Ethics (or Moral Philosophy)

• It is concerned with questions of how

people ought to act, and the search for a
definition of right conduct (identified as the
one causing the greatest good) and the
good life (in the sense of a life worth living
or a life that is satisfying or happy).
 The word "ethics" is derived from the Greek "ethos"
(meaning "custom" or "habit").

 Ethics is not limited to specific acts and defined moral

codes, but encompasses the whole of moral ideals and
behaviors, a person's philosophy of life.

 Ethics differs from morals and morality.

 Morals or morality denotes the practice of right action.

 History of Ethics
Ancient Greek Ethics

1. Socrates, as recorded in Plato's dialogues, is customarily

regarded as the father of Western ethics.
He asserted that people will naturally do what is good
provided that they know what is right, and that evil or bad
actions are purely the result of ignorance: "There is only
one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance".
He equated knowledge and wisdom with self-awareness
(meaning to be aware of every fact relevant to a person's
existence) and virtue and happiness.
2. Aristotle, "Nature does nothing in vain", so it is only when
a person acts in accordance with their nature and thereby
realizes their full potential, that they will do good and
therefore be content in life.

He held that self-realization (the awareness of one's nature

and the development of one's talents) is the surest path to
happiness, which is the ultimate goal, all other things (such
as civic life or wealth) being merely means to an end.
 He encouraged moderation in all things, the extremes
being degraded and immoral, (e.g. courage is the
moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice
and recklessness), and held that Man should not
simply live, but live well with conduct governed by
moderate virtue.

 Aristotle, denotes doing the right thing to the right

person at the right time to the proper extent in the
correct fashion and for the right reason - something
of a tall order.
3. Cynicism. Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who
lived in a tub on the streets of Athens.
He taught that a life lived according to Nature was
better than one that conformed to convention, and that
a simple life is essential to virtue and happiness.
As a moral teacher, Diogenes emphasized detachment
from many of those things conventionally considered
"good".
4. Hedonism posits that the principal ethic is maximizing pleasure and
minimizing pain. Hedonists are people who believe that the most
ethical pursuit maximizes pleasure and happiness for oneself or the
most people.

5. Stoicism. Epictetus posited that the greatest good was contentment,

serenity and peace of mind, which can be achieved by self-mastery
over one's desires and emotions, and freedom from material
attachments.
In particular, sex and sexual desire are to be avoided as the greatest
threat to the integrity and equilibrium of a man's mind.
According to Epictetus, difficult problems in life should not be
avoided, but rather embraced as spiritual exercises needed for the
health of the spirit.
6. Skepticism
Pyrrho, the founding figure of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, taught
that one cannot rationally decide between what is good and
what is bad although, generally speaking, self-interest is the
primary motive of human behavior, and he was disinclined to
rely upon sincerity, virtue or Altruism as motivations.
a.2. Philosophical Approaches
 a.2.1. Normative or Prescriptive Approach
Normative Ethics (or Prescriptive Ethics) is the branch of
ethics concerned with establishing how things should or
ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or
bad, and which actions are right or wrong.
It attempts to develop a set of rules governing human
conduct, or a set of norms for action.
 Normative ethical theories are usually split into three
main categories: Consequentialism, Deontology and Virtue
Ethics:

1. Consequentialism (or Teleological Ethics) argues that the

morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome
or result. Thus, a morally right action is one that produces a
good outcome or consequence. Consequentialist theories
must consider questions like "What sort of consequences
count as good consequences?", "Who is the primary
beneficiary of moral action?", "How are the consequences
judged and who judges them?"
Some consequentialist theories include:
1. Utilitarianism, which holds that an action is right if it
leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of
people ("happiness“ here is defined as the maximization of
pleasure and the minimization of pain). The origins of
Utilitarianism can be traced back as far as the Greek
philosopher Epicurus, but its full formulation is usually
credited to Jeremy Bentham, with John Stuart Mill as its
foremost proponent.
2. Hedonism, which is the philosophy that pleasure is
the most important pursuit of mankind, and that
individuals should strive to maximize their own total
pleasure (net of any pain or suffering). Epicureanism is
a more moderate approach (which still seeks to
maximize happiness, but which defines happiness more
as a state of tranquility than pleasure).
3. Egoism, which holds that an action is right if it
maximizes good for the self. Thus, Egoism may license
actions which are good for the individual, but
detrimental to the general welfare. Individual Egoism
holds that all people should do whatever benefits him or
her self. Personal Egoism holds that each person should
act in his own self-interest, but makes no claims about
what anyone else ought to do. Universal Egoism holds
that everyone should act in ways that are in their own
interest.
4. Asceticism, which is, in some ways, the opposite of
Egoism in that it describes a life characterized by
abstinence from egoistic pleasures especially to achieve
a spiritual goal.

