what does it mean to use ethics in your thinking

What is ethics?

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

Ideals is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is besides described as moral philosophy.

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

Ethics covers the following dilemmas:

• how to live a good life
• our rights and responsibilities
• the language of right and incorrect
• moral decisions - what is good and bad?

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

Approaches to ethics

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

• Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral sentence. It looks at the origins and meaning of upstanding principles.
• Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for what is right or incorrect.
• Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishment

What use is ethics?

Ethics needs to provide answers. Photograph: 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 exercise this. They argue that if a person realises that it would be morally good to exercise something then it would be irrational for that person not to practise information technology.

Just human beings ofttimes bear irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head suggests a dissimilar course of activeness.

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

Ethics can provide a moral map

Near moral bug become us pretty worked upwards - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters. Considering these are such emotional bug we frequently let our hearts exercise the arguing while our brains simply go with the flow.

Only in that location's another way of tackling these problems, and that's where philosophers tin can come up in - they offer the states ethical rules and principles that enable us to take a libation view of moral problems.

So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we tin can utilise to notice our manner through hard problems.

Ideals can pinpoint a disagreement

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

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

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

Ethics doesn't give right answers

Ideals doesn't always evidence the right answer to moral problems.

Indeed more and more than people think that for many ethical issues there isn't a single correct answer - just a gear up of principles that tin be applied to particular cases to requite those involved some articulate choices.

Some philosophers become further and say that all ethics can do is eliminate confusion and analyze the issues. Afterwards that information technology's up to each individual to come to their own conclusions.

Ideals can give several answers

Many people desire 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 'correct' affair, and even if they can't work out what that right thing is, they similar the idea that 'somewhere' there is one correct answer.

But often there isn't one right respond - there may be several right answers, or merely 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 ain choices and actions, rather than falling back on convenient rules and customs.

Ideals and people

Ethics is almost the 'other'

Ethics is concerned with other people ©

At the middle of ethics is a business about something or someone other than ourselves and our own desires and self-involvement.

Ideals is concerned with other people's interests, with the interests of society, with God'southward interests, with "ultimate appurtenances", and and then on.

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

Ethics every bit source of group strength

One trouble with ethics is the style it'southward often used as a weapon.

If a group believes that a particular activity is "wrong" it can and then utilise morality equally the justification for attacking those who exercise that activity.

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

Good people likewise as adept deportment

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

Virtue Ideals 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 upstanding problems could be solved in ane of two ways:

• by discovering what God wanted people to practise
• by thinking rigorously most moral principles and problems

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

But now fifty-fifty philosophers are less sure that it's possible to devise a satisfactory and complete theory of ideals - at least not 1 that leads to conclusions.

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

In this view, the office of ethics is limited to clarifying 'what'due south at stake' in item upstanding problems.

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

Are ethical statements objectively truthful?

Do ethical statements provide data about anything other than man opinions and attitudes?

• Ethical realists call back that human beings discover ethical truths that already have an independent being.
• Ethical non-realists think that human being beings invent upstanding truths.

The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many different upstanding codes and moral behavior. So if at that place are real ethical truths out there (wherever!) then human beings don't seem to be very good at discovering them.

I grade of ethical realism teaches that ethical backdrop be independently of human beings, and that ethical statements give knowledge about the objective globe.

To put it another style; the ethical backdrop of the globe and the things in it be and remain the same, regardless of what people think or experience - or whether people recall or feel nearly them at all.

On the face of information technology, it [upstanding realism] means the view that moral qualities such equally wrongness, and as well moral facts such as the fact that an act was wrong, be in rerum natura, so that, if 1 says that a certain human activity was wrong, i is saying that in that location existed, somehow, somewhere, this quality of wrongness, and that it had to be in that location if that human action were to exist incorrect.

R. M Hare, Essays in Upstanding Theory, 1989

Four ethical 'isms'

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

That's the sort of question that only a philosopher would ask, only information technology'south really a very useful way of getting a clear idea of what'south going on when people talk about moral issues.

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

We can show some of the different things I might be doing when I say 'murder is bad' by rewriting that statement to show what I really hateful:

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

Moral realism

Moral realism is based on the thought that there are real objective moral facts or truths in the universe. Moral statements provide factual information near those truths.

Subjectivism

Subjectivism teaches that moral judgments are nothing more statements of a person's feelings or attitudes, and that ethical statements do not contain factual truths almost goodness or badness.

In more than item: subjectivists say that moral statements are statements almost the feelings, attitudes and emotions that that particular person or group has well-nigh a particular issue.

If a person says something is good or bad they are telling the states about the positive or negative feelings that they have about that something.

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

These statements are truthful if the person does concur the appropriate attitude or have the appropriate feelings. They are false if the person doesn't.

