Lesson 1

• Morality refers to the set of standards a person and society have about what is right and wrong.
• Right moral dilemma involves deciding whether to reveal a secret, such as Phyllis's marriage, to someone else, like Roger.
• Ethics is sometimes used to refer to one’s set of moral beliefs and practices.
• Ethics is the discipline that examines the moral standards of an individual or a society.
• Ethics involves reflecting on or examining the moral standards.
• Ethics invites us to exercise self-awareness and self-criticism with regard to our views and beliefs about morality.
• Philosophy, derived from the Greek words 'philo' (love) and 'sophia' (wisdom), is the study of the most basic and profound matters of human existence and asks the fundamental questions of human existence.
• Ethics examines the moral standards of an individual or a society.
• Ethics is not considered an area of moral philosophy but is a study of morality.
• Descriptive Ethics uses researches from the fields of anthro, sociology, history, and psychology as part of understanding the moral norms that people follow or believe in.
• Some may refer to this “little voice” as your conscience, and you may be the type of person who is keenly aware of their own “moral compass.”
• Moral statements as normative statements express a value judgment, a kind of statement that claims that something is the case.
• Social etiquette dictates that one should not pick their nose in public.
• Normative statements can be assessed by looking at certain criteria, standards of norms instead of focusing on empirical data.
• Decision is a choice of what to perform or do.
• Dilemma involves making a choice between two or more moral (ethical) values and in making a decision or in taking action you will compromise or violate some other moral (ethical) principle(s) or value(s)
• You may have a “little voice” inside your head telling you to do one thing, while your immediate desire is to do another.
• Saying "po" to elders is a sign of respect in the Philippines.
• Ethics involves valuations or moral judgment that we make in a sphere of human actions that are characterized by certain gravity and that concern human well-being or human life itself.
• Judgment is the assessment of the actions or behavior of someone.
• Issue is a controversial and people keep on debating about it.
• Main areas of ethics include Descriptive Ethics which describes what people actually believe to be right and wrong, moral values (or ideals) they hold up to, how people behave, and what ethical rules guide their moral reasoning.
• Metaethics attempts to shed light on the basic ideas, concepts, and assumptions that underlie our moral beliefs and judgment.
• Metaethics examines the basic meanings, ideas and connotations involved in moral discourse to the questions: (1) Who have moral rights? (2) What does it mean to be morally accountable? (3) Is morality objective or relative?
• Applied ethics focuses on moral practical concerns of ethics.
• Normative ethics engages the question, “What could or should be considered as the right way of acting?”
• Normative ethics is concerned with moral standards to determine right from wrong conduct.
• Applied ethics uses Normative Ethics and Metaethics to analyze, clarify, and shed light on various ethical issues to guide our moral judgment.
• Normative ethics prescribes what we ought to maintain as our standards or bases for moral judgment (moral valuation).
• Applied ethics uses philosophical methods to determine the moral permissibility of specific actions and practices.
• Aesthetics is derived from Greek words “aisthesis” which means “sense” or “feeling” and involves judgments of personal approval and disapproval that we make to what we see, hear, taste, or smell.
• Normative ethics, also known as analytic ethics, deals with the nature and meaning of ethical terms, scope and foundations of moral values and discourses.
• Applied ethics focuses on issues pertaining to public policy and the professions and issues on personal concerns such as life, health, sex and relationship.
• Technique/Technical is derived from Greek word “techne” which is often used to refer to “a proper way” (or right way) of doing things and involves right and wrong technique of doing things.
• Theories proposed to answer what moral standards should govern human action usually fall into three broad categories: consequentialism (hedonism, utilitarianism), deontology, and virtue ethics.
• Metaethics attempts to answer questions like “what is morality?”
• Etiquette is concerned with right and wrong actions maintained by the society to which we belong and when violated, it might be considered not quite grave enough to belong to a discussion on ethics.
• Metaethics involves an abstract and detached way of thinking philosophically about morality.
• Normative ethics provides guidelines, norms, and principles that we follow to act morally and acceptably.