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Ethics guide

Ethics: a general introduction More on introducing Ethics

Ethics are a system of moral principles and a branch of philosophy which defines what is
good for individuals and society. See also

Religion and Ethics home

What is ethics? Religions

On this page
At its simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect
What is ethics? how people make decisions and lead their lives.
Around the BBC
What use is ethics? Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society
Ethics and people and is also described as moral philosophy. Science - Social responsibility test

Are ethical statements Radio 4 - Moral Maze

The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean
objectively true?
custom, habit, character or disposition. Radio Ulster - Everyday Ethics
Four ethical 'isms'
Ethics covers the following dilemmas:
Where does ethics
come from?
how to live a good life Elsewhere on the web
Are there universal
moral rules? our rights and responsibilities
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
the language of right and wrong
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Print this page moral decisions - what is good and bad?

Our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions,

philosophies and cultures. They infuse debates on topics like
abortion, human rights and professional conduct.

Approaches to ethics

Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three

areas: metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.

Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement. It looks

at the origins and meaning of ethical principles.
Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral
judgements and the criteria for what is right or wrong.
Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal
rights and capital punishment

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What use is ethics?

If ethical theories are to be useful in
practice, they need to affect the
way human beings behave.

Some philosophers think that ethics

does do this. They argue that if a
person realises that it would be
morally good to do something then
it would be irrational for that person
not to do it. Ethics needs to provide answers.
Photo: Geoffrey Holman ©

But human beings often behave

irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head
suggests a different course of action.
However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral
issues.

Ethics can provide a moral map

Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion

and euthanasia for starters. Because these are such emotional
issues we often let our hearts do the arguing while our brains
just go with the flow.

But there's another way of tackling these issues, and that's

where philosophers can come in - they offer us ethical rules and
principles that enable us to take a cooler view of moral
problems.

So ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we

can use to find our way through difficult issues.

Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement

Using the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a

moral issue can often find that what they disagree about is just
one particular part of the issue, and that they broadly agree on
everything else.

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

But sometimes ethics doesn't provide people with the sort of

help that they really want.

Ethics doesn't give right answers

Ethics doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems.

Indeed more and more people think that for many ethical issues
there isn't a single right answer - just a set of principles that can
be applied to particular cases to give those involved some clear
choices.

Some philosophers go further and say that all ethics can do is

eliminate confusion and clarify the issues. After that it's up to
each individual to come to their own conclusions.

Ethics can give several answers

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

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

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Ethics and people

Ethics is about the 'other'

At the heart of ethics is a concern about

something or someone other than
ourselves and our own desires and self-
interest.

Ethics 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 thought to
something beyond themselves.

Ethics as source of group strength

One problem with ethics is the way it's

often used as a weapon.

If a group believes that a particular

activity is "wrong" it can then use morality
as the justification for attacking those who
Ethics is concerned with practice that activity.
other people ©

When people do this, they often see those

who they regard as immoral as in some way less human or
deserving of respect than themselves; sometimes with tragic
consequences.

Good people as well as good actions

Ethics is not only about the morality of particular courses of

action, but it's also about the goodness of individuals and what it
means to live a good life.

Virtue Ethics 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 ethical problems

could be solved in one of two ways:

by discovering what God wanted people to do

by thinking rigorously about moral principles and problems

If a person did this properly they would be led to the right

conclusion.

But 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 not to

conclusions but to 'decisions'.

In this view, the role of ethics is limited to clarifying 'what's at

stake' in particular ethical problems.

Philosophy can help identify the range of ethical methods,

conversations and value systems that can be applied to a
particular problem. But after these things have been made clear,
each person must make their own individual decision as to what
to do, and then react appropriately to the consequences.

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Are ethical statements objectively true?

Do ethical statements provide information about anything other
than human opinions and attitudes?

Ethical realists think that human beings discover ethical truths

that already have an independent existence.
Ethical non-realists think that human beings invent ethical
truths.

The problem for ethical realists is that people follow many

different ethical codes and moral beliefs. So if there are real
ethical truths out there (wherever!) then human beings don't
seem to be very good at discovering them.

One form of ethical realism teaches that ethical properties exist

independently of human beings, and that ethical statements give
knowledge about the objective world.

To put it another way; the ethical properties of the world and the
things in it exist and remain the same, regardless of what people
think or feel - or whether people think or feel about them at all.