5. Altruism, which prescribes that an individual take

actions that have the best consequences for everyone
except for himself, according to Auguste Comte's
dictum, "Live for others". Thus, individuals have a moral
obligation to help, serve or benefit others, if necessary
at the sacrifice of self-interest.
6. Rule Consequentialism, which is a theory
(sometimes seen as an attempt to reconcile
Consequentialism and Deontology), that moral
behavior involves following certain rules, but that
those rules should be chosen based on the
consequences that the selection of those rules have.
7. Negative Consequentialism, which focuses on
minimizing bad consequences rather than promoting
good consequences. This may actually require
active intervention (to prevent harm from being
done), or may only require passive avoidance of bad
outcomes.
 a.2.2. Meta-ethics or Analytic Ethics

Meta-Ethics is concerned primarily with the meaning of

ethical judgments, and seeks to understand the nature
of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and
judgments and how they may be supported or
defended. A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative
ethical theory (see below), does not attempt to
evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good,
bad or evil; rather it tries to define the essential
meaning and nature of the problem being discussed. It
concerns itself with second order questions, specifically
the semantics, epistemology and ontology of ethics.
 The major meta-ethical views are commonly divided into
two camps: Moral Realism and Moral Anti-Realism:

1. Moral Realism:
Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism) holds that there are
objective moral values, so that evaluative statements are
essentially factual claims, which are either true or false, and
that their truth or falsity are independent of our beliefs,
feelings or other attitudes towards the things being
evaluated. It is a cognitivist view in that it holds that ethical
sentences express valid propositions and are therefore truth-
apt.
 There are two main variants:
a. Ethical Naturalism
This doctrine holds that there are objective moral properties
of which we have empirical knowledge, but that these
properties are reducible to entirely non-ethical properties. It
assumes cognitivism (the view that ethical sentences express
propositions and can therefore be true or false), and that
the meanings of these ethical sentences can be expressed as
natural properties without the use of ethical terms.
b. Ethical Non-Naturalism
This doctrine (whose major apologist is G. E. Moore)
holds that ethical statements express propositions (in that
sense it is also cognitivist) that cannot be reduced to non-
ethical statements (e.g. "goodness" is indefinable in that it
cannot be defined in any other terms). Moore claimed that a
naturalistic fallacy is committed by any attempt to prove a
claim about ethics by appealing to a definition in terms of
one or more natural properties (e.g. "good" cannot be
defined in terms of "pleasant", "more evolved", "desired",
etc).
 Ethical Intuitionism is a variant of Ethical Non-
Naturalism which claims that we sometimes have
intuitive awareness of moral properties or of moral
truths.

