Philosophy of Ethics
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Contents |
Introduction
The Philosophy of Ethics can be described as the "science of morality". It deals with questions such as:
What actions are 'good'? Just what does 'good' mean? How do we live the 'good life'?
The formal study of ethics in a serious and analytical sense began with the early Greeks, and later Romans. Important Greek ethicists include the Sophists and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who developed ethical naturalism. The study of ethics was developed further by Epicurus and the epicurean movement, and by Zeno and the stoics.
Although not developed in a formal and analytical sense, the subject of ethics was of great concern to the Hindu people in Ancient India. For the first time in world history, they described the highest ethical standards called "absolute ethics" by Albert Schweitzer. Millennia later, the Society of Friends or the Quakers reached as high as the Jinas. See also Ethics in religion
In Europe, the formal study of philosophy stagnated until the era of Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and others. It was in those days that the debate between ethics based on natural law and "divine law" gained a new importance.
Modern Western philosophy began with the work of greats such as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Their work was followed up by the utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Arthur Schopenhauer must be mentioned here because of his Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral. He was the first European philosopher to start out from the ethical achievements of Ancient India. The study of analytic ethics went on with G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross, followed by the emotivists, C. L. Stevenson and A. J. Ayer. Existentialism was developed by writers such as Jean Paul Sartre. Some modern philosophers who have done serious philosophical writing on ethics include John Rawls, Elliot N. Dorff, Jürgen Habermas, Christine Korsgaard and Charles Hartshorne.
Disputes of definition
There are at least five well-recognized ways to approach this subject:
Philosophers sometimes call it the "science of morality" , but generally emphasize its non-empirical character. Theologians consider ethics a branch of theology, especially in Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Roman Catholicism and some Fundamentalist Protestant sects. Ethics is inseparable from economics in some theories, notably Marxism and social ecology, from feminism, and from gender in Queer studies. These views are said to represent workers, women, and sexual outcasts who have historically been degraded by traditional ethics. Professionals usually use or interpret "ethics" to refer to elements of professional practice that are part of dispute resolution or which have some great potential for: bodily harm, urban planning, medicine, law, politics and theories of civics. A fifth way derives from theories of nonviolence, pacifism, anarchism ,and secession as a route to peace. Sometimes, ethics is simply regarded as the de-escalation and mediation of conflicts.
Divisions of ethics
In analytic philosophy, ethics is traditionally divided into three fields: Metaethics, Normative ethics (including value theory and the theory of conduct) and applied ethics – which is seen to be derived, top-down, from normative and thus meta-ethics.
Metaethics
Metaethics is the investigation of the nature of ethical statements. It involves such questions as: Are ethical claims truth-apt, i.e., capable of being true or false, or are they, for example, expressions of emotion (see cognitivism and non-cognitivism)? If they are truth-apt, are they ever true? If they are ever true, what is the nature of the facts that they express? And are they ever true absolutely, or always only relative to some individual, society, or culture? (See moral relativism, cultural relativism.) Metaethics is one of the most important fields in philosophy.
Metaethics studies the nature of ethical sentences and attitudes. This includes such questions as what "good" and "right" mean, whether and how we know what is right and good, whether moral values are objective, and how ethical attitudes motivate us. Often this is derived from some list of moral absolutes, e.g. a religious moral code, whether explicit or not. Some would view aesthetics as itself a form of meta-ethics.
Metaethics also investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves.
Normative ethics
Normative ethics bridges the gap between metaethics and applied ethics. It is the attempt to arrive at practical moral standards that tell us right from wrong, and how to live moral lives. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others.
One branch of normative ethics is theory of conduct; this is the study of right and wrong, of obligation and permissions, of duty, of what is above and beyond the call of duty, and of what is so wrong as to be evil. Theories of conduct propose standards of morality, or moral codes or rules. For example, the following would be the sort of rules that a theory of conduct would discuss (though different theories will differ on the merit of each of these particular rules): "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"; "The right action is the action that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number"; "Stealing is wrong". Theories of moral conduct can be distinguished from etiquette by their concern with finding guidelines for action that are not dependent entirely on social convention. For example, it may not be a breach of etiquette to fail to give money to help those in poverty, but it could still be a failure to act morally. Another branch of normative ethics is theory of value; this looks at what things are deemed to be valuable. Suppose we have decided that certain things are intrinsically good, or are more valuable than other things that are also intrinsically good. Given this, the next big question is what would this imply about how we should live our lives? The theory of value also asks: What sorts of things are good? What sorts of situations are good? Is pleasure always good? Is it good for people to be equally well-off? Is it intrinsically good for beautiful objects to exist? Or: What does "good" mean? It may literally define "good" and "bad" for a community or society. [Criticism: Theory of value is not a part of normative ethics, though normative ethics presupposes some theory of value. For example, there are aethetic values which may be amoral, i.e., neutral in regard to conduct.