On the face of it, it [ethical realism]

means the view that moral qualities such
as wrongness, and likewise moral facts
such as the fact that an act was wrong,
exist in rerum natura, so that, if one
says that a certain act was wrong, one is
saying that there existed, somehow,
somewhere, this quality of wrongness,
and that it had to exist there if that act
were to be wrong.
R. M Hare, Essays in Ethical Theory,
1989

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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,

but it's actually a very useful way of getting a clear idea of
what's going on when people talk about moral issues.

The different '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 mean:

I might be making a statement 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 there 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 nothing more

than statements of a person's feelings or attitudes, and that
ethical statements do not contain factual truths about goodness
or badness.

In more detail: subjectivists say that moral statements are

statements about the feelings, attitudes and emotions that that
particular person or group has about a particular issue.
If a person says something is good or bad they are telling us
about the positive or negative feelings that they have about that
something.

So if someone says 'murder is wrong' they are telling us that

they disapprove of murder.

These statements are true if the person does hold 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

expressions of approval or disapproval.

This sounds like subjectivism, but in emotivism a moral

statement doesn't provide information about the speaker's
feelings about the topic but expresses those feelings.

When an emotivist says "murder is wrong" it's like saying "down

with murder" or "murder, yecch!" or just saying "murder" while
pulling a horrified face, or making a thumbs-down gesture at the
same time as saying "murder is wrong".

So when someone makes a moral judgement they show their

feelings about something. Some theorists also suggest that in
expressing a feeling the person gives an instruction to others
about how to act towards the subject matter.

Prescriptivism

Prescriptivists think that ethical statements are instructions or

recommendations.

So if I say something is good, I'm recommending you to do it,

and if I say something is bad, I'm telling you not to do it.

There is almost always a prescriptive element in any real-world

ethical statement: any ethical statement can be reworked (with
a bit 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".

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Where does ethics come from?

Philosophers have several answers to this question:

God and religion

Human conscience and intuition
a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and their
effects
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 good because God says it is, and the way to
lead a good life is to do what God wants.

Intuitionism

Intuitionists think that good and bad are real objective

properties that can't be broken down into component parts.
Something is good because it's good; its goodness doesn't need
justifying or proving.
Intuitionists think that goodness or badness can be detected by
adults - they say that human 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
self-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 get confused. For the intuitionist:

moral truths are not discovered by rational argument

moral truths are not discovered by having a hunch
moral truths are not discovered by having a feeling

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

truth.

Consequentialism

This is the ethical theory that most non-religious people think

they use every day. It bases morality on the consequences of
human actions and not on the actions themselves.

Consequentialism teaches that people should do whatever

produces the greatest amount of good consequences.

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

The most common forms of consequentialism are the various

versions of utilitarianism, which favour actions that produce the
greatest amount 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 ethical problems.

Two problems with consequentialism are:

it 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 ethics

Non-consequentialism is concerned with the actions themselves

and not with the consequences. It's the theory that people are
using when they refer to "the principle of the thing".

It teaches that some acts are right 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 actions - indeed
some philosophers of this school deny that there can be such
things as universal ethical rules.

Virtue ethics is particularly concerned with the way 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 do.

To put it very simply, virtue ethics teaches that an action is right

if and only if it is an action that a virtuous person would do in
the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is someone
who has a particularly good character.
Situation ethics

Situation ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that

individual ethical decisions should be made according 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 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 function of ethics is to state,
enforce and preserve particular political beliefs.

They usually go on to say that ethics is used by 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 not apply this code to their own behaviour.

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Are there universal moral rules?

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

Moral absolutism

Some people think there are such universal rules that apply 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 be discovered and that
these rules apply to everyone.

Immoral acts - acts that break 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 everyone - which enables the drafting of universal
rules - such as the Declaration of Human Rights.

Religious views of ethics tend to be absolutist.

Why people disagree with moral absolutism:

Many of us feel that the consequences of an act or the

circumstances surrounding it are relevant to whether that act
is good or bad
Absolutism doesn't fit with respect for diversity and tradition

Moral relativism

Moral relativists say that if you look at

different cultures or different periods in
history you'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 approve of.

Moral relativists think that that's just fine,

and dispute the idea that there are some Different cultures have
had different attitudes to
objective and discoverable 'super-rules' issues like war ©
that all cultures ought to obey. They
believe that relativism respects the diversity of human 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 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 problem with arguing against the
majority view: if most people in a society agree with particular
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 "badly"
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-between-ism

Most 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 culture

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