Introduction to Ethics and

Morality
What is Ethics?
• Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with
moral principles, values, and judgement about
what is right or wrong, good or bad.
• It seeks to understand how people should behave
and the basis for making decisions that affect
others.
What is Morality?
• Morality refers to the principles, values, and
beliefs that guide people’s behavior and
decision-making in terms of what is right and
wrong, good or bad.
What is Morality?
Morality can be shaped by various factors:
• Cultural
• Social
• Religious
• Philosophical
Ethics and Morality
Morality – Concerned with principles of right and
wrong.
Ethics – Related to right and wrong conduct of an
individual in particular situations.
Why is Ethics
important?
Why is Ethics important?
• Ethics can be applied to in various aspect of life,
including personal relationships, professional
settings, and public policy.
• It helps us navigate the complexities of moral
dilemmas and choices that we encounter in our
lives.
Moral and Non-Moral
Standards
What is Moral Standards?
• Set of norms in society in accord to moral
principles.
• Moral standards are those laws or commands that
allow specific actions to be committed or those
that disallow actions contrary to these norms.
• “Don’t lie to others”
Development of Moral Standards
Development of Moral Standards
• During Childhood, moral standards are absorbed
from family, friends, and various societal
institutions.
• Later in life experiences, learning and intellectual
development helps a person in complying with
these standards.
Development of Moral Standards
• Later in life, individuals comes up with personal
moral guide to achieving one’s goals in life.
Development of Moral Standards
• Moral Standards are postulated by accepted
cultural practices and established societal norms.
• Actions that were allowed and permitted under
particular situations, once they become irrelevant,
certain moral standards are set to rectify this
actions.
Moral vs Non-Moral Standards
Moral vs Non-Moral Standards
• Moral standards deals with matters, which can
seriously injure or seriously benefit human beings
while it is not the case with non-moral standards.
• Examples of Non-Moral Standards include:
• Dress Code
• Etiquette
• Traffic Laws
Characteristics of moral standards
Moral standards involve serious wrong or
significant benefits.

• Moral standards deals with matters which can

seriously impact, that is, injure of benefit human
beings. It is not the case with many non-moral
standards.
Moral standards ought to be preferred to
other values.
• Moral standards have overriding characteristics.
If a moral standards states that a person has the
moral obligation to do something, then he/she is
supposed to do that even if it conflicts with other
non-moral standards, and even with self-interest.
Moral standards ought to be preferred to
other values.
• There is a general moral duty to obey the law,
but there may come a time when injustice of an
evil law is unbearable and thus call for illegal but
moral non-cooperation.
Moral standards are not established by
authority figures.
• Moral standards are not invented, formed, or
generated by authoritative bodies or person such
as nations’ legislative bodies. Thus, they cannot be
changed nor nullified by the decision of particular
authoritative bodies.
• Moral standards validity lies on the soundness or
adequacy of the reasons that are considered to
support and justify them.
Moral standards have the trait of
universalizability.
• It means that everyone should live up to moral
standards. It entails that moral principles must
apply to all who are in the relevantly similar
situation.
• This characteristic is best exemplified in the
Golden Rule, “Do unto others what you what them
to do unto you”.
Moral standards are based on impartial
considerations.
• Moral standards do not evaluate standards on
the basis of the interest of a particular individual
or group, but one that goes beyond personal
interests to a universal stand point in which
everyone’s interests are impartially counted as
equal.
Moral standards are based on impartial
considerations.
• Impartiality is usually depicted as being free of
bias or prejudice. Impartiality in morality requires
that we give equal and/or adequate
consideration to the interest of all concerned
parties.
Moral standards are associated with special
emotions and vocabulary.
• Moral standards are put forth as interjections or
imperatives. (Do not kill, Do no unnecessary harm)
• These principles are proposed for use, to advice,
and to influence action.
• This is used to evaluate behavior, to assign praise
and blame, and to produce feelings of guilt and
satisfaction.
 Why is Moral and
Non-Moral standards
important?
Activity
• What is your idea of rightness (moral justice)?
• What is happiness for you?
• What would you like your life to be?
• What is desirable for you?
• What do you value?
Reference/s
• Ethics by Ricardo A. Mondares
• Ethics in the contemporary perspectives by Co, Garcia & Dumo
• Ethics “Ako at ang Kagandahang Asal Bilang Isang Filipino” by
Agdalpen & Francisco
Dilemma and Foundation of
Morality
What is Dilemma?

