ETHICS1 (Midterms)

• The Usual Rules of Our Lives

  Etiquette, Legal, Language, Aesthetic, Athletic
• Etiquette


  Judge manners to be good or bag
• Legal (Rules)


  Judge legal right or wrong
• Language


  Judge what is grammatically right or wrong
• Aesthetic


  Judge good or bad art
• Athletic (Rules)


  Judge good or bad a game is played
• Why Rules?

  • Sense of order
  • Get things done
  • We are being with others (esse est co-esse)
• Pre-socratics, Plato, Aristotle


  “Philosophy as love, pursuit, or study of knowledge, wisdom, or truth, especially as to the nature of things”
• Medieval Philosophy 


  “Philosophy as the handmaid of theology whose purpose is to elucidate revealed truths and to combat heresy”
• S.E. Frost Jr., Jean-Paul Sartre


  “Philosophy as meaning which the world has for you or as the meaning one has created or invented in life”
• THREE CONCEPTS OF PHILOSOPHY

  1. Value System
  2. Reflective Activities
  3. Foundationalism
• ETHICS


  moral philosophy; asks foundational questions about the good life
• Examples of Areas of Philosophical Investigation

  Aesthetics, Philosophy of Science, Law
• Mores


  Customs including the customary behavior of a particular group of people
• TWO FORMS OF ETHICAL RELATIVISM

  Individual Ethical Relativism & Cultural Ethical Relativism
• ETHICAL RELATIVISM


  view that ethical values and beliefs are relative to the various individuals or societies that hold them
• Individual Ethical Relativism


  Outlook and attitudes of individual person
• Cultural Ethical Relativism


  Ethical values vary from society to society and that basis for moral judgements lies in these social or cultural views
• CULTURAL RELATIVISM


  The principle of regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture and to avoid making hasty judgements
• JAMES RACHELS


  The morally right thing to do, in any circumstance, is determined by what there are the best reasons for doing
• The Five Claims of Cultural Relativists:

  Different societies have different moral codes
• The Five Claims of Cultural Relativists:

  The moral code of a society determines what is right or wrong within the society
• The Five Claims of Cultural Relativists:

  There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times
• The Five Claims of Cultural Relativists:

  The moral code of our own society has no special status; is but one among many
• The Five Claims of Cultural Relativists:

  It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be tolerant of therm
• Ethics


  ethos = character of a culture; Deals with systematic questioning and critical examination of the underlying principles of morality
• Morality


  Mores = customs including the customary behavior of a particular group of people
• TWO GENERAL APPROACHES IN ETHICS

  Normative Ethics & Meta-Ethics
• Normative Ethics


  Pertains to certain norms or standards for goodness and badness, rightness or wrongness of an act
• Meta-ethics


  Questions the basis of the assumptions proposed in such framework of norms and standards by normative ethics;

  
  

  Ethical approach that examines the presuppositions, meanings and justification of ethical concepts and principles
• The Notion of What is Right

  Folkways & Mores
• FOLKWAYS

  • Made unconsciously 
  • Due to false interference
  • Formed by accident
  • Based on pseudo-knowledge
  • Man’s instinct to survive
• MORES

  • Come from folkways
  • In order to preserve society together with its accepted norms and practices, the individual has to defend and maintain this notion of what is right
  • Directive force
• LAWS


  Acts of legislation came out of mores
• Tendency to Defend the Practices


  In our society, there is a tendency to defend the practices that we have been used to
• Individual :


  Habit
• Society/ Groups


  Social rules and sanctions
• John Mothershead


  There are 2 necessary conditions for morality to occur: freedom and obligation
• FREEDOM


  Assumed when one is making his choices and is the agent that is taking full responsibility in planning his life, and in the process, planning and budgeting his actions for some future outlook or goals
• OBLIGATION


  Constructed as one’s duty to himself to exercise this freedom as a rational moral being