Ethics: The systematic, organized study of concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, along with theories that explain these concepts.
Ethics addresses three primary questions:
How should one act?
Focus on determining if actions, decisions, or policies are morally good or bad, or better or worse.
Approaches include Utilitarianism and Kant's duty-based ethics, each offering tests for right and wrong actions.
How should one live?
Involves life goals and what one finds important.
What sort of person should one become?
Focus on character traits, cultivating virtues, and avoiding vices.
Explored through Virtue Ethics and Ethics of Care.
Socrates asks, How ought we to live?
Emphasized the importance of living well over personal safety, wealth, or reputation.
Considered this question as paramount to one’s existence.
Ethical decisions are common in daily life, including:
Helping others or not.
Managing leisure time.
Issues of honesty vs. deception (e.g., telling a lie for someone’s perceived benefit).
Gossip and exaggeration about oneself.
Purely Descriptive Ethics:
Describes people's moral behaviors without passing judgment on their correctness.
Few adhere to this practice; often social scientists.
Normative Ethics:
Philosophical approach prescribing how people ought to think and act in moral contexts.
Sets norms and standards for behavior, similar to medical prescriptions.
Normative ethics focuses on what people should believe regarding moral issues.
Concerned with prescribing criteria for determining right from wrong behavior.
Instrumental Value:
Valuable as a means to achieve something else. Also known as extrinsic value.
Examples include technology: computers (tasks) and cars (transportation).
Items often valued for their utility, not intrinsic worth.
To assess pure instrumental value:
Consider what you’d do with it if it breaks or wears out.
If the answer is disposal, it likely has only instrumental value.
Intrinsic Value:
Value in its own right, independent of any external purpose.
Defined by the entity's nature itself.
Human beings exemplify intrinsic value:
Recognized in laws and societal values – a life has worth regardless of utility.
Dignity and worth are inherent, not contingent upon productivity or capability.
Each person's interests should be treated equally when formulating ethical theories.
Variations exist in different ethical frameworks (e.g., maximizing happiness or duty-based ethics).
Over-application of impartiality may disrupt normal human relationships.
Critics suggest it could harm emotional bonds and social connections.
Impartiality may demand equal emotional investment in family and strangers.
Real-life relationships naturally involve preferential treatment of close ties.
While complete impartiality may be undesirable, most people lack sufficient impartiality in decisions.
Striving toward impartiality in ethics can correct biases.
Moral judgments are not merely personal taste; individuals provide arguments to validate their positions.
This implies an underlying sense of moral truth that transcends personal preference.
Surveys may reveal public opinion but do not answer whether actions are morally right or wrong.
The truth of moral claims exists independently of popular belief.
Public opinion on moral issues can shift without altering the actual truth.
Example: Historical misconception of the Earth’s position in the cosmos does not change factual inaccuracies.