Ethical and Meta-Ethical Frameworks

Basic Ethical Framework

• Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan.
  • Advocated submitting to an absolute, undivided, and unlimited sovereign power.
  • Believed men are machines who must obey the law to avoid primitive outlawry.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed people are naturally good, but civilization corrupts them.
• Niccolo Machiavelli's ethics are captured in the expression "The end justifies the means."
  • If the cause is ethical, actions including war, repression, and misinformation are ethical.
• Application to Media: Media professionalism is justified in pursuing goals without considering consequences for others if success and survival are guaranteed.
• Application to Politics: Leaders are justified in pursuing goals without considering consequences like murder or human rights suspension, if state survival is guaranteed.

Meta-Ethical Framework

• Ethical Relativism/Situational Ethics:
  • Founded by Joseph Fletcher in the 1960s, it posits that no universally valid ethical norms, values, or approaches exist.
  • Norms, values, and approaches are only valid relative to a culture or group.
  • Rejects black-and-white thinking, favoring "more ethical" and "less ethical" choices.
• Aristotle's Golden Mean:
  • Advocates for moderation as a guiding principle, finding a midpoint between two extremes.
  • Media practitioners and politicians should identify extremes before deciding on a course.
• Advantages of Ethical Relativism:
  • Promotes tolerance of differing views and practices.
  • Relieves the obligation to seek universally valid values and frameworks.
• Problem with Ethical Relativism:
  • Tolerance becomes a relative value, leading to paralyzed moral judgement (e.g., excusing violence against women).
• Ethical Relativism leads to moral isolationism
  • Suggests that members of one culture can't learn or gain value from other cultures.
• Ethical Absolutism (Monism): Asserts universally valid norms, beliefs, and practices define right and wrong for all people, times, and places.
  • Ethical absolutists applaud or condemn others’ values; however this leads to intolerance.

Ethical Pluralism

• Seeks to resolve conflicts between relativism and absolutism.
• Does not insist on a single set of values, norms, and practices.
• Understands/applies norms in diverse ways in diverse contexts.
  • Contextualized - to be interpreted based on context in different cases and ways - relativist, or absolutism should be used
  • Usually applied to cases of health and well-being of communities vis-a-vis resources - basic agreement on the well-being of the community as shared norm or value
• Agrees with ethical relativism that diverse practices are observed and differences should be tolerated, not condemned.
• Allows for a global digital media ethic that provides a shared set of guidelines for ethical behavior.

Feminist Ethics

• Historically, most philosophers who developed ethical frameworks were men.
• First Wave Feminism (1830-1900s): Focused on women gaining political power through the right to vote.
  • Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
• Second Wave Feminism (1960s-1970s): Addressed equality and discrimination in the workplace.
  • Simone de Beauvoir (1909-1986)'s The Second Sex marked the beginning of global second-wave feminism.
• Third Wave Feminism (1990s): Emphasized sexuality, family, and reproductive rights.
  • Critiqued prevailing ethical frameworks for reflecting masculine ways of knowing

Virtue Ethics

• Focuses on becoming excellent human beings first.
• Developing and fulfilling important human capacities.
• Aristotle and Socrates emphasized REASON and call PHRONESIS a practical judgement to discern the right choice.

Terms:

• Leviathan: A book by Thomas Hobbes arguing that society must submit to an absolute sovereign to avoid chaos.
• Machiavellian Ethics: The "end" justifies the methods, including manipulation, war, or repression, to achieve a greater good like state survival.
• Ethical Relativism: Ethical norms/values are not universal, varies between cultures/situations, argues that right/wrong depends on cultural/societal context.
• The Golden Mean: Aristotle's concept of moderation, seeking the ethical path between excess and deficiency.
• Teleology: Focuses on the purpose or end goal of actions for individual/community well-being.
• Moral Isolationism: Lack of cross-cultural understanding/accountability because one culture cannot critique another's practices.
• Ethical Absolutism (Monism): Universally valid ethical norms that apply to all, regardless of culture/situation.
• Ethical Pluralism: Bridges relativism/absolutism, acknowledging diverse ethical practices but finding common ground like justice/well-being.
• Phronesis: Practical wisdom used to make ethical decisions by balancing different possibilities.
• Feminist Ethics: Critiques male-centered frameworks to focus on inclusivity, equality, and gender inequality/ reproductive rights.
• Situational Ethics: Proposed by Joseph Fletcher, suggests decisions based on context rather than rigid rules.
• Tolerance: Acceptance/respect for different practices, values, and beliefs, in the context of ethical relativism.
• Systemic Violence: Violence embedded in social structures, often justified/overlooked as part of cultural/institutional practices.
• Universal Norms: Ethical principles that apply to all, regardless of cultural background.
• Ethical Diversity: Variety in ethical beliefs/practices, emphasizing respect and understanding.
• Justice: Fairness and equitable treatment for all individuals, central to ethical pluralism/global ethics.
• Virginia Woolf: Early feminist advocating for women's rights/equality, particularly in first-wave feminism.
• Simone de Beauvoir: Feminist thinker, author of The Second Sex critiquing traditional gender roles and inspiring second-wave feminism.
• Virtue Ethics: Focuses on personal character and virtues such as honesty, courage and wisdom.
• Global Digital Media Ethics: Shared guidelines in media for responsible behavior within a globally connected digital world.

