ethics

• Socrates: '"Do the God's love an act because it is pious, or it is pious because the God's love it"'
• Ethics


  Derives from the Greek ethos, which means "custom" in the singular and "character" in the plural (ethe)
• Morality


  Derives from the Latin mos, which means "custom" in the singular and "character" in the plural (mores)
• Ethics


  As a branch of philosophy, deals with the study of the morality of human action
• Abel (1994): '"ethics (morality) is concerned with what we do (custom) and with the kind of person we are"'
• Ethics


  Provides a detailed justification of what makes a particular action good or evil and prescribes which is one to pursue
• "Vote buying is bad"
• Conventional


  Our moral verdict that vote buying is bad is conventional, it is a social consensus, "agreed upon"
• Logical


  Laying down reasons, the consequentialist approach to the moral status of vote buying is the reason why our ethical assessment of vote buying and of any moral issue is a product of logical reasoning, "systematic study"
• Prescriptive


  It tells us in black and white which action is good and which is not, moral prescriptions usually begin with "must", "must not", "ought to", "should", and other imperatives holding a moral tone, "suggest which action is good or bad"
• Normative


  From where ethics draw its moral judgment, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Kant, Bentham, Singer, etc., "set standard of morality"
• Maboloc (2010) says that ethics, as a branch of philosophy is divided into normative and meta-ethics
• Branches of normative ethics

  • Virtue ethics
  • Utilitarian ethics
  • Duty ethics
  • Natural law ethics
• Normative ethics


  These moral theories provide a moral justification for the goodness or evilness of an action
• Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, etc. are figures considered as authoritative in their moral insights
• Applied ethics


  This is ethics applied to concrete moral issues such as the death penalty, animal rights, environment, child bride, homosexuality, abortion, and other personal and social issues which call for our moral attention
• Meta-ethics


  These branches of ethics include moral epistemology, moral semantics, and moral metaphysics, Maboloc (2010) says "meta-ethics is primarily concerned with the study of the meaning and epistemological foundation of moral statements", A.J. Ayers objected "ethics is a philosophical discipline that makes the moral judgment belongs to meta-ethics", Ayer states that moral judgments are mere expressions of one's emotion
• Material object of ethics

  Human act, must possess the following elements: knowledge, freedom, and free will
• Formal object of ethics

  Morality, the human act that ethics takes interest in
• "Acts of man" - blood flow, heartbeat, sleepwalking
• Ethics and religion


  Common knowledge comes from our beliefs, religion being the chief social institution that prescribes morality
• Ethics as a philosophical discipline

  Solely relies on reason, logic, and experience, especially in the justification and validation of certain theories and principles concerning good or bad
• Theological ethics


  Assumes that the answers (on the moral question) given by revelation are true
• Sources of God's will in religion

  • Scripture
  • Conscience
  • Church/religious authorities
• Reason


  The ethical source of morality
• The basic Judeo-Christian belief that man is the creation of God; from which borne the corollary belief that man should be good because he was created good by a good creator (Gen. 1:31)
• Stumpf And Fieser (2008) say "to relate human behavior to this order of law was the chief concern of stoic philosophy"
• Why should we be moral?


  To engulf oneself in a life of harmony with the non-human environment, the human environment, and the self by ordering one's will and action with the natural law of life
• "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." -- Aldo Leopold--
• Virtue ethics


  A good act is that which is neither excessive nor inadequate
• Divisions of the soul

  • Rational self (reasoning, regulate)
  • Irrational self (vegetative self, appetitive self)
• Three specific environments man deals with

  • Non-human environment
  • Human environment
  • Inner environment
• Non-human environment


  Everything external to him minus fellow humans and himself, trees, rivers, and animals
• Human environment


  His fellow humans with whom he shares the same genetic makeup, survival of the fittest - others think the same way as we do; because they need the same resources for survival
• Inner environment


  We encounter ourselves, the metaphysical world as he sees it- the way he makes sense of the two previous environments, the world in his mind, only the human species that tried to make sense of both environments mentioned earlier
• According to Dawkins (2006), our reason can go against the dictate of its creator- the genes
• Animals have always been an important part of human life, aside from being the chief source of protein in our diet, prior to the introduction of machines in the largescale production of goods or in transportation, animals did most of the job
• Buddhism condemns the slaughter of animals
• Peter Singer


  Craft a system of ethical principles to cater for issues concerning our treatment of animals, debunk Speciesism - a 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, argues that animals possess moral status and, thus, deserve 'humane treatment' based on their being sentient which refers to their capacity for conscious experiences such as pain or pleasure, proceeded to argue on the principle of equal consideration of interest
• Carl Cohen


  Argues that animals have no rights because they do not have the mental or intellectual faculty for a deliberate moral judgment, animals do not have moral status simply because they are irrational