2. Moral Anti-Realism:
 Moral Anti-Realism holds that there are no objective
moral values, and comes in one of three forms,
depending on whether ethical statements are
believed to be subjective claims (Ethical
Subjectivism), not genuine claims at all (Non-
Cognitivism) or mistaken objective claims (Moral
Nihilism or Moral Skepticism).
1. Ethical Subjectivism, which holds that there
are no objective moral properties and that moral
statements are made true or false by the
attitudes and/or conventions of the observers, or
that any ethical sentence merely implies an
attitude, opinion, personal preference or feeling
held by someone.
There are several different variants:
 Simple Subjectivism: the view that ethical statements reflect
sentiments, personal preferences and feelings rather than objective
facts.
 Individualist subjectivism: the view (originally put forward by
Protagoras) that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as
there are individuals in the world (effectively a form of Egoism).
 Moral Relativism (or Ethical Relativism): the view that for a thing to
be morally right is for it to be approved of by society, leading to the
conclusion that different things are right for people in different
societies and different periods in history.
 Ideal Observer Theory: the view that what is right is determined by
the attitudes that a hypothetical ideal observer (a being who is
perfectly rational, imaginative and informed) would have.
 Non-Cognitivism, which holds that ethical sentences are
neither true nor false because they do not express
genuine propositions, thus implying that moral knowledge
is impossible. Again there are different versions:
 Emotivism: the view, defended by A.J. Ayer and C. L.
Stevenson (1908 - 1979) among others, that ethical
sentences serve merely to express emotions, and ethical
judgments are primarily expressions of one's own attitude,
although to some extent they are also imperatives meant
to change the attitudes and actions of other listeners.
 Prescriptivism (or Universal Prescriptivism): the view,
propounded by R.M. Hare (1919 - 2002), that moral
statements function as imperatives which are
universalizable (i.e. applicable to everyone in similar
circumstances) e.g. "Killing is wrong" really means "Do not
kill!"
 Expressivism: the view that the primary function of moral
sentences is not to assert any matter of fact, but rather to
express an evaluative attitude toward an object of
evaluation. Therefore, because the function of moral
language is non-descriptive, moral sentences do not have
any truth conditions.
 Quasi-Realism: the view, developed from Expressivism
and defended by Simon Blackburn (1944 - ), that
ethical statements behave linguistically like factual
claims, and can be appropriately called "true" or "false"
even though there are no ethical facts for them to
correspond to. Blackburn argues that ethics cannot be
entirely realist, for this would not allow for
phenomena such as the gradual development of ethical
positions over time or in differing cultural traditions.
 Projectivism: the view that qualities can be attributed
to (or "projected" on) an object as if those qualities
actually belong to it. Projectivism in Ethics (originally
proposed by David Hume and more recently
championed by Simon Blackburn) is associated by many
with Moral Relativism, and is considered controversial,
even though it was philosophical orthodoxy throughout
much of the 20th Century.
 Moral Fictionalism: the view that moral statements
should not be taken to be literally true, but merely a
useful fiction. This has led to charges of individuals
claiming to hold attitudes that they do not really have,
and therefore are in some way insincere.
 Moral Nihilism, which holds that ethical claims are
generally false. It holds that there are no objective values
(that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong, right, etc.)
because there are no moral truths (e.g. a moral nihilist
would say that murder is not wrong, but neither is it
right).
 Error Theory is a form of Moral Nihilism which combines
Cognitivism (the belief that moral language consists of
truth-apt statements) with Moral Nihilism (the belief that
there are no moral facts).
 Moral Skepticism, which holds that no one has any
moral knowledge (or the stronger claim that no
one can have any moral knowledge). It is
particularly opposed to Moral Realism (see above)
and perhaps its most famous proponent is
Friedrich Nietzsche.
An alternative division of meta-ethical views is between:

 Moral Absolutism:
The ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral
questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong,
regardless of the context of the act.
 Moral Universalism:
The meta-ethical position that there is a universal ethics which applies
to all people, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality,
sexuality or other distinguishing feature, and all the time.
 Moral Relativism:
The position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective
and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social,
cultural, historical or personal circumstances.
a.2.3. Applied Ethics
 Applied Ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts
to apply ethical theory to real-life situations.
 Strict, principle-based ethical approaches often result in
solutions to specific problems that are not universally
acceptable or impossible to implement.
 Applied Ethics is much more ready to include the insights
of psychology, sociology and other relevant areas of
knowledge in its deliberations. It is used in determining
public policy.
The following would be questions of Applied Ethics:

 "Is getting an abortion immoral?",

 "Is euthanasia immoral?",
 "Is affirmative action right or wrong?",
 "What are human rights, and how do we determine
them?" and
 "Do animals have rights as well?"
Some topics falling within the discipline include:

1. Medical Ethics: the study of moral values and judgments

as they apply to medicine.
Historically, Western medical ethics may be traced to
guidelines on the duty of physicians in antiquity, such as the
Hippocratic Oath (at its simplest, "to practice and prescribe
to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to
try to avoid harming them"), and early rabbinic, Muslim and
Christian teachings.
Six of the values that commonly apply to medical ethics
discussions are:
 1. Beneficence (a practitioner should act in the best
interest of the patient),
 2. Non-maleficence ("first, do no harm"),
 3. Autonomy (the patient has the right to refuse or
choose their treatment),
 4. Justice (concerning the distribution of scarce health
resources, and the decision of who gets what treatment),
 5. Dignity (both the patient and the practitioner have the
right to dignity),
 6. Honesty (truthfulness and respect for the concept of
informed consent.
 2. Bioethics: concerns the ethical controversies brought
about by advances in biology and medicine.
Public attention was drawn to these questions by abuses
of human subjects in biomedical experiments, especially
during the Second World War, but with recent advances in
biotechnology, bioethics has become a fast-growing
academic and professional area of inquiry.
Issues include consideration of cloning, stem cell
research, transplant trade, genetically modified food, human
genetic engineering, genomics, infertility treatment, etc.
 3. Legal Ethics: an ethical code governing the conduct of
people engaged in the practice of law.
Model rules usually address the client-lawyer relationship,
duties of a lawyer as advocate in adversary proceedings,
dealings with persons other than clients, law firms and
associations, public service, advertising and maintaining the
integrity of the profession.
Respect of client confidences, candor toward the tribunal,
truthfulness in statements to others, and professional
independence are some of the defining features of legal
ethics.
 4. Business Ethics: examines ethical principles and moral
or ethical problems that can arise in a business
environment.
This includes Corporate Social Responsibility, a concept
whereby organizations consider the interests of society by
taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on
customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the
environment in all aspects of their operations, over and
above the statutory obligation to comply with legislation.
5.Environmental Ethics: considers the ethical relationship
between human beings and the natural environment.