•A dilemma is a difficult situation in which an

individual is confronted to choose between
two or more alternative actions to resolve the
problem.
Types of Dilemma

1. Classic Dilemma
2. Temporal Dilemma
3. Orthogonal Dilemma
4. Sequential Dilemma
5. Unequal Dilemma
Classic Dilemma

•There are conflicting criteria for the same

behavior. While the blend may be difficult, it
is essential. Each side of the dilemma is
valuable only because of the other side.
Attempts to live only under one side of the
dilemma are fatally flawed.
Temporal Dilemma

•A special case of a classic dilemma occurs

with an activity which is complex enough to
be a work process or a project. Often there
are criteria dominant in the early part of the
process that conflict with criteria that become
dominant in a later point.
Orthogonal Dilemma
• There are two different sets of behaviors that
seem diametrically opposed. They generate
different cultures, different structures, different
staffing. While there may be a hybrid that is
preferable, the blending is optional; a company
could be viable exploiting just one half of the
dilemma.
Sequential Dilemma

•Different behaviors which conflict with each

other, but the most likely solution is to
sequence them appropriately; the tension in
the dilemma eventually becomes one of
relative emphasis, timing, and transitioning.
Unequal Dilemma

•Sometimes a person in authority will assert

one side of a dilemma.
Moral Dilemma
What is a Moral Dilemma?

•Any situation in which the person making the

decision experiences a conflict between
moral rightness of a decision and the quality
of the results it produce.
What is a Moral Dilemma?

•Many times, these dilemmas involves a

morally wrong decision that produce
desirable result, or vice versa. Other times,
moral dilemmas involve a decision in which
the person is forced to choose only one of
two good things.
Types of Moral Dilemma

1. Personal Dilemma
2. Organizational Dilemma
3. Systematic Dilemma
Personal Dilemma

•Individual has a choice to be made between

two options, neither of which resolves the
situation in an ethically acceptable fashion.
Organizational Dilemma

•The principals and standards by which

business operate, according to Reference for
Business. They are best demonstrated through
acts of fairness, compassion, integrity, honor
and responsibility.
Systematic Dilemma
•The process of systematic moral analysis is
predicated on moral rule violations, which
result in harm to another person or persons.
•This refers to the conformity and compliance
of each member to the expected code of
conduct to be manifested in the
agency/workplace.
 Foundation of
Morality: Freedom as
Requisite on Moral
Responsibility
What is Freedom?
• Freedom as the power or right to act, speak, or think as
one wants without hindrance or restraint; “we do have
some freedom of choice.”
• Freedom, in politics, consists of the social, political, and
economic freedoms to which all community members
are entitled. In philosophy, freedom involves free will as
contrasted with determinism.
What is Freedom?

•Kant – Freedom is the source of all value.

•Summum bonum – Freedom in accordance
with a will which is not necessitated to action.
•Saint Augustine – Human is free physically,
yet bound to obey the law.
What is Freedom?

•Gorbachev – The principle of freedom is a

must. Refusal to recognize this principle will
have serious consequences to the issue of
world peace.
•Quito – No ethics is likewise possible without
human freedom.
 Reason and
Impartiality:
Requisites for
Morality
Immanuel Kant
• Kant argued that “morality
was based on reason alone,
and once we understood it,
we would see that acting
morally is the same as acting
rationally.”
• Reason enables us to think and reflect over
actions that we intend to do and decide which of
them to take.
• A mere knowledge of morality will not make
human moral (there has to bean application of it,
by obeying the rules)
• Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that
decisions or judgment on something or someone
should be objective not on the basis of bias
or prejudice to favor someone irrationally.
Activity
Present an argument from both perspectives (For
and against), and explain which side you agrees
on.

