Understanding Ethics and Moral Dilemmas

Key Concepts in Ethics

• Ethics is defined in multiple ways, often starting with its etymology to understand its origin and historical development.
• Etymologically, "ethics" comes from the ancient Greek word "êthikos," meaning "relating to one's character," derived from "êthos," meaning "character, disposition."
• In dictionaries, ethics refers to philosophical ethics or moral philosophy, which uses reason to address ethical questions, and it also signifies a common human ability to ponder ethical problems, applicable beyond philosophy.
• Ethics in its comprehensive sense explores the question of "How we ought to live?"
• Ethics is a practical concept meant to be lived and experienced.
• Some link ethics to concepts like right, value, morals, good, evil, and happiness, offering practical questions related to acts, desires, and needs to find life's meanings and purposes.
• Complete universal definition of ethics may be impossible due to varying experiences, diverse influences on beliefs and ever changing cultural contexts.
• The relevance of ethics remains significant, with personal understanding grounded in the fundamentals of the subject matter.
• Rules are established to govern or restrict actions by setting acceptable terms and conditions.
• Various rules influence behaviors, but not all are ethical, rules are related to manners, sports, laws, languages, and art appreciation.
• Etiquette standards dictate good or bad manners, usually by a socio-economic elite.
• Athletic standards govern game play, created by governing bodies.
• Legal standards determine legal right or wrong in a democracy, formulated by people's representatives.
• Language standards judge grammatical correctness, evolving through usage.
• Aesthetic standards determine good or bad art, dictated by a small circle of art specialists.
• Moral standards address serious harm or benefit to humans, involving the character and dignity, not just physical aspects.
• Violating grammar rules does not hurt anyone, while athletic rules may cause physical but not moral injury.
• The standards of good art are based on personal perception.
• Negligence rules are punishable by law, but the focus is the act not the person, as violations can occur without intent or knowledge.
• Legal actions may conflict with moral standards, like divorce, legal abortion, or the death penalty.
• Moral standards rely on sound reasoning for support and justification, not majority or authoritative decisions.
• Moral standards should override self-interest.
• They involve impartial considerations, weighing the interests of all affected parties without bias.
• Moral standards are expressed from a universalizable viewpoint.
• Moral standards relate to emotions like guilt, shame, remorse, praise, pity, and indignation, connecting ethics to human feelings.
• Ethics involves reflecting on values and critically examining standards and analyzes the agent responsible for making ethical decisions.
• It differs from morals, as ethics is a set of external rules, morals are internal principles and beliefs.
• Ethics are formulated to regulate conduct within particular groups or societies, coming from social units like families, communities, schools, companies, or nations.
• Morals are personal convictions on right and wrong, guiding actions by individual beliefs.
• Ethics aims to establish consistent, acceptable actions within specific social settings, while morals serve as a personal compass for navigating right and wrong.
• Ethics is a reflective study that critically examines standards, exploring the values at the base of moral standards.
• Ethics studies the moral decision process, addressing what to consider for a final moral decision
• Ethics emphasizes applying knowledge in daily life rather than just acquiring theoretical knowledge.

Moral Dilemmas and the Minimum Requirements of Morality

• A moral dilemma is a problem with choices that involve a conflict of values, thus requiring a preference for one value/thing over the other. Ordinary dilemmas are problems related plainly to choices.
• Moral dilemmas inherently involve "sacrifices," as each option has a value, increasing the difficulty of choosing as options expand.
• Moral dilemmas involve choices between two equally good or two equally evil options.
• An ethical dilemma is a complex situation involving an apparent mental conflict between moral requirements, where obeying one results in transgressing another.
• In a moral dilemma, no matter what one does, one does wrong, or whatever one chooses, one does right.
• These dilemmas, also called ethical paradoxes, present contradictions that reveal fundamental truths, prompting improvements or refutations of ethical systems.
• Solutions to dilemmas often involve sacrificing values or choosing the lesser evil, making choices between two equally good or equally evil options necessary.
• Situations involving choices between good and evil are not moral dilemmas, as moral individuals should choose the common good.
• There are different types of moral dilemmas that confront us in our everyday life
• Types of Moral Dilemmas*
• Epistemic: Conflicts between moral requirements where the agent doesn't know which conflicting requirement takes precedence. Ex: moral agent tells the truth under oath but doing to would endanger a loved one
• Ontological: Conflicts between moral requirements with neither overriding the other, genuinely. Ex: A moral agent trusted by a secret society of its ideology but is summoned by immediate and superior authority to persecute the said society.
• Self-imposed: Arise from the agent's own wrongdoing. Ex: A moral agent makes two conflicting promises, creating an impossible situation to discharge both.
• Levels of Moral Dilemmas
  • Individual: Exists within the person only, involving unrevealed facts or truths.
  • Organizational: Exists within an organization or sector, involving conflicting individual needs/aspirations and collective purposes.
  • Systemic: Seeks a satisfactory system for all concerns, entailing trade-offs and bargaining without exact solutions.
• Educational System and Issues*
• Issues on tuition fee increases are rife within HEIs where education is unreasonably high in most colleges/universities that are privately operated.
• Systemic dilemmas help identify all those involved in a system, assess specific problems units contribute, and attempt to solve issues through sound alternatives.
• HEIs are morally obliged to provide quality education and should teach graduates how to become potential employees for different companies that play a role in our economy
• The increase of tuition has become a necessary condition for quality education, thus placing so much premium on tertiary education that leads to a phenomenon known as credentialism, where companies look for credentials rather than the acquired skills of the graduates
• The role of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is to regulate tuition fees increases and guard the delivery of a quality education by ensuring that the HEIs conform to the certain standards
• Quality education includes the improvement of facilities, salary increases for their professionals, and funding for research
• Minimum Requirements of Morality*
• Moral philosophy needs a systematic understanding on morality and questions of how we ought to live and Why.
• Morality requires reason because moral judgements are not of personal preference and requires support of sound reasons or well-founded justifications
• Moral reasoning is a system to think about dilemma
• Ways to think about Dilemma*
• Identify (as comprehensively as possible) the morally relevant aspects of the situation
• Weigh the significance of the morally relevant aspects, giving due importance to the views of persons with what is considered benefit and harm.
• Identify all the possible actions that could to be pursued and their most likely consequences; and Consider all of the above elements and come to a decision based on the action that is reasoned to be ethically justified Impartiality refers to each individual's interests that are equally important in the issue in hand, and must acknowledge that other person's welfare is important
• A Conscientious moral agent is one who is concerned with the interest of everyone affected by the outcome of what he or she does

