What is ethics?

At its simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how people make decisions and lead their
lives.

Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also described as moral philosophy.

The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean custom, habit, character or disposition.

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?

Our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and cultures. They infuse debates on
topics like abortion, human rights and professional conduct.

Approaches to ethics

Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas: metaethics, normative ethics and applied
ethics.

 Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement. It looks at the origins and meaning of ethical
principles.

 Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for what is right
or wrong.

 Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishment
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What use is ethics?

Ethics needs to provide answers. Photo: Geoffrey Holman ©

If ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way human beings behave.

Some philosophers think that ethics does do this. They argue that if a person realises that it would be morally
good to do something then it would be irrational for that person not to do it.
But human beings often behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head suggests a
different course of action.

However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral issues.

Ethics can provide a moral map

Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters. Because these are such
emotional issues we often let our hearts do the arguing while our brains just go with the flow.

But there's another way of tackling these issues, and that's where philosophers can come in - they offer us ethical
rules and principles that enable us to take a cooler view of moral problems.

So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we can use to find our way through difficult issues.

Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement

Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue can often find that what they disagree
about is just one particular part of the issue, and that they broadly agree on everything else.

That can take a lot of heat out of the argument, and sometimes even hint at a way for them to resolve their
problem.

But sometimes ethics doesn't provide people with the sort of help that they really want.

Ethics doesn't give right answers

Ethics doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems.

Indeed more and more people think that for many ethical issues there isn't a single right answer - just a set of
principles that can be applied to particular cases to give those involved some clear choices.

Some philosophers go further and say that all ethics can do is eliminate confusion and clarify the issues. After
that it's up to each individual to come to their own conclusions.

Ethics can give several answers

Many people want there to be a single right answer to ethical questions. They find moral ambiguity hard to live
with because they genuinely want to do the 'right' thing, and even if they can't work out what that right thing is,
they like the idea that 'somewhere' there is one right answer.

But often there isn't one right answer - there may be several right answers, or just some least worst answers -
and the individual must choose between them.

For others moral ambiguity is difficult because it forces them to take responsibility for their own choices and
actions, rather than falling back on convenient rules and customs.

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Ethics and people

 Ethics is about the 'other'

Ethics is concerned with other people ©

At the heart of ethics is a concern about something or someone other than ourselves and
our own desires and self-interest.

Ethics is concerned with other people's interests, with the interests of society, with God's
interests, with "ultimate goods", and so on.

So when a person 'thinks ethically' they are giving at least some thought to something
beyond themselves.

Ethics as source of group strength

One problem with ethics is the way it's often used as a weapon.

If a group believes that a particular activity is "wrong" it can then use morality as the
justification for attacking those who practice that activity.

When people do this, they often see those who they regard as immoral as in some way
less human or deserving of respect than themselves; sometimes with tragic
consequences.

Good people as well as good actions

Ethics is not only about the morality of particular courses of action, but it's also about
the goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life.

Virtue Ethics is particularly concerned with the moral character of human beings.

Searching for the source of right and wrong

At times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could be solved in one of
two ways:

 by discovering what God wanted people to do

 by thinking rigorously about moral principles and problems

If a person did this properly they would be led to the right conclusion.
But now even philosophers are less sure that it's possible to devise a satisfactory and
complete theory of ethics - at least not one that leads to conclusions.

Modern thinkers often teach that ethics leads people not to conclusions but to 'decisions'.

In this view, the role of ethics is limited to clarifying 'what's at stake' in particular ethical
problems.

Philosophy can help identify the range of ethical methods, conversations and value
systems that can be applied to a particular problem. But after these things have been
made clear, each person must make their own individual decision as to what to do, and
then react appropriately to the consequences.

Ethics is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what
humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society,
fairness, or specific virtues.

Some years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does
ethics mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:

"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."

"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I don't know what the word means."

These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin
down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their
feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person
following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings
frequently deviate from what is ethical.

Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high
ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only
to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to
that of the devout religious person. Religion can set high ethical standards and can
provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined
to religion nor is it the same as religion.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates
ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate
from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of
present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from
what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In any
society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of
behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become
ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out
what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I
should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American
society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever
tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus
on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts.
Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing
whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does
not, in fact, exist.

What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded
standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in
terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for
example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain
from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include
those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards
include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom
from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics
because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.