Module 1: BASIC CONCEPTS IN ETHICS

Ethics - branch of Philosophy which studies the morality of human actions.

- Moral Philosophy and concerned with the rightness or wrongness of acts done by individuals
and how are they considered right or wrong.
- established standards or norms regarding good and bad or right and wrong behavior that are
recognized by the people in consonance with their religious beliefs and cultures.
- came from the
- Greek word ‘ethos’ which translates as “character” or “manners”; it is also translated as
“characteristic or habitual ways of doings things” in some other references.

Philosophy- science of all things through their ultimate causes, reasons, and principles acquiredthrough
the use of human reason alone.

- “Love of Wisdom” since it seeks the highest/ultimate reasons and causes for the existence of
anything.

Morality- quality of an action as either good or bad; hence we call an action immoral if it is bad and
moral if it is good according to our standards.

- code or system of behaviors that are considered acceptable and unacceptable to a community
that is based on personal beliefs or communal traditions which is not formally presented or
imposed to the community.

The difference is that ethics is an established set of norms/standards and an academic discipline itself
while morality is the moral quality of an action and at the same time a standard regarding good and
bad which is personal or subjective.

Acts of man- acts done by a human person that no longer requires will, intention, and knowledge.

- done spontaneously as they are actions natural to a human person or non-related to morality or
otherwise known as neutral acts or amoral acts.
- do not belong to a person’s idea of morally right and morally wrong.

Human Acts- done voluntarily with awareness about the nature of an action whether it is naturally good
or bad.

Non-moral Standards- standards of what is good and bad and are not related with morality

- refer to norms of fashion, mechanics of a game or sport, some house rules and rules of public
institutions, and some laws.
- human acts or actions that are not related to morality or that cannot be morally and ethically
judged as right or wrong.

Moral Norms- standards categorizing human acts as either moral or immoral.

- actions that can be ethically or morally judged as either right or wrong as they are related to our
ideas of what is ideally and morally good behaviors for a human person as a part of society and
as an individual.
1. Moral Standards include actions that will greatly affect the well-being of a person.

- Actions that have direct or indirect effects to another person or to one’s self that will cause either
significant benefit and joy or serious injury, sadness, and anger for a long period of time.

2. Moral Standards tend to or ought to out-weigh other norms and standards.

- Actions that we can consider good and the morally right thing to do may be wrong or bad for some
other norms.

3. Moral Standards come from the immediate judgment of a person and not just dictated by sources
of authority.

-Moral actions come from an individual’s own perception and understanding of good and bad even
without the guidance the sources of authority such as the religion, the law, and the culture of a person.

4. Moral Standards can be agreed universally.

- The idea and judgment regarding what is morally right and wrong does not only exist in just one
specific group of people.

5. Moral Standards are based from impartiality.

- Actions we regard as morally right and morally wrong remains the same regardless of the persons who
do those actions.

Foundations of Morality

A. Freedom- capacity of doing anything or any act which is morally good.

- free will, a person becomes autonomous or is capable of deciding for himself whichever course of
action to take in response to a given situation.
B. Responsibility- A person is accountable and responsible for every action s/he takes. A person is
always ought to do what is morally good.

Minimum Requirements for Morality

Reason- being a rational being means having the capacity to reason out and to grasp knowledge.

- helps people to understand and to justify actions they see and do in the society.

Impartiality - an individual’s judgment of an action without any bias and prejudice. This refers to
becoming objective of using one’s reason in judging the morality of an action or of an individual.

Moral Dilemmas- situation or an instance wherein a person or a group is presented with a problem and
that a difficult choice has to be made between or among two or more courses of action.

- conflicts between moral principles.

 These are the features of a moral dilemma:

(a) a person is ought to perform a solution to a dilemma;

(b) a person can perform either of the choices to solve the dilemma but cannot do them both;

(c) a person, no matter what course of action s/he chooses, will fulfill a moral principle and
transgress another moral principle at the same

Three Levels of Moral Dilemma

A. Personal Dilemmas- experienced by a single person and are resolved by this person alone who
is experiencing the dilemma. This means that a person will not depend on a collective decision but
will depend of his/her own moral reasoning guided by the moral principle s/he is following or
believing.

B. Organizational Dilemmas- experienced by people who belong to the same group or

organization. The dilemma experienced in this level requires a collective decision of all the members
of the organization or majority of the members at least. This does not depend on a decision made by
a single person in the organization.

C. Structural Dilemmas- experienced by two or more organizations. This dilemma involves more
than just an organization but two or more of them to answer a certain problem. It may pertain to a
national or international concern or matter, concern of a province with many cities or municipalities,
concern of a city with many barangays.

