Ethics Is Best Described As

What use is ideals?

American motorway sign reading 'Answers: next exit' Ethics needs to provide answers. Photograph: Geoffrey Holman ©

If upstanding theories are to be useful in exercise, they demand to impact the way homo beings carry.

Some philosophers think that ethics does practise this. They contend that if a person realises that it would be morally good to do something then it would exist irrational for that person not to do it.

Merely human beings frequently behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head suggests a unlike course of activity.

However, ideals does provide good tools for thinking about moral problems.

Ethics can provide a moral map

Almost moral issues get us pretty worked upward - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters. Because these are such emotional bug we often let our hearts practise the arguing while our brains just become with the flow.

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

So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we can apply to observe our fashion through difficult issues.

Ideals can pinpoint a disagreement

Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue tin can oftentimes detect that what they disagree about is just one particular function of the consequence, and that they broadly concord on everything else.

That tin can take a lot of oestrus out of the statement, and sometimes fifty-fifty hint at a way for them to resolve their trouble.

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

Ethics doesn't give right answers

Ideals doesn't e'er evidence the right answer to moral issues.

Indeed more than and more people remember that for many ethical issues in that location isn't a unmarried correct answer - simply a set of principles that tin be applied to item cases to give those involved some clear choices.

Some philosophers go further and say that all ethics tin do is eliminate confusion and clarify the bug. Afterward that information technology's upwardly to each individual to come to their own conclusions.

Ideals can give several answers

Many people want at that place to be a single right respond to upstanding questions. They find moral ambiguity difficult to live with because they genuinely desire to do the 'right' affair, and even if they can't work out what that right thing is, they similar the idea that 'somewhere' there is one right reply.

Only often there isn't ane right answer - at that place may exist several correct answers, or just some to the lowest degree worst answers - and the individual must choose betwixt them.

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

Ideals and people

Ethics is about the 'other'

Hand holding and supporting another hand Ideals is concerned with other people ©

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

Ideals 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 idea to something beyond themselves.

Ethics as source of group strength

One trouble with ethics is the style it's oft used equally a weapon.

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

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

Good people besides as expert actions

Ideals is not only near the morality of particular courses of activeness, merely information technology's also about the goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life.

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

Searching for the source of right and wrong

At times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could exist solved in i of ii ways:

by discovering what God wanted people to practice
past thinking rigorously about moral principles and issues

If a person did this properly they would be led to the correct conclusion.

Simply 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 non to conclusions but to 'decisions'.

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

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

Four ethical 'isms'

When a person says "murder is bad" what are they doing?

That's the sort of question that simply a philosopher would inquire, merely it'south actually a very useful way of getting a clear idea of what's going on when people talk about moral problems.

The dissimilar 'isms' regard the person uttering the statement equally doing different things.

We can show some of the dissimilar things I might be doing when I say 'murder is bad' by rewriting that statement to prove what I actually mean:

I might exist making a argument about an ethical fact
- "It is wrong to murder"
- This is moral realism
I might be making a statement about my own feelings
- "I disapprove of murder"
- This is subjectivism
I might be expressing my feelings
- "Down with murder"
- This is emotivism
I might be giving an instruction or a prohibition
- "Don't murder people"
- This is prescriptivism

Moral realism

Moral realism is based on the idea that in that location are real objective moral facts or truths in the universe. Moral statements provide factual information about those truths.

Subjectivism

Subjectivism teaches that moral judgments are cipher more than statements of a person's feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements practise not contain factual truths about goodness or badness.

In more than detail: subjectivists say that moral statements are statements near the feelings, attitudes and emotions that that particular person or grouping has about a particular result.

If a person says something is skilful or bad they are telling us nearly the positive or negative feelings that they accept about that something.

So if someone says 'murder is wrong' they are telling united states of america that they disapprove of murder.

These statements are true if the person does hold the appropriate attitude or take the appropriate feelings. They are faux if the person doesn't.

Emotivism

Emotivism is the view that moral claims are no more expressions of approval or disapproval.

This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral argument doesn't provide information about the speaker's feelings virtually the topic but expresses those feelings.

When an emotivist says "murder is wrong" information technology's like saying "down with murder" or "murder, yecch!" or just maxim "murder" while pulling a horrified face up, or making a thumbs-down gesture at the aforementioned fourth dimension equally saying "murder is wrong".

And then when someone makes a moral judgement they show their feelings about something. Some theorists besides suggest that in expressing a feeling the person gives an instruction to others near how to act towards the discipline matter.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivists recollect that ethical statements are instructions or recommendations.

So if I say something is good, I'k recommending you to exercise information technology, and if I say something is bad, I'm telling you non to practise information technology.

In that location is almost e'er a prescriptive element in any real-earth ethical statement: any ethical statement can be reworked (with a bit of endeavour) into a statement with an 'ought' in it. For instance: "lying is wrong" tin be rewritten as "people ought not to tell lies".

Where does ethics come up from?