• Animal experimentations for human vaccines and

medications.
Reference/s
• Ethics “Ako at ang Kagandahang Asal Bilang Isang Filipino” by
Agdalpen & Francisco
The Moral Agent and Culture
What is a Moral Agent?
• A being who is capable of acting with reference
to right and wrong. Moral agents are expected
to meet the demands of morality (choosing
between good and evil).
• Moral agents must also be capable of confronting
to at least some of the demands of morality.
Demands of Morality
• On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the
agent has the capacity to conform to some of the
external requirements of morality.
• If certain agent can obey moral law such as
‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they
are moral agents.
Demands of Morality
• On the stronger version, the agent should have
the capacity to rise above their feelings and
passion and act for the sake of the moral law.
• Agent must have enduring self with free will and
inner life; understanding of the relevant facts and
moral understanding; and moral sentiment, such
as remorse and concern for others.
Characteristics of Moral Agent
• A moral agent is a person who has the ability to
discern right from wrong and to be held
accountable for his or her own actions.
• Moral agents have a moral responsibility not to
cause unjustified harm.
Characteristics of Moral Agent
• Children and adults with certain mental
disabilities may have little or no capability to be
moral agents.
Culture
• An aggregate of the learned beliefs, attitudes,
values, norms and customs of a society or group
of people, shared by them and transmitted from
generation to generation within the society.
Types of Culture
High Culture
• Linked with the elite, upper class society, those
families and individuals with an ascribed status
position.
Cultural Diversity
• Concept relating to culturally embedded
differences within society, it’s the fact that
different cultures exist alongside each other.
Subculture
• Culture enjoyed by a small group within society. It
is minority part of majority culture.
Popular Culture
• It borrows the idea from high culture and
popularized it, making it available for the
masses.
Multiculturalism
• It is depicted to be to be very similar to cultural
diversity other definitions align multiculturalism
with different ethnic groups living alongside each
other.
Global Culture
• A global culture is a key feature of globalization,
they emerge due to patterns of migration, trends
in international travel and the spread of the
media, exposing people to same images of the
same dominant world companies.
Importance of Culture
Culture affects perception
• Our culture determines the structure of our
thinking, which influence our perceptions on the
good or bad.
Culture influence behavior
• Culture affects perception and perception drive
behavior. What our culture teaches us affects the
way we interact socially as much as it also affects
our moral behavior towards other people.
Culture shapes personalities
• We shape our behavior and personality to suit
our culture. The way we perceive a situation and
react to it, depend largely on what we have
learned from the environment and the way we
have been brought up.
Our culture shapes our values and belief system

• In a culture where children are taught to be

independent early in life, (American, for
example), they grow up to be individualistic. In a
culture where boy and girls are not treated
equally, children may become aggressive and
look at the opposite gender as their enemy.
Moral Behavior
• Moral behavior are what one believes to be the
right things to do.
Role of Culture in Moral Behavior
• Culture influence human behavior at any given
society’s belief system, laws, mores, practices,
language and attitudinal variables which make a
people unique from others.
• Culture has a great impact in the development of
the human person in varied ways; may it be in
physical, knowledge, thought, relationship,
religious or moral development.
Culture Relativism
• The principle of regarding the belief, values, and
practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that
culture itself.
• The uniqueness of every culture from each other.
• Cultural relativism is the view that morality is
culture dependent.
Ethical Relativism
• The theory that holds that morality is relative to
the norms of one’s culture.
• Ethical relativism denies the existence of one
universal moral law.
Moral Relativism
• The view that moral judgements are true or false
only relative to some particular standpoint and
that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all
others.
• Moral relativism is the idea that there is no
universal or absolute set of moral principles.
Descriptive moral Relativism
• Also known as cultural relativism, says that moral
standards are culturally defined.
• There may be a few values that seem nearly
universal, such as honesty and respect, but many
differences appear across cultures.
Meta-ethical moral Relativism
• There are no objective grounds for preferring the
moral values of one culture over another.
• People tend to believe that the “right” moral
values that exist in their own culture.
Normative moral Relativism
• Is the idea that all societies should accept each
other’s differing moral values, given that there
are no universal moral principles.
• Most philosophers disagree however.
Moral Relativism
• Moral relativism rests on the idea that values are
subjective, and the belief that there is no
objective morality.
• Moral relativism holds that ethical systems are
subjective, thus non is better or worse than
another.
Activity
• Divide the class into 4 groups.
• Each group will randomly draw a type of culture
from a box.
• Each group will research their assigned culture type
and prepare a skit/role-play that:
• Explains the key elements, norms, values, and
significance of the culture type.
• Provides examples of individuals, communities, or
phenomena representing this culture.
• Each group will have 5-7 minutes to perform their
skit/role-play.