ETHICS - MIDTERM SUMMARY

• Ethics


  Branch of philosophy that deals with the study of morality of human action
• Morality


  Gives ethics a particular perspective
• Branches of Ethics


  • Normative Ethics
  • Meta-ethics
• Normative Ethics


  Deals with how people should act and prescribes norms
• Applied Ethics


  Applied to concrete moral issues, involves the study of morality of human action
• Divisions of Ethics


  • Ethical Theory
  • Applied Ethics
• Ethical Theory


  Systematic examination of morals involving critical reflection and analysis about what is right or wrong
• Applied Ethics


  Actual application of theories
• Moral Theories


  Provide justification for the goodness and evilness of an action
• Figures in Ethics


  • Socrates
  • Aristotle
  • Stoics
  • Jeremy Bentham
  • Immanuel Kant
• Meta-Ethics


  Concerned with the meaning and logical structure of moral statements
• Moral Epistemology


  Study of how we know moral truths; grounds of moral knowledge
• Moral Semantics


  Study of meaning of moral language
• Material Object of Ethics


  Ethics deals with the object it studies, such as human actions
• Formal Object of Ethics


  Morality is the formal object of ethics
• In Christianity, abortion is considered evil due to religious beliefs
• Theological Ethics


  Assumes that moral answers from revelation are true
• Morality is subjective, depending on one's emotion and perspective
• Therapeutic abortion done to save the life of the mother at the expense of the child, though with much regret, is morally permissible
• Religion relies on the divine will to determine the morality of the issue at hand
• Believers adhere to scripture, and church/religious authorities as the sources of God's will
• Three Specific Environments


  • Non-human Environment
  • Human Environment
  • Inner Environment
• It is only the humans in the solar system that tries to make sense of both the non-human and human environments
• Our genes' only mandate is survival but we can't succumb to dictates of the natural tendencies in us
• Humans can be less selfish or selfless should he choose to in dealing with his fellow human beings
• The success we exhibit as we deal with our environment--whether non-human or human, does not necessarily translate to our satisfaction
• We want to be happy, we want to live a life worth living. We dread the thought of us living soon not finding the meaning of life
• Genesis - where God had entrusted this world to us, and we should have dominion over all of his creation
• Animals are an important part of human life, being a chief source of protein prior to the introduction of machines in the large scale production of goods or in transportation
• The necessity for the mass production of food to keep up with the exponential increase of our population make humans turn their gaze upon animals
• Farms with technologically advanced facilities and superior nutrition not for their quality of life but for the quality of their meat or any other produce from them
• Buddhism condemns the slaughter of animals
• Speciesism


  Prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interest of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species
• Sentience


  Capacity for conscious experiences such as pain or pleasure
• The moral status of animals is founded on their being sentient, which refers to their capacity for conscious experiences such as pain or pleasure
• The principle of equal consideration of interest is a fundamental principle of morality that any moral being have interest
• Animals have no rights because they do not have mental or intellectual faculty for a deliberate moral judgment, they are simply making the simplest moral judgment
• Equal consideration of interest


  Fundamental principle of morality that any moral being have interest
• Animals, being sentient beings, are capable of experiencing sensation and have interest to avoid pain
• This becomes the philosophical underpinning of the moral status of animals