Foundation of Morality and Freedom

• Universalisim: Modern philosophy's approach to morality
• The Bill of Rights (American Revolution, 1776) and Declaration Universelle Des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen (French Revolution, 1789) document affirmed that all men have the same rights.
• Problems is that not everyone enjoys the same rights - slaves vs those that commute
• Reflection on morality: the "State of Pure Nature"
  • enlightenment philosophers referred to the state of nature which, existed prior to laws and society.
  • All men are equal and guided by the same moral norms
  • Human existence before societies formed question whether people were naturally good or in constant conflict
• Reason and Passions: Morality must be in reason, which stands guard over desires, allowing the fulfillment of social order
  • There are different systems that claim their own perspective on justice/legitimacy
  • A vicious circle behind this approach -> desires can not act as criteria for the choice

Pure Duty - Immanuel Kant

• An agent has good will if they act consistently from duty
• The agent must act out of respect for the moral law, which commands to act in ways that can be Universally adopted - known as CATEGORIAL IMPERATIVE
• Morality is based on duty and universal laws
• A "good will" is good not becuase of what it does, but simply by virtue of volition; good in itself
• "The good will is the only thing of moral value" - "good will" is your duty
• Inclination vs. Duty Eating ice cream is an inclination, but being a soldier is a duty"
  • Inclination: Acts are done purely
  • Inclination and duty: acts are done partly from duty
  • Duty: acts are done purely through duty

The State

• Morality of the individual is "abstract", empty and unreal because it is egoistic - individuality must overcome e ethnicity of the state
• individual person is irrelevant because they only bear "needs"
• individual disappears by adapting to the will of the state as expressed by laws

Relativism

• Arriving to one conclusion is impossible becuase there are many factors that can be validated
• Using emotion to suggest or manipulate viewpoint without rational argument

Historicism, Sociologism and Psychologism

• Historicism: Classic relativistic theory - moral choices/reasons are expressions of a determined historical epoch
  • There's no point in asking whether certain behavior is good or bad or a certain moral judgment as true or false.
  • Understanding people and cultures require an understanding of their historical events
    • Studying how a phenomenon, belief, cultural practice came to be Example: (studying effects of Martial Law, good or bad)
• Sociologism: A form of historicism that attempts to make moral judgments dependent on the sociological structure in which it evolves - lacks reference to other disciplines
• Example: If behavior is determined by what is popular on social media, Example: behavior is sociologism (a fad)
  • Subscribe to this idea: what is popular is right and what is unpopular is wrong
• Psychologism: Attempts to reduce diverse forms of knowledge including concepts and principles of logical and mathematics to states of mind
  • Uses psychology as the discipline to explain and justify knowledge in philosophy
  • The tendency to exaggerate the relevance of psychological factors - what feels right is right

Three levels of Moral Dilemmas and Freedom

1. Personal: dilemmas that are encountered and resolved personally by the individual, by another person, or by a group.
2. Organizational dilemmas Encountered and resolved by social organizations such in business, medical field and public sector.”
3. Structural dilemmas Encountered and resolved by a network of organizations.

Freedom

1. Why Only Human Beings Can be Ethical? Animal ethics behave instinctively, while human behavior is rational, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas
   • Instinctive behavior is hardwired whereas rational behavior is a decisions-making process.
   • Only human beings can be ethical because only human have the capacity for free moral judgment. ( Freedom then, is the foundation of moral acts - inborn properties of the human person)
   • Jean Paul Satre said "You are free" - that freedom is the capacity to choose, that even not choosing is a choice

Moral vs. Non-Moral Standards

• Good behavior vs. bad behavior, right and wrong, and good and evil.
• Morality refers to the standards that a person or a group has about what is right and wrong, or good and evil
• Moral standards are those concerned with or relating to human behavior, especially the distinction between good and bad (or right and wrong) behavior.

