business ethics, biomedical and environmental ethics, and social ethics.
• Morality is understood in two senses - the descriptive and normative sense.
• Metaethics is descriptive in nature as it aims to understand the nature and dynamics of ethical principles.
• A moral requirement means that the person is obliged to do certain acts.
• By choosing one of the possible moral requirements, the person also fails on others.
• Examples of non-moral standards are: Black is beautiful; health is wealth; and don't talk if the mouth is fall.
• From teleological, to deontological and consequentialist ethics, and to their recent variations, one is offered different moral principles which overlap, conflict, and diverge in many ways.
• A non-moral standard refers to rules which do not concern moral actions or judgments.
• Each theory seeks to realize that which is good and right for oneself and for others.
• A dilemma is a situation where the individual is torn between two or more conflicting options.
• Examples of moral standards are: do not kill; do not steal; and do not tell a lie.
• In philosophy, a moral standard is one that is justified by reason, and not by custom, religion, or by certain convictions of a group of people.
• A moral dilemma places the moral agent in a situation that requires her to choose between two or more conflicting moral requirements.
• A moral standard seeks to codify rules of conduct (of right and wrong), which can be rationally accepted by relevant individuals.
• Moral obligations can be hierarchically arranged to resolve seemingly conflicting moral dilemmas.
• There is no single moral principle that overshadows the rest in the history of philosophy.