Emotivism

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

This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral statement doesn't provide information near the speaker'due south feelings about the topic simply expresses those feelings.

When an emotivist says "murder is incorrect" it'due south like saying "down with murder" or "murder, yecch!" or just proverb "murder" while pulling a horrified face, or making a thumbs-downwards gesture at the same time as saying "murder is wrong".

So when someone makes a moral judgement they show their feelings almost something. Some theorists also suggest that in expressing a feeling the person gives an instruction to others about how to human action towards the subject matter.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivists think that ethical statements are instructions or recommendations.

So if I say something is practiced, I'm recommending you to do it, and if I say something is bad, I'chiliad telling you not to do information technology.

At that place is most always a prescriptive chemical element in whatsoever real-earth ethical statement: any upstanding statement can be reworked (with a fleck of effort) into a statement with an 'ought' in it. For example: "lying is wrong" can be rewritten as "people ought not to tell lies".

Where does ethics come from?

Philosophers have several answers to this question:

• God and organized religion
• Man censor and intuition
• a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and their effects
• the example of good homo beings
• a desire for the all-time for people in each unique state of affairs
• political ability

God-based ethics - supernaturalism

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

So, something is practiced because God says it is, and the way to pb a good life is to practice what God wants.

Intuitionism

Intuitionists recollect that good and bad are real objective properties that can't exist broken downwards into component parts. Something is good because it's good; its goodness doesn't need justifying or proving.

Intuitionists call back that goodness or badness tin can be detected by adults - they say that human beings have an intuitive moral sense that enables them to discover existent moral truths.

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

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

Don't get dislocated. For the intuitionist:

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

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

Consequentialism

This is the upstanding theory that virtually non-religious people think they use every twenty-four hours. Information technology bases morality on the consequences of human actions and non on the actions themselves.

Consequentialism teaches that people should practice whatever produces the greatest amount of good consequences.

1 famous mode of putting this is 'the greatest proficient for the greatest number of people'.

The near mutual forms of consequentialism are the diverse versions of utilitarianism, which favour actions that produce the greatest corporeality of happiness.

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

Ii problems with consequentialism are:

• information technology can lead to the conclusion that some quite dreadful acts are good
• predicting and evaluating the consequences of actions is often very difficult

Non-consequentialism or deontological ideals

Non-consequentialism is concerned with the actions themselves and not with the consequences. Information technology'southward the theory that people are using when they refer to "the principle of the affair".

It teaches that some acts are correct or wrong in themselves, whatever the consequences, and people should act accordingly.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics looks at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of deportment - 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 mode individuals live their lives, and less concerned in assessing particular actions.

It develops the idea of good actions by looking at the way virtuous people express their inner goodness in the things that they practise.

To put it very only, virtue ethics teaches that an action is right if and simply if information technology is an action that a virtuous person would practice in the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is someone who has a especially good character.

State of affairs ethics

State of affairs ideals rejects prescriptive rules and argues that private ethical decisions should be fabricated co-ordinate to the unique situation.

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

Ideals and ideology

Some philosophers teach that ethics is the codified of political credo, and that the function of ethics is to state, enforce and preserve particular political beliefs.

They ordinarily continue to say that ideals is used by the dominant political elite equally a tool to command anybody else.

More cynical writers suggest that ability elites enforce an upstanding code on other people that helps them control those people, but do not utilize this code to their ain behaviour.

Are there universal moral rules?

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

Moral absolutism

Some people retrieve there are such universal rules that apply to everyone. This sort of thinking is chosen moral absolutism.

Moral authoritarianism argues that in that location are some moral rules that are e'er truthful, that these rules can be discovered and that these rules utilize to everyone.

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

Absolutism takes a universal view of humanity - there is one set of rules for anybody - which enables the drafting of universal rules - such as the Announcement of Human being Rights.

Religious views of ideals 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 deed is adept or bad
• Authoritarianism doesn't fit with respect for diversity and tradition

Different cultures have had unlike attitudes to problems like war ©

Moral relativism

Moral relativists say that if you look at different cultures or unlike periods in history you'll find that they have dissimilar moral rules.

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

Moral relativists think that that'due south but fine, and dispute the thought that there are some objective and discoverable 'super-rules' that all cultures ought to obey. They believe that relativism respects the diversity of human being societies and responds to the different circumstances surrounding human 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 a super-charged class of etiquette
• Many of us think we can be good without befitting to all the rules of society
• Moral relativism has a trouble with arguing confronting the majority view: if about people in a social club concur with detail rules, that's the end of the matter. 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"
• Whatsoever choice of social group equally the foundation of ideals is spring to be arbitrary
• Moral relativism doesn't provide any style to bargain with moral differences between societies

Moral somewhere-in-between-ism

Near non-philosophers think that both of the above theories have some good points and think that

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

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/intro_1.shtml

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