Joy M. Salgado Jr.

BS Criminology- I

1. What is Ethics?
Ethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally
good and bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory
of moral values or principles.
How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of
beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what
of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we
justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war
justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong
to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our
obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman
animals with whom we share the planet?
Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental
issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value
and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong.

2. Why do we study ethics?

Ethics is a central component of any happy, healthy, and mature life. But some critics still
question the value of studying ethics and living an ethical life. After all, if you ignore ethics, you
can just focus on yourself, right? So here are some of the many reasons why we need to study
ethics:
 Ethics allows you to live an authentic life. An authentic and meaningful life requires
you to live with a sense of integrity. Integrity is making commitments and sticking to
them through thick and thin — no matter how much violating them may benefit you.
Having a firm character or set of principles to guide your life and the choices you make is
what ethics is all about.
 Ethics allows you to cultivate inner peace. Lives that are lived ethically tend to be
calmer, more focused, and more productive than those that are lived unethically. Most
people can’t turn off their sympathy for other human beings. Hurting people leaves scars
on both the giver and the receiver. As a result, unethical people have stormier internal
lives because they have to work to suppress their consciences and sympathies to deal with
the ways they treat others. When they fail to properly suppress their sympathies, the guilt
and shame that comes with harming or disrespecting one’s fellow human beings takes
deep root within them.
 Ethics provides for a stable society. When people live ethical lives, they tell the truth,
avoid harming others, and are generous. Working with such people is easy. On the other
 hand, callous and insensitive people are distrusted, so it’s difficult for them to be
integrated well into social arrangements. A stable society requires a lot of ethical people
working together in highly coordinated ways. If society were mostly composed of
unethical people, it would quickly crumble.
 Ethics may help out in the afterlife. Some religious traditions believe ethics is the key
to something even greater than personal success and social stability: eternal life. No one
can be sure about an eternal life, but people of faith from many different religions believe
that good behavior in this life leads to rewards in the next life.

3. Example of ethics and values.

It may be worthwhile to define ethics first. To my mind, ethics is all about justice,
fairness, morality. I use these terms as synonyms. (For those who define these terms differently,
just substitute the word that you use when you mean fairness towards others.)

I define ethical values as those which govern our attitudes and behavior towards others,
and affect them in a way that may be just or unjust.

To my mind the ethical values that govern our attitudes are (in that order):

1. Preservation of life. The preservation of life takes priority over all the other values
that may follow. Within these, the most important is the preservation of one’s child’s
life or that of an innocent, followed by the preservation of one’s own life, followed by
the preservation of the life of an evil person.
2. Rationality is the next, and will most strongly govern our behavior provided that
there is no conflict with item no 1.
3. Natural justice is third, and will prevail unless it conflicts with items 1 and 2.
4. Non-maleficence. The degree of harm is also very, very important. Severe harm to
another must be avoided more than mild harm.
5. Autonomy
6. Fidelity (fulfillment of a promise)
7. Public good
8. Veracity (truthfulness)
9. Loyalty (includes patriotism)
10. Beneficence
11. Altruism (there’s some difference between beneficence and altruism. Won’t go into
this here)

Here are some examples of core values from which you may wish to choose:

 Dependability
 Reliability
  Loyalty
 Commitment
 Open-mindedness
 Consistency
 Honesty
 Efficiency
 Innovation
 Creativity
 Good humor
 Compassion
 Spirit of adventure
 Motivation
 Positivity
 Optimism
 Passion
 Respect
 Fitness
 Courage
 Education
 Perseverance
 Patriotism
 Service to others
 Environmentalism