Understanding Human Freedom

• Freedom as the absence of restriction and implies no bounding actions or contradictory decisions.
• “Positive” freedom means individuals want to be the master of their actions and in control of free will and acts.
• Negativity prevents action - person does everything to prevent the odds while positivism gives favorable actions that are expected
• Negative liberty means the absence of obstacles, barriers, or constraints, while positive liberty means the possibility of acting to control one's life.
• Positive human freedom focuses on actions to reach optimum potentials, not just avoiding restrictions.
• Is Human Freedom Absolute?*
• Absolute human freedom is possible according to Jean Paul Sartre.
• Exists only in spirtual dimension.
• Human imagination sets the limit.
• Sarte's arguments for absolute human freedom*
• Existence precedes essence: Human subjectivity allows individuals to realize their existence and learn their purpose.
• Subject rather than object: People can control themselves and influence others, as they are not puppets to be controlled by society, and they posses the ability to influence environments over being guarded by them
• Notion of choice: Freedom and choosing among available choice allows all capacity to choose and choose for themselves
• Responsibility: Actions come with freedom and responsibility
• Our acts define us: People create themselves through free and voluntary actions.
• Three Positions Of Freedom*
• Human is absolutely free (Sartrean View)
• Human is absolutely determined (Views are logical, psychological, and theological)
• Human is situated (as proposed by Maurice Merleau Ponty
• Deterministic views*
• Logical determinism maintains the idea that the future is already fixed.
• Physical determinism based on the physical laws of nature claims that physical factors determine world feature ,and limit choices even like gender conditions.
• Psychological determinism sustains that discoverable psychological laws dictates the ability to predict how a person might respond to situations throughout one's later life
• Objection on the absolute determinism*
• There must always be possible hope for other opportunities and the statement on the impossibility lacks truth meaning.
• Claiming that humans are manipluable causes the fact that society could become unjust because humans will act toward action without accountability of possible results.
• The Middle Ground*
• Middle ground states that humans are free to make choices despite physical and psychological state.
• Freedom is related to a Person*\
• Gabriel stated that existence grows out of the context and having freedom that allows us the exist in the world that nurtures the essence. Freedom is external and possess no communion.
• Marcel talks about in two realms of freedom: the realm of sharing and the realm of being.
• Understanding Freedom and Responsibility*
• Responsibility relies upon freedom and has two meanings: accountability and response-ability.
• Accountability, he stated, "I am accountable for an action that is that I acted on my own that freed from external restraints
• Responsibility, he stated, "...means the actions that are responsive to demands from a situation.
• Freedom and Justice*
• Both fair and harmonious when a person is liberated thus recognizes the relations among people and goods and discerns its needs with the capacity to choose is available. Thus, individuals is able to see the limited in distribution of sources .
• A person becomes more fair/just with presence of freedom that is related in relationships among people and goods.
• Generally, an individual that is free with capacity to see can allocate limited resources by discerning his/her needs and ones fellowmens needs
• Freedom and Values*
• Associate with freedom and value and since it is linked in choices it is mainly based on value.
• Sheller concept of value further elaborates in varied hierarchy:*
• Sensory: (Unpleasant/Pleasant)
• Vital: (vulgar/noble)
• Spiritual: (injustice/justice; lies/truth, Ugly/beauty)
• Unholy and Holy: (traditions/biblical truths/faiths / sacraments
• Sensory values are what the feeling are to which the corresponding subjects are pleasure/pain
• People tend to lean over bad things over good as long it yields a better value, with to the Vital values are connected in the general being . The corresponding with the spiritual values are disconnected from the body by having feelings.
• The holy values are values that appear on object as the objects appear hence its values are not based on thing but on the value itself. The presence of values allows person with that being said the person qualities should be on standards of high value

Explore the relationship between ethical theory and practice. Investigate the etymological roots of 'ethics' and its core principles. Analyze moral dilemmas and the challenges of making ethical choices when faced with conflicting values.