ETHICS

ETHICS
• the study of moral principles and values, focusing on what is
considered right or wrong, good or bad. It explores how these
principles guide human conduct and decision-making, particularly
within academic and professional contexts. Studying ethics helps
students develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-
making skills, preparing them to navigate complex situations with
integrity.
1. Difference between Moral
Standards
Moral Standards
a.) The norms about the kinds of actions believed to be normally right
and wrong.
b.) Values place on the kinds of objects believed to be good and bad.
C.) Moral Standards come from: Family-Friends-School-T.V.-Music
Characteristics of Moral Standard
• Involve with serious injuries or benefits
(e.g. Theft, rape, murder, child abused, assault, fraud,slander)
• Not established by law or legislative. Moral standards rest on the
adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify them.
• Should be preferred to other interest.
• Based on imperial considerations
• Associated with special emotions and a special vocabulary.
Non-moral Standards
• Standards of etiquette by which we judge manners as good or bad.
• Standards we call the law by which we judge legal right and wrong
• Standards of aesthetics – good or bad art.
• The athletic standards – how well a game is being played.
2. What are moral dilemmas?
• Moral dilemmas also known as a situation in w/c there is a choice to
be made between two options, neither of w/c resolves the situation
in an ethically acceptable fashion. In such cases, societal and ethical
guidelines can provide no satisfactory outcome for the chooser.
3. The three levels of moral
dilemma
1. Individual Level - Since business are run by people, the ethical standards of
individuals may well have a very different set of ethical standards from their employer
and this can lead to tensions. Factors such as peer pressure, personal financial
position, and socio-economic status all may influence individual ethical standards.
2. Organizational Level – At a company or corporate level, ethical standards are
embedded in the policies and procedures for the organization, and form an important
foundation on w/c business strategy is built. These policies drive from the influences
felt at macro level and therefore help a business to respond to changing pressures in
the most effective way.
3. Structural Level – At the systematic or structural level, ethics defined and influenced
by the wider operating environment in which the company exist. Factors such as
political pressures, economic conditions, social attitudes to certain businesses, and
even business regulation can influence a company’s operating standards and policies.
4. On freedom as foundation for
Moral Acts: A critical Study
• Nowadays, our ordinary moral thinking is under a tremendous strain,
for two reasons. On the one hand, it is brought into a kind of
competition with a node of thinking that is quite different in nature.
Of course I have in mind, at least in western societies. While the main
criteria of ethical thinking are good and evil or right and wrong,
technological thinking has as its main criteria efficiency and considers
only effectiveness in all our operations, how to make things go faster,
how make reduce cost.
• On the other hand, people today may have to face the fact that their
neighbors have quite different moral standards that may nevertheless
have to recognize to be as valid as their own.
• Ethical nihilism is nothing new among those who consider their personal
power, fame, or wealth to be the only things worth fighting for. But the
the fact that many people believe that they can decide by by themselves
what is right and what is wrong is something new and most peculiar.
• Of course, these terms – justice, love and freedom - are solemn, so
loaded with meaning, and used and misused to such an extent, that the
idea of not having to employ the any more may feel liberating.
• Do we seriously want to get rid of these burdensome notions of justice,
love and freedom? If so, we only have to give in to the tyranny of the
technological mind, w/c is not only ready to rule the external world of
things and products, but also the internal world of our thoughts and
desires.
• Technological thinking is indeed the greatest instrument of liberation at
our disposal and we can use it to build up as well as to tear down
whatever we fancy.
Activity
Write a 150-word essay on the topic “Am I Moral”