Descriptive Normative

Ethics Ethics

Meta- Applied
Ethics Ethics
 Descriptive ethics deals with what people
actually believe (or made to believe) to be
Descriptive right or wrong, and accordingly holds up
the human actions acceptable or not
Ethics acceptable or punishable under a custom or
law.

However, customs and laws keep changing from time to time and from
society to society. The societies have structured their moral principles as
per changing time and have expected people to behave accordingly. Due to
this, descriptive ethics is also called comparative ethics because it
compares the ethics or past and present; ethics of one society and other. It
also takes inputs from other disciplines such as anthropology, psychology,
sociology and history to explain the moral right or wrong.
 Normative Ethics deals with “norms” or set of
considerations how one should act. Thus, it’s a study of
“ethical action” and sets out the rightness or wrongness of
Normative the actions. It is also called prescriptive ethics because it
rests on the principles which determine whether an action
Ethics is right or wrong. The Golden rule of normative ethics is
“doing to other as we want them to do to us“.

Since we don’t want our neighbors to throw stones through our glass
window, then it will not be wise to first throw stone through a neighbor's
window. Based on this reasoning, anything such as harassing,
victimizing, abusing or assaulting someone is wrong. Normative ethics also
provides justification for punishing a person who disturbs social and moral
order.
1.
2.
Teleology 3.
Utilitarianism
Deontology
1.
Teleology

Teleological ethics, (teleological from Greek telos, “end goal or

purpose”; logos, “science”), theory of morality that derives duty
or moral obligation from what is good or desirable as an end to
be achieved. Also known as consequentialism, says that the
morality of an action is contingent with the outcome of that
action. So, the morally right action would produce good outcome
while morally wrong action would produce bad outcome.
 is an ethical doctrine
which holds the belief
that the morality, that
is, the rightness or
wrongness, of a
human act depends
on its consequence.
Other famous types of consequentialism:

Ethical Hedonism -anything that maximizes pleasure is right.

Ethical Egoism -anything that maximizes the good for self is right.

Ethical Asceticism -abstinence from egoistic pleasures to achieve

spiritual goals is right action.

Ethical Altruism -to live for others and not caring for self is right
action.
 As a matter of fact, consequentialism
permits that the end justify the means
even if the means used is problematic.
The core idea of consequentialism is that
“the ends justify the means”. An
action that might not be right in the
light of moral absolutism may be a right
action under teleology.
most famous type of
Consequentialism:
UTILITARIANISM
As is well-known, in utilitarianism,
the basis of the morality of human
acts are:

the consequent benefits that the

act brings to many people
concerned.
Jeremy Bentham
2.
Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham An act is good or John Stuart Mill

morally right if it
promotes
happiness, and
bad or immoral if
it tends to
produce pain.
 In fact, for the utilitarian, an
act is morally right
if it produces greatest happiness to
the greatest number of people,
and morally wrong
if it produces more pain than
happiness to the greatest number
of people concerned.
Key Principle
 A utilitarian would not
care whether an action is
done out of deception, lie
or manipulation as long as
it produces maximum
benefits to many people.
 The intense(intensity) the pleasure, the better.
The longer(duration) it lasts, the better.
The more certain (certainty) that it will happen, the
better.
The closer(propinquity) that it will occur, the better.
The greater the possibility(fecundity) that it will be
followed by another pleasure, the better.
The purer(purity) the pleasure, the better.
The greater the number of people that it
benefits(extent), the better.
FELICIFIC CALCULUS FORMULA

– =
BALANCE
is the basis of
the morality of
an action. MORALLY RIGHT MORALLY WRONG

EX. 16 Pleasures-6 Pains=6 5 Pleasures-20 Pains=15

Sum up all the pleasures and pains produced by the action:

If the balance is in favor of please, then the act is morally right.
If the balance is in favor of pain, then the action is morally wrong.
John Stuart Mill’s Model
Mill disagrees with Bentham.

We cannot calculate the amount of pleasure or pain that an act

produces.

Basis of morality:
The majority of the people
that attains happiness.
FAMOUS UTILITARIAN CLAIM:

“An act is morally right if it produces

greatest happiness to the greatest
number of people and it is morally
wrong if it produces more pain than
pleasure to the greatest number of people
concerned.”
Utilitarian principle should be applied to a
particular act in a particular situation or
circumstance.

The basis of the morality of an action is

the ACT itself.
Example:

The consequences of the act of giving money

to charity would be considered right in act-
utilitarianism, because the money increases
the happiness of many people, rather than just
yourself. In the example, the general rule
would be: ‘share your wealth’.
The principle at issue should be used to test moral rules, and
then such rules can be utilized in judging what is right and
wrong under the circumstance.

An act is morally right if it conforms to a justified

MORAL RULE
The principle of utility in rule-utilitarianism is to follow those rules which will
result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

One objection to rule-utilitarianism is that in some situations the utility of breaking

a certain rule could be greater than keeping it. It is, for example, not difficult to
imagine that a rule-utilitarian who lives by the rule ‘tell the truth’, sometimes will
find him or herself forced to lie in order to increase utility.

When a rule-utilitarian is compelled to break a rule, he or she will be forced to

modify the rule in order to repair the theory. This rule-modifying will continue as
long as there are situations where the rules do not produce the greatest utility. The
rule for promise-keeping, for example, would be of the form: “Always keep your
promises except …”; with a very long list of exceptions. The rule-breaking is
necessary in order to maintain the greatest utility.
3.
Deontology

Deontological ethics or duty

ethics focuses on the rightness and
wrongness of the actions rather than
the consequences of those actions.
 RIGHT

GOOD

Right' and 'good' are the two basic terms of moral evaluation. In general,
something is 'right' if it is morally obligatory, whereas it is morally 'good' if
it is worth having or doing and enhances the life of those who possess it.
 Rightness DEPENDS from
goodness.
RIGHT
- "right" are "proper," "legal"
and "correct."
 According to Utilitarians, rightness follows from
goodness. What is "intrinsically good"? Pleasure. What
about people? Are people intrinsically good? Well, only
insofar as they are the carriers and bearers of pleasure.
One person's pleasure is as good as another's. An
action is morally right because it brings happiness --
because it has certain good effects. Right actions are
right because they achieve something that is good.

GOOD
What is good has to do
with benefits.
Something that
benefits something or
someone else is called
good for that thing or
person.
 Hence, a deontologist will say “We
should not lie because it is morally
wrong to lie.”

A consequentialist will say, “it is morally

right to lie if doing so produces a good
outcome or consequences.”
 Meta Ethics or “analytical ethics” deals with the origin of
the ethical concepts themselves. It does not consider
whether an action is good or bad, right or wrong. Rather,
Meta- it questions – what goodness or rightness or morality itself
is? It is basically a highly abstract way of thinking about
ethics. The key theories in meta-ethics include naturalism,
Ethics non-naturalism, emotivism and prescriptivism.

Deals with what it means to claim that something is right or wrong.

It is like a foreign language you have to understand what the word means
to understand what is being said. “This is a good gun” – what do we mean
by using the word GOOD.
 Applied ethics deals with the philosophical examination,
from a moral standpoint, of particular issues in private
and public life which are matters of moral judgment. This
Applied branch of ethics is most important for professionals in
different walks of life including doctors, teachers,
Ethics administrators, rulers and so on.

Applied ethics is a branch of ethics devoted to the

treatment of moral problems, practices, and policies in
personal life, professions, technology, and government.