4. Good and Bad of Ethics.

'Good' has many dictionary definitions such as 'Having desirable or positive qualities
especially those suitable for a thing specified' or 'Deserving of esteem and respect', which can
be summarized into two categories:
1. Fit for purpose
2. Morally admirable
Bad is defined as the opposite of good, so this means something assessed as such is unfit
or morally reprehensible.
 Fitness
Fitness implies appropriateness, that something does what it should without waste or failure. It
says that the thing or person is capable, that the job is done well. When something is fit for
purpose we can things like 'that is a good joke' or 'she is a good doctor'.
 Morality
When something is moral, we say an act is good or bad. We also may say that the person is
good or bad, although this implies that a person who does one bad thing has permanently bad
intent and will always do bad things, and vice versa.
This makes good and bad uniquely human. Animals do not have morals, so predatory and
possibly cruel (in our view) acts are neither good nor bad. We cannot say, for example, that a
lion which kills a terrified buffalo is bad (although from a fitness viewpoint, the act is bad for
the buffalo and good for the lion).
 Judgment and decision
Deciding whether something is good or bad is an evaluation, a decision. The concept of good
and bad is important in our decision-making and we use our notions of goodness to censor
both our own choices and those of others.
 Comparison
Whether something is fit or moral, the decision of good and bad is typically done as a
comparison against a standard of 'good' and 'bad'.
This standard is often fixed, but can be variable, such as when a parent tells a child 'you are
good' they may be comparing with how the child behaved the previous day. A more fixed
benchmark of 'good' would be the stable notions the adult has of how children should behave.
 Social construction
Good and bad are defined by people. When nobody knows and there is nobody there to judge,
then good and bad do not inherently exist.
The standards of good or bad are usually socially constructed. That is, we create them with
reference to others and what they have said. Good and bad hence act as tools of social
conformance, providing means by which those who deviate from social norms can be judged
and criticized.
A parent's view of what a good or bad child does is hence based on their conversations with
others, their experiences of reward and punishment as a child, television features on parental
discipline and so on.
 Dilemmas
There are many dilemmas where an act may be both good and bad. For example killing one
person in order to save another (if only one can live, how do you choose?). In this way, it can
be difficult to live doing only good things. You cannot just avoid bad things as this can result
in further bad things happening. We can be guilty by omission as well as commission.
 Attribution
When we evaluate an action as good or bad, we seek to explain this by identifying
and attributing causes. In this we tend to over-emphasize personal factors. In the actor-
observer difference, we tend more to judge others as being a bad person when the do things
wrong, yet we sustain our personal goodness by blaming the situation when we do wrong or
bad things.

Right and wrong

Good and bad are often thought of as synonymous with right and wrong, particularly in the
moral definition. 'Right' in this sense is not logical correctness but conformance to rules, which
in the good-bad sense are the social norms of morality.
 When people say 'I know it was wrong, but it was the right thing to do' they typically talking
about the right thing being the 'lesser of two evils' (in other words, comparatively good).
 Evil
When something is highly immoral it may be described as evil. This is an ultimate term,
assuming total immorality, with an active desire to harm others, or at least a total lack of
concern for them. Evil implies knowing something is bad but still doing it.
 Degrees
Good and bad exists along a spectrum from angelic goodness to demonic evil. Few people
reach the extremes and many of us have a 'zone of comfort' where we will do some good and
some bad, yet where we can live with our actions.
 Social desirability
Our notions of good and bad are very strong drivers of how we act. Partly this is due to
internal desire to do the 'right thing'. More strongly, we are very concerned that others think us
to be good and so act in ways to gain this approval. Being seen to be good is hence highly
socially desirable.
This means that when we do things which others think of as bad (and perhaps we reframe as
'necessary'), we hide our actions and are careful not to let others know. If they do find out, we
will feel embarrassment and guilt.
 Conscience
As well as the fear of criticism by others, we do good things because our conscience (or super
ego) prods us into doing so. In this way good acts become their own reward as we feel good for
having remained consistent with our values.

5. What is a value?
Value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of
determining what actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics), or to
describe the significance of different actions. Value systems are proscriptive and prescriptive
beliefs; they affect ethical behavior of a person or are the basis of their intentional activities.
Often primary values are strong and secondary values are suitable for changes. What makes an
action valuable may in turn depend on the ethical values of the objects it increases, decreases or
alters. An object with "ethic value" may be termed an "ethic or philosophic good" (noun sense).
Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or
outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and wrong or what "ought" to be.
"Equal rights for all", "Excellence deserves admiration", and "People should be treated with
respect and dignity" are representatives of values. Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior
and these types include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (religious, political) values,
social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values that are not clearly
physiologically determined, such as altruism, are intrinsic, and whether some, such as
acquisitiveness, should be classified as vices or virtues.