Ethics

• Ethics, according to Aristotle, involves living and actualizing moral principles in everyday concerns, cultivating a character of virtue through painstakingly choosing the moral path
• Ethics originates from the Greek word ethos, meaning custom or character, and is a branch of philosophy that studies the rightness or wrongness of human actions
• Morality tells us what we ought to do and urges us to follow the right way, characterized as an "end-governed rational enterprise" aiming for peaceful coexistence and the general benefit
• Types of Ethics:

  • Normative Ethics:
  • Prescriptive, setting norms or standards regulating right and wrong conduct
  • Develops guidelines or theories telling us how we ought to behave
  • Metaethics:
  • Descriptive, aims to understand the nature and dynamics of ethical principles
  • Asks about the origin and nature of moral facts, and how we learn and acquire moral beliefs
  • Applied Ethics:
  • Applies ethical and moral theories to decide appropriate actions in specific situations, divided into fields like business ethics, biomedical and environmental ethics, and social ethics
• Genuine Moral Dilemma:

  • Neither possible course of action overrides the other
  • Requires the person to do each of the two acts but cannot do both
• In a moral dilemma, the individual is torn between conflicting options, placing the moral agent in a situation requiring a choice between conflicting moral requirements
• False Moral Dilemma:

  • One of the agent's seemingly conflicting moral obligations overrides the other
• Causes of Moral Dilemmas:

  • Epistemic and ontological conflict:
  • Epistemic conflict: the agent does not know what option is morally right
  • Ontological conflict: the agent chooses between equally the same moral requirements with neither overriding the other
  • Self and world-imposed dilemmas:
  • Self-imposed dilemmas: caused by the agent's wrongdoing
  • World-imposed dilemmas: certain events in the world place the agent in a situation of moral conflict
• Causes of Moral Dilemmas:

  • Single agent and multi-person dilemmas:
  • Single agent dilemmas: compel the person to act on equally the same moral options but she cannot choose both
  • Multi-person dilemmas: involve several agents with the same set of moral requirements, requiring a general consensus
• Moral character is a personality trait or disposition that has become habituated in the individual moral agent, needing to be developed, nurtured, and cultivated
• Virtue ethics posits that individual actions are based upon inner moral virtue and that the basic function of morality is the moral character of persons
• Virtue, in ethics, is a character trait that is socially valued
• Aristotle considered goodness of character as a product of the practice of virtuous behavior, where virtuous acts are the end results of a good character
• Virtues are tendencies to act, feel, and judge, developed from natural capacity through proper training and exercise, depending on clear judgment, self-control, symmetry for desire, and artistry of means
• The Doctrine of the Mean suggests that moral behavior is one that is in the middle of two extremes (the good and the bad)
• Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development:

  • Pre-conventional Level focuses more on the self and is concerned with the consequences of one’s actions
  • Conventional Level focuses more on the group and is concerned with societal relationships, emphasizing social conformity
  • Post-conventional Level is focused on the common good and universal moral principles
• For Kohlberg, moral development is linear and ordered hierarchically, meaning an individual cannot jump from one stage to another
• Carol Gilligan's Theory of Moral Development:

  • Concern for Survival focuses on what is best for the self, with selfishness taking center stage
  • Goodness includes a sense of sacrifice and responsibility, prioritizing the needs of others ahead of oneself
  • Imperative of Care emphasizes a deeper appreciation of connectedness with self and others, including responsibility to self and others as moral equals and a clear imperative to harm no one