ETHICS

• Ethics


  A branch of philosophy that studies ideal human behavior and the ideal ways of being
• Eudaimonia


  Aristotle's conception of ideal behavior
• Duty


  Kant's conception of ideal behavior
• Ethos


  The Greek word meaning custom, habit, character or disposition
• Ethics is a systematic approach to understanding, analyzing, and distinguishing matters of right and wrong, good and bad, and admirable and deplorable as they relate to the well-being of and the relationships among sentient beings
• Doing ethics


  Ethics is an active process rather than a static condition
• Ethics covers the following dilemmas

  • How to live a good life
  • Our rights and responsibilities
  • The language of right and wrong
  • Moral decisions – what is good and bad?
• Morals


  Specific beliefs, behaviors, and ways of being derived from doing ethics
• Immorality


  A person's behavior is in opposition to accepted societal, religious, cultural, or professional ethical standards and principles
• What use is ethics?

  • Ethics can provide a moral map
  • Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement
  • Ethics does not give right answers
  • Ethics can give several answers
• Normative ethics


  An attempt to decide or prescribe values, behaviors, and ways of being that are right or wrong, good or bad, admirable or deplorable
• Common morality


  Normative beliefs and behaviors that the members of society generally agree about and that are familiar to most human beings
• Meta-ethics


  Concerned with understanding the language of morality through an analysis of the meaning of ethically related concepts and theories
• Descriptive ethics


  A scientific rather than a philosophical ethical inquiry that describes what people think about morality or how people actually behave
• Ethical perspectives


  • Ethical relativism
  • Ethical objectivism
• Ethical relativism


  The belief that it is acceptable for ethics and morality to differ among persons or societies
• Types of ethical relativism

  • Ethical subjectivism
  • Cultural relativism
• Ethical subjectivism


  The belief that individuals create their own morality and that there are no objective moral truths – only individual opinions
• Cultural relativism


  The ethical theory that moral evaluation is rooted in and cannot be separated from the experience, beliefs, and the behaviors of a particular culture
• Ethical objectivism


  The belief that universal or objective moral principles exist