Standards

• Morality is an innate sense, instinctively practiced of what is in the best interests of individuals, nations, and the planet-> preserve, freedom, happiness, and innocent life
• Idea or thing used as measure, norms or model in comparative evaluation. ( rules and norms people have and place on the kinds of objects they believe are morally good and morally bad)
  • Moral standards: rationalized your way out of this
  • non-Moral standards: refer to rules that are unrelated to moral or ethical considerations. linked to morality or by nature, lak ethical sense

Six Characteristics of Moral Standards

1. Moral Standards Involve Serious Wrongs or Significant Benefits
   • Can injure or benefit humans - games doesn't affects life or well-being
2. Moral Standards Ought to be Preferred to Other Values
   • Overriding character or hegemonic authority - person has some moral obligation
   • Moral standards take precedence over other considerations, including aesthetic, business matters and even legal ones
3. Moral Standards are Not Established By Authority Figures - Instead, moral standards are not invented but those values ought to be used in the process of making laws
4. ) Moral Standards have the Trait of Universalizability (everyone should live up to moral standards

Moral standards

5. based on impartial considerations: standards does not evaluate standards on the basis of the interests of certain people or groups, but one that goes beyond personal interest to a universal standpoint
6. associated with special emotions and vocabulary (prescription indicates the practical or action-guiding nature of moral standards-> produced by feelings of satisfaction or of guilt)

Cultural, Values, and Moral Behavior

• Perception - External factors include family, religion, history, and cultural identity.
• Refers to sensory experience of the world and how we make sense of the physical world, and how we relate it to our beliefs
• Culture - The processes by which a person uses the behavior of other to form opinions for motivation
• Bias - We tend to fun on people who have weird beliefs and sometimes

Belief and Values

• Beliefs and Values are double edged swords and are every hard to change

1. Belief: serves as the storage system for the content of our past experiences, including thoughts, memories and interpretations of events (Shaped by the individual's culture-> Accepted as “truths” by most people)
2. Values Beliefs form the basis of values which provide rules for making choices and for resolving conflicts (Values are shared ideas because values are not only held by individuals)

Classification of values

1. Primary) those things were dying for
2. Secondary : Important in the alleviation of pain and suffering of other and securing material possessions. Relationships Values (SIR) for filipinos
3. Tertiary - Lifestyle, not as consequential

Hofstede's Value Dimensions:

1. Individualism: Personal rights
2. Collectivism: Emphasizes community collaboration
3. Uncertainty Avoidance: Unstructured situations are novel.
4. Masculinity vs. Femininity: Distribution of roles between the genders
5. Long vs. Short term orientation: From long-term (such as China) cultures to short (such as Canada)

Creativity (Ordinary vs. Accidental Plagiarism)

• Plagiarism: To steal and pass off the ideas or words of another

James Montmarquet Philosophical Concepts:

1. Episteme : Knowledge
2. Epistemic : Relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation
3. Epistemology : Concerned with the nature, origins, and limitations of knowledge.
4. Epistemic responsibility : RESPONSIBLE for knowing, or things we have DUTY to know

Other Separate And Distinct Epistemic Criteria:( impartiality, Sobriety and Courage)

Module 7:The Story of Gyges of Lydia by Herodotus::

• Used by Plato and Herodotus to explain power, choice of morality and corruption
• Lord of the rings -> story to explore the concept choice, morality and power
  • Saurons ring to be a symbol of the idea that with unlimited power comes immorality
  • Lord of the Rings and Plato's Story of Gyges' Ring
    • Gyge's' ring grants immoratality
    • One ring grants immense power but corrupts, suggest that morality and absolute power are incompatible.
  • Lack to strenght or Strength
    • Had strenght and would reject the ring.

Module 8 Wikiality

• Truthiness, and Gut Thinking - How does you know you're seeing things and not what you want
• Philosophical Concepts:: 1. the principle of charity. 2, Individual relativism. 3.Truths, beliefs, propositions
• The correspondence Theory of Truth 4. Cultural relativism-> what make you a impressionable person

1. Individual relativism “What's true for you may not be true for me
2. Truth properties of claims and truth varies in Magdinitrue and the test of truth exist
3. STEPHEN COLBERT-> 4)Cultural Relativism: “True in your culture, but not in ours”-> actions are morally permissible if it's accepted 5)TRUTHINESS AND GUT THINKING-> unlike gut thinking it is the father of empiricism and english thinking

• Truth - a property of believe Truthiness - a false claim relying on gut thinking

Conclusion

There are danger of intuitionism -> The study of knowledge and how knowledge is justified

• We Do Not Have the Right to Opinions We Cannot Defend Rationally"-> should have defense and never take personal