Philosophers have several answers to this question:

God and religion
Human conscience and intuition
a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of deportment and their furnishings
the example of good human beings
a desire for the best for people in each unique situation
political power

God-based ethics - supernaturalism

Supernaturalism makes ethics inseparable from religion. It teaches that the only source of moral rules is God.

So, something is expert because God says information technology is, and the fashion to lead a good life is to do what God wants.

Intuitionism

Intuitionists think that expert and bad are real objective properties that tin can't be broken down into component parts. Something is good because it'southward good; its goodness doesn't demand justifying or proving.

Intuitionists think that goodness or badness tin can be detected by adults - they say that man beings have an intuitive moral sense that enables them to detect real moral truths.

They think that basic moral truths of what is good and bad are cocky-evident to a person who directs their mind towards moral issues.

So good things are the things that a sensible person realises are good if they spend some time pondering the subject.

Don't go confused. For the intuitionist:

moral truths are non discovered by rational argument
moral truths are not discovered by having a hunch
moral truths are not discovered by having a feeling

It'south more a sort of moral 'aha' moment - a realisation of the truth.

Consequentialism

This is the ethical theory that nigh non-religious people think they use every twenty-four hour period. It bases morality on the consequences of human being deportment and not on the actions themselves.

Consequentialism teaches that people should exercise any produces the greatest amount of good consequences.

One famous way of putting this is 'the greatest adept for the greatest number of people'.

The most mutual forms of consequentialism are the various versions of utilitarianism, which favour deportment that produce the greatest amount of happiness.

Despite its obvious common-sense appeal, consequentialism turns out to exist a complicated theory, and doesn't provide a complete solution to all ethical problems.

Two problems with consequentialism are:

it tin can pb to the conclusion that some quite dreadful acts are good
predicting and evaluating the consequences of deportment is often very difficult

Non-consequentialism or deontological ideals

Not-consequentialism is concerned with the deportment themselves and non with the consequences. It's the theory that people are using when they refer to "the principle of the thing".

Information technology teaches that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, whatever the consequences, and people should deed accordingly.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics looks at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of actions - indeed some philosophers of this school deny that at that place can be such things every bit universal ethical rules.

Virtue ethics is particularly concerned with the style individuals live their lives, and less concerned in assessing detail actions.

Information technology develops the idea of adept actions past looking at the fashion virtuous people limited their inner goodness in the things that they do.

To put it very only, virtue ideals teaches that an action is correct if and just if information technology is an action that a virtuous person would do in the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is someone who has a specially practiced character.

State of affairs ethics

Situation ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that individual upstanding decisions should exist made according to the unique situation.

Rather than following rules the determination maker should follow a desire to seek the best for the people involved. There are no moral rules or rights - each case is unique and deserves a unique solution.

Ethics and ideology

Some philosophers teach that ethics is the codification of political ideology, and that the office of ethics is to state, enforce and preserve detail political beliefs.

They usually keep to say that ethics is used past the dominant political elite as a tool to control everyone else.

More cynical writers suggest that power elites enforce an ethical code on other people that helps them control those people, but do non apply this code to their own behaviour.

Are there universal moral rules?

One of the big questions in moral philosophy is whether or not in that location are unchanging moral rules that apply in all cultures and at all times.

Moral absolutism

Some people think in that location are such universal rules that utilise to everyone. This sort of thinking is called moral absolutism.

Moral absolutism argues that there are some moral rules that are always true, that these rules can exist discovered and that these rules apply to anybody.

Immoral acts - acts that break these moral rules - are incorrect in themselves, regardless of the circumstances or the consequences of those acts.

Authoritarianism takes a universal view of humanity - at that place is one fix of rules for everyone - which enables the drafting of universal rules - such as the Proclamation of Man Rights.

Religious views of ethics tend to be absolutist.

Why people disagree with moral absolutism:

Many of us experience that the consequences of an act or the circumstances surrounding it are relevant to whether that human action is good or bad
Authoritarianism doesn't fit with respect for multifariousness and tradition

Moral relativism

Moral relativists say that if yous wait at different cultures or different periods in history yous'll find that they have different moral rules.

Therefore it makes sense to say that "good" refers to the things that a particular group of people corroborate of.

Moral relativists call up that that's only fine, and dispute the idea that there are some objective and discoverable 'super-rules' that all cultures ought to obey. They believe that relativism respects the diversity of human societies and responds to the unlike circumstances surrounding human being acts.

Why people disagree with moral relativism:

Many of us feel that moral rules have more than to them than the general agreement of a group of people - that morality is more than a super-charged form of etiquette
Many of us think we can be good without conforming to all the rules of society
Moral relativism has a trouble with arguing against the bulk view: if most people in a society agree with particular rules, that's the end of the thing. Many of the improvements in the world have come about because people opposed the prevailing ethical view - moral relativists are forced to regard such people as behaving "desperately"
Any choice of social grouping as the foundation of ethics is bound to be arbitrary
Moral relativism doesn't provide any way to deal with moral differences between societies

Moral somewhere-in-betwixt-ism

Nigh not-philosophers call back that both of the above theories accept some good points and think that

there are a few absolute ethical rules
but a lot of ethical rules depend on the culture