Ethics Notes PDF

**TOPIC 1:\ ETHICS: ITS DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE** **LEARNING OUTCOMES:** 1. Illustrate knowledge of what ethics are and their importance. 2. Recall rules you have to follow and why you need to follow them; and 3. Describe what a moral experience is as it happens in different levels of h...

**TOPIC 1:\ ETHICS: ITS DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE** **LEARNING OUTCOMES:** 1. Illustrate knowledge of what ethics are and their importance. 2. Recall rules you have to follow and why you need to follow them; and 3. Describe what a moral experience is as it happens in different levels of human experience. **DEFINITION OF ETHICS** The book of Montemayor (1994) provides the following definitions of ethics: - Ethics is the practical science of the morality of human actions. - Ethics is the science of human acts with reference to right and wrong. - Ethics is the scientific inquiry into the principles of morality. - Ethics is the study of the rectitude of human conduct. - Ethics is human conduct from the standpoint of morality. - Ethics is the science which lays down the principles of right living. - Ethics is the practical science that guides us in our actions so that we may live rightly and well. - Ethics is a normative and practical science, based on reason, which studies human conduct and provides norm for its natural integrity and honesty. - According to Socrates, ethics is the investigation of life. **IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS** Montemayor (1994) proclaims that the importance of the study of ethics follows immediately from the importance of ethics itself**.** - Ethics means right living and good moral character and it is in good moral character that man finds his true worth and perfection. All the great teachers of the ages maintain that the supreme purpose of human living lies not in the acquisition of material good or bodily pleasures, nor in the attainment of bodily perfections such as health and strength; nor even in the development of intellectual skills but in the development of the moral qualities which lift man far above brute creation. - Education is the harmonious development of the whole man-of all man's faculties: the moral, intellectual, and physical powers in man. Now then the highest of man's power are his reason and will. Hence, the primary objective of education is the moral development of the will. **RULES AND ITS IMPORTANCE TO SOCIAL BEINGS** 1. Rules protect social beings by regulating behavior. 2. Rules help to guarantee each person certain rights and freedom. 3. Rules produce a sense of justice among social beings. 4. Rules are essential for a healthy economic system. **KINDS OF VALUATIONS THAT DO NOT IMPLY MORAL JUDGMENT OR ARE NOT PART OF ETHICS** - **Aesthetic Valuation**. Some things are considered good or bad because of their appeal to the senses. - **Technical Valuations**. Some things are considered right or wrong depending on whether the proper manner of them doing has been respected. - **Etiquette**. People approve or may disapprove about certain ways of doing. - **Acts of Man versus Human Acts** - The **acts of man** refer to the involuntary activities that are necessary to sustain human life, like in the case of breathing, the continuous beating of the heart and involuntary movements of the intestines and lungs. - Helping someone in need and other gestures that relieve people from their suffering or the opposite, making people suffer and placing them in difficult situation are **human acts**. **VALUATIONS THAT INVOLVE MORAL OR ETHICAL VALUATIONS** - Moral problems according to Bulaong Jr. et al. (2018) "involve valuations that belong to the sphere of human actions characterized by certain gravity and concern the well-being or human life itself." - Something is also about moral problem when it violates certain standards. - A religious belief may also qualify as a moral standard. - In the same vein of ideas, an act is a moral problem if it violates certain moral principles. **Why only human beings can be ethical?** - From St. Thomas Aquinas point of view, the human being is ethical because the human person has the rational soul. Hence, according to St. Thomas, we can ascribe morality only to human beings. - Also, ethical assumptions; namely, free will and reason are important bases that determine why only human beings can be ethical. - Another authority explains that human beings have rules, principles, desires (the desire to do what is good), consciousness, sensitivity to higher order (ability to recognize God) and AKRASIA (Greek word for courage). **What is moral experience and how moral rule is born?** - For instance, you found a wallet that contains 5,000 pesos and an ATM card with the pin number as well! Something inside tells you to get it but at the same time you remember the prohibition; "Thou shall not steal." That is a moral experience and where moral rule is born. It calls for judgment. - A moral rule constitutes a moral situation that calls for or requires moral judgment to do good or the opposite.