Ethics by cases
By far the most common way to approach applied ethics is by resolving individual cases. This is, not coincidentally, also the way business and law tend to be taught. Casuistry is one such application of case-based reasoning to applied ethics. Almost all American states have tried to discourage dishonest practices by their public employees and elected officials by establishing an Ethics Commission for their state.
Bernard Crick in 1982 offered a more socially-centered view, that politics was the only applied ethics, that it was how cases were really resolved, and that "political virtues" were in fact necessary in all matters where human morality and interests were destined to clash. This and other views of modern universals is dealt with below under Global Ethics.
The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry. For example, the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, "where do rights come from?" and "what kind of beings have rights?"
Descriptive ethics
Some philosophers rely on descriptive ethics and choices made and unchallenged by a society or culture to derive categories, which typically vary by context. This leads to situational ethics and situated ethics. These philosophers often view aesthetics and etiquette and arbitration as more fundamental, percolating 'bottom up' to imply, rather than explicitly state, theories of value or of conduct. In these views ethics is not derived from a top-down a priori "philosophy" (many would reject that word) but rather is strictly derived from observations of actual choices made in practice:
Ethical codes applied by various groups. Some consider aesthetics itself the basis of ethics – and a personal moral core developed through art and storytelling as very influential in one's later ethical choices. Informal theories of etiquette which tend to be less rigorous and more situational. Some consider etiquette a simple negative ethics, i.e. where can one evade an uncomfortable truth without doing wrong? One notable advocate of this view is Judith Martin ("Miss Manners"). In this view, ethics is more a summary of common sense social decisions. Practices in arbitration and law, e.g. the claim by Rushworth Kidder that ethics itself is a matter of balancing "right versus right", i.e. putting priorities on two things that are both right, but which must be traded off carefully in each situation. This view many consider to have potential to reform ethics as a practice, but it is not as widely held as the 'aesthetic' or 'common sense' views listed above. Observed choices made by ordinary people, without expert aid or advice, who vote, buy and decide what is worth fighting about. This is a major concern of sociology, political science and economics. Those who embrace such descriptive approaches tend to reject overtly normative ones. There are exceptions, such as the movement to more moral purchasing.
Analytic Ethics
The descriptive view of ethics is modern and in many ways more empirical. But because the above are dealt with more deeply in their own articles, the rest of this article will focus on the formal academic categories, which are derived from classical Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle.
First, we need to define an ethical sentence, also called a normative statement. An ethical sentence is one that is used to make either a positive or a negative (moral) evaluation of something. Ethical sentences use words such as "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," "moral," "immoral," and so on. Here are some examples:
"Sally is a good person." "People should not steal." "The Simpson verdict was unjust." "Honesty is a virtue." "One ought not to break the law." In contrast, a non-ethical sentence would be a sentence that does not serve to (morally) evaluate something. Examples would include:
"Sally is a tall person." "Someone took the stereo out of my car." "Simpson was acquitted at his trial." "Many people are dishonest." "I dislike it when people break the law."
Is ethics futile?
The whole assumption of the field of ethics is that agreement is possible. And since agreement is possible, ethics is possible.
The term ethics is actually derived from the ancient Greek ethos, meaning moral character. Mores, from which morality is derived, meant social rules or etiquette or inhibitions from the society. In modern times, these meanings are often somewhat reversed, with ethics being the "science" and morals referring to one's conduct and character. But it is significant that the origins of the words reflect the tension between an inner-driven (character) and an outer-driven (conduct) view of what constitutes morality.
Many thanks to Wikipedia Ethics page for much of this page. Released under the GNU FPL License.
Philosophers
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