Ethics week 2 ata

• Freedom, along with reason, is central to the person as it distinguishes her from other creatures
• Freedom sets the person apart from nature, allowing her to transcend nature's deterministic world
• By freedom, it means individuals navigate within the limits of physical and material entanglements
• Responsibility to one's actions entails moral and legal liability
• Morality is based on the idea that individuals are free and capable of making decisions based on reason
• Reason serves as the grounding principle of moral actions
• Allegory of the Cave:

  • Person's liberation from the World of the Senses to the World of Reason
  • Plato believes liberation leads to doing what is good and right, encountering eternity, and developing a wider perspective
• The Categorical Imperative:

  • Immanuel Kant's corrective measure judging actions as morally desirable or deplorable
  • Acts as an impartial judge ensuring actions are unbiased by personal interests
• Jurgen Habermas, John Rawls, Amartya Sen:

  • Discursive procedure, original position, impartial spectator
  • Mechanisms ensuring moral and legal principles are impartial and free from biases
• Culture shapes social and personal values, decisions, behavior, and practice
• Culture is a structure of collective experience and shared practices expressed in arts, music, literature, and social norms
• Culture encompasses material, emotional, intellectual, and ethical aspects of society
• Habitus:

  • Set of predispositions shaping human actions and behavior
  • Acquired non-forcefully and expressed differently based on social or cultural markers
• Michel Foucault:

  • Hidden knowledge determines actions through power
  • Institutions like schools and prisons have a disciplinary effect on individuals
• Moral character guides moral decision making and affects one's actions
• Virtue ethics: actions based on inner moral virtue and moral character
• Aristotle:

  • Goodness of character results from virtuous behavior
  • Virtues are tendencies developed through training and exercise
• Doctrine of the Mean: moral behavior is balanced between extremes
• Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development:

  • Pre-conventional, Conventional, Post-conventional levels
  • Moral development is linear and hierarchically ordered
• Carol Gilligan's Theory of Moral Development:

  • Concern for Survival, Goodness, Imperative of Care
  • Emphasizes concern for others over personal survival and responsibility to self and others