LESSON II: POSTMODERN FRAMEWORK OF THINKING

Epistemology -branch of philosophy which deals with the study of knowledge. It is known as the
philosophy of knowledge.

Modern epistemology or theory of knowledge - claims that there is an objective truth that constitutes
the reality in the world.

Objective truth could be studied and known in the various disciplines or fields of learning assumed to be
distinct from one another. Each discipline has its own method of knowing about specialized truth out
there in the world.

Postmodern Framework and Interdisciplinary Approach towards Integrated Knowledge: The New
Paradigm

John Francois Lyotard (1984)- starting that decade, we were no longer in the modern age, but in the
period after the modern, in a word, “postmodern”.

Postmodernity - general condition of human, social and cultural life of every person at the present times

- asserts that there is one objective reality out there in the world, but this reality can never be
known by people because they are determined by their own subjectivities, interests and
prejudices.
Four different models that may be formulated through the interaction of the different perspectives:

1) Respect- they could respect one another by not interacting at all; this leads to the total
independence of perspectives but to the stagnancy of truth.

2) Confrontation- the different positionalities could confront or clash against one another, resulting to
the dissolution of truth.

3) Imposition- one point of view could impose its truth upon the other, leading to the privileging of this
truth held by the powerful who lays supreme, over the truth held by the weak who is silenced and
subordinated; this is the truth created by the narratives of colonialization and globalization, and taken
up in discourse analysis and deconstruction.

4) Integration- the various points of view could be integrated with one another, leading to the
production of collaborated and negotiated truth, and the more perspectives intersect, to the
construction of many encircling truths which approximate the world. The last one is the model of
integration adapted from postmodernist thinking about education. This is also the ideal model of
ecumenism in interreligious dialogue.

Culture in Moral Behavior

Culture- includes all the things individuals learn while growing up among particular group: attitudes,
standards of morality, rules of etiquette, perceptions of reality, language, notions about the proper way
to live, beliefs about how females and males should interact, ideas about how the world works and so
forth.

Culture’s Role in Moral Behavior

Culture is learned as children grow up in society and discover how their parents and others around them
interpret the world.

People learn morals and aspects of right or wrong from transmitters of culture:parents, teachers, novels,
films and television.

Social learning – the process by which individuals acquire knowledge from others in the groups to which
they belong, as a normal part of childhood.

Moral Standards as Social Convention and the Social Conditioning Theory

Social Convention – those things agreed upon by people, like through their authorities. Convention also
refers to the usual or customary ways through which things are done within a group.

Social conditioning Theory – our moral consciousness or the feeling that we are obliged to act morally,
are nothing but outcomes of social conditioning.

Cultural Relativism in Ethics

Cultural Relativism – a theory in Ethics which holds that ethical judgments have their origin either in
individual or cultural standards.
Moral Relativism – it says that no act is good or bad objectively, and there is no single objective
universal standard through which we can evaluate the truth of moral judgments.

Valuable Lessons from Ethical Relativism

It encourages tolerance to co-exist and live peacefully in a society.

It teaches open-mindedness.

The Theory’s Ethical Faults

Subject interpretation of “good”. (Example: Hitler’s Nazi Regime, killing millions of

Jews)

It discourages analytical thinking and independent decision-making in Ethics.

Feelings and Moral Decision-Making

Role of Feelings in Moral Decision-Making

Ethics is a matter of emotion

Ethical judgments are highly emotional.

Ethical Subjectivism- Morality is based on each person’s feelings.

-There is no objective morality.

-It holds that truth or falsity of ethical propositions are dependent on the feelings, attitudes or standards
of a person or group of persons.

Emotivism

Moral judgments- express positive and negative feelings and are not statement of facts but are mere
expressions of the emotions of the speaker.

Emotivism- intends influence other’s behavior; and to express the speaker’s attitude.

Examples: Stealing is immoral; killing is immoral; cheating is immoral; bullying is immoral.

Difference between Subjectivism and Emotivism

“Cheating is immoral.”

In Subjectivism, it is a statement of fact about one’s attitude which could be true or false.

In Emotivism, it denies any fact at all. Instead, one’s utterance is viewed as equivalent to something such
as “Cheating is detestable” or “Do not cheat”.

Evaluating Subjectivism and Emotivism

Ethical subjectivism and Emotivism suggest that we are to identify our moral principles by simply
following our feelings.

Dangers of these theories: letting children decide based on their feelings; weak foundation on the topics
slavery, racism, discrimination and other societal issues.

Each of us is infallible with regard to morality.

Feelings can help in making the right decisions

Feelings play a crucial role on the following:

Selecting a course to take;

A job to assume;

Selecting a person to marry; and others.

Our feelings and emotions should be anchored with right moral principles.