It addresses questions like "Should we continue to clear

cut forests for the sake of human consumption?",

"Should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles,

depleting fossil fuel resources while the technology exists
to create zero-emission vehicles?",

"What environmental obligations do we need to keep for

future generations?",
"Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a
species for the (perceived or real) convenience of
humanity?"
"What environmental obligations do we need to keep for
future generations?",
"Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a
species for the (perceived or real) convenience of
humanity?"
 6. Information Ethics: investigates the ethical issues
arising from the development and application of
computers and information technologies.
It is concerned with issues like the privacy of
information, whether artificial agents may be moral, how
one should behave in the info sphere, and ownership and
copyright problems arising from the creation, collection,
recording, distribution, processing, etc, of information.
 7. Media Ethics: deals with the specific ethical
principles and standards of media in general,
including the ethical issues relating to journalism,
advertising and marketing, and entertainment
media.
b. Where does Ethics comes from?
b.1. The Supernatural Theory
b.2. The Natural Law Theory
b.3. The Subjectivist Theory

 b.1. The Supernatural Theory

Virtually every human society has some form of myth to explain the
origin of morality. In the Louvre in Paris there is a black Babylonian
column with a relief showing the sun god Shamash presenting the code
of laws to Hammurabi (died c. 1750 BCE), known as the Code of
Hammurabi.
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) account of God’s giving the Ten
Commandments to Moses (flourished 14th–13th century BCE) on Mount
Sinai might be considered another example.
 In the dialogue Protagoras by Plato (428/427–348/347
BCE), there is an avowedly mythical account of how Zeus
took pity on the hapless humans, who were physically no
match for the other beasts. To make up for these
deficiencies, Zeus gave humans a moral sense and the
capacity for law and justice, so that they could live in
larger communities and cooperate with one another.
 That morality should be invested with all the mystery and
power of divine origin is not surprising.
 Nothing else could provide such strong reasons for accepting the
moral law.
 By attributing a divine origin to morality, the priesthood
became its interpreter and guardian and thereby secured for
itself a power that it would not readily relinquish.
 This link between morality and religion has been so firmly
forged that it is still sometimes asserted that there can be no
morality without religion.
 According to this view, ethics is not an independent field of
study but rather a branch of theology (see moral theology).
 Fortunately, another mode of inquiry is available. Because
living in social groups is a characteristic that humans
share with many other animal species—including their
closest relatives, the apes—presumably the common
ancestor of humans and apes also lived in social groups.
Here, then, in the social behaviour of nonhuman animals
and in the theory of evolution that explains such
behaviour may be found the origins of human morality.
 Social life, even for nonhuman animals, requires
constraints on behaviour. No group can stay together if its
members make frequent, unrestrained attacks on each
other. With some exceptions, social animals generally
either refrain altogether from attacking other members of
the social group or, if an attack does take place, do not
make the ensuing struggle a fight to the death—it is over
when the weaker animal shows submissive behaviour. It is
not difficult to see analogies here with human moral
codes. The parallels, however, go much further than this.
 Like humans, social animals may behave in ways that
benefit other members of the group at some cost or risk
to themselves. Male baboons threaten predators and cover
the rear as the troop retreats. Wolves and wild dogs take
meat back to members of the pack not present at the kill.
Gibbons and chimpanzees with food will, in response to a
gesture, share their food with other members of the
group. Dolphins support other sick or injured dolphins,
swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing
them to the surface so they can breathe.
 It may be thought that the existence of such apparently
altruistic behaviour is odd, for evolutionary theory states
that those who do not struggle to survive and reproduce
will be eliminated through natural selection. Research in
evolutionary theory applied to social behaviour, however,
has shown that evolution need not be so ruthless.
 Some of this altruistic behaviour is explained by kin
selection. The most obvious examples are those in which
parents make sacrifices for their offspring. If wolves help
their cubs to survive, it is more likely that genetic
characteristics, including the characteristic of helping
their own cubs, will spread through further generations of
wolves.