Ethics

Ethics: Three definitions of ethics

─ Ethics may be defined as the normative science of the conduct

of human beings living in societies ─ a science which judges the
conduct to be right or wrong, good or bad or in some similar
way.
(William Lillie, An Introduction to Ethics)
─ Ethics is a branch of philosophy; it is moral philosophy or
philosophical thinking about morality, moral problems and
moral judgments. (W. K. Frankena, Ethics)
─ Ethics may be defined as philosophical inquiry into the nature
and grounds of morality. (Paul W. Taylor, Principles of Ethics:
An Introduction)

The purpose of ethics

 Ethics is necessary to resist social chaos where life is horrible,
impure or miserable in other words ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short’.
 Ethics is a set of rules that if followed by nearly everyone, will
promote the flourishing of nearly everyone.
 These rules restrict our freedom but only in order to promote
greater freedom and well-being.
 The five purposes of ethics are:
1. To keep society from falling apart;
2. To minimize human suffering;
3. To promote human flourishing;
4. To resolve conflicts of interest in just and orderly ways;
5. To assign praise and blame, reward and punishment and guilt.

Ethics and religion

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 Morality and religion both are related to duties and obligations.

Both call for the exercise of conscience. Morality as well as
religion emphasizes goodness, truth and peace.
 The practice of morality need not be motivated by religious
considerations. Moral precepts need not be grounded in
revelation or divine authority as religious teachings are.
 Ethics is grounded in reason and human experience.
 Religion includes wider range of duties than morality, for example,
worship, rites, prayer etc. are among the most important of
religious duties but morality has only an indirect concern with
such duties in so far as they affect a man’s conduct in relation to
his fellow-men.
 Religion is characteristically an emotional experience whereas
morality is grounded in reason.
 Religion is knowledge based, morality is action based. For religion
theoretical study of knowing God is essential; knowledge is all
important toward the behavior of the self. For morality knowledge
is for the sake of action.
 Religion has its center in God; morality has its center in man. Not
to harm anyone is moral duty, whereas, to be loyal to the
supernatural God and to follow God’s commands are religious
duties.

Ethics and law

 The aim of ethics and law is human welfare. Ethical rules are to
secure welfare of the members of the community; state laws act
as keeping peace among the citizens of the state.
 Ethics is a normative or idealistic science which emphasizes moral
values, on the other hand, laws emphasizes on certain legality in
order to maintain social security and progress of the society. Law
is always to the protection of human rights and welfare so it is
with ethics.
 Both ethics and law are dependent on value in order to fulfill their
aims.
 Ethics is related with voluntary actions of individual person; law is
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related with collection of people.

 Ethics examines on the basis of moral value; law is based on the
interest or utility of the people.
 Ethical laws are unwritten undocumented but laws are written
and documented.
 Ethical bindings are should or ought, laws are forced to be followed
otherwise punishment will be faced.

Ethics and psychology

 Ethics is a normative science of conduct of human beings and
psychology is a science of behavior of human beings as well as
animal beings.
 Both ethics and psychology study voluntary, involuntary and non-
voluntary behavior of human beings.
 In order to evaluate a certain conduct ethics reviews the will,
motive, intention and desires of the individual. Ethical studies of
conduct require a focus on the psychological stages of the
individual. These show similarities between the two subjects.
 But ethics is evaluative science whereas psychology is a factual
science. Methods of ethics are analytic and deductive, methods of
psychology are experimental and inductive. The scope of
psychology is broader than that of ethics.
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Deontological and Consequential Theories

Deontological Moral Theory

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

His main works: Critique of Pure Reason

Critique of Practical Reason
Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals
Kant is:
— a deontologist (believes in duty for duty’s sake).
— an absolutist (accepts unqualified, unconditional motives as
good and believes in no exception).
— a rationalist (faith on reason as the guide of morality).

The Good Will:

— For Kant, a good motive or a good will is central.
— While there are many things which we call good, a good motive
is the only thing that has intrinsic value.
— Goodness is to be found in an inner quality of will, motive or
intention and not in an outward performance or the
consequences of one’s act.
— The true object of reason is to produce a will which is good in
itself, since nothing else is always and necessarily good.
— Other things, like intelligence, courage and happiness are
usually good, but they may be used so as to promote evil.
— Intelligence or courage, when used to carry out an evil purpose,
may increase the evil.
— In order for the motive to be good, a man must act from a
sense of duty.
— Good will alone is praiseworthy and that means acting out of
pure respect for moral law.
— A good will or good motive is therefore the indispensable
condition of the moral life.
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The Categorical Imperative:

— The moral law expresses in the “categorical imperative”.
— The categorical imperative is a direct command to act.
— A hypothetical imperative depends upon an “if” and is
conditional.
— According to Kant a hypothetical imperative is not an
expression of the moral law.
— The categorical imperative is the voice of duty, the sense of
“ought” within the morally sensitive person.
— It is a priori or derived from the reason itself.
— The categorical imperative is expressed in two general rules.
— The first general rule states that “Act only on maxims which you
can at the same time will to be universal law”.
— It means that we should act in such a way that the principle for
our actions could become a universal law.
— Thus in order for an action to qualify as moral we should always
be able to affirm that all people at all times and places should
follow the same principle of conduct, e.g., promise keeping,
truth telling.
— The second general rule states that “Treat every rational being
including yourself always as an end, and never as a mere
means”.
— It emphasizes respect for persons and affirms that people
should not be used just as instruments or objects.
— Lying and suicide are condemned because in both instances we
are treating someone (or the individual himself) only as a
means. Here human beings are used as objects and not as
persons.
— The dignity of persons are denied when we use them as means
to get the desired ends.
— Kant holds that we must treat people as ends rather than as
means.
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Consequential or Utilitarian Ethical Theory

J.Bentham (1748-1832) & J.S.Mill (1806-73)

— Consequentialism as an ethical theory holds that the rightness

or wrongness of an action depends not on the intentions of the
person performing the action, but rather on the consequences
of the action.
— Utilitarianism is known as consequentialism.
— Utilitarianism is based on the assumption that the ultimate aim
of all human activity is happiness.
— Utilitarianism is a form of hedonism.
— According to utilitarianism an act is right if it promotes a
balance of pleasure over pain.
— Utilitarianism believes that greatest happiness for greatest
number is good and the reverse is bad.
— Utilitarianism is based on two main principles: (1) the utility
principle implies pleasure, advantage; (2) the consequentialist
principle implies result or end of the action.
— Utility is that property in any act or object whereby it tends to
produce an advantage, a benefit, pleasure or happiness.
— Consequence refers to the result of the action which it
produces.
— Utilitarianism deals with the probable consequences of various
possible courses of action in any circumstance.
— From the various possible courses of action whichever is the most
likely to bring about the most happiness (or at least the greatest
balance of happiness over unhappiness) is the right action.
— For Bentham probable consequences are calculated by hedonic
calculus.
— Hedonic calculus serves the quantitative measurement for
pleasure and pain experiences.
— The calculus determines some pleasure more preferable to
other on the basis of intensity, duration, certainty, nearness,
fruitfulness, purity and extent.
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— The quantitative measurement is provided by Bentham.

— The qualitative distinction among pleasures plays an important
role in Mill’s theory.
— For Mill “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied. It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied”.
— For Mill quality rather than quantity of pleasure determines the
moral value of any act.

Negative Utilitarianism

— States that an act which originates less pain and suffering is

more ethical than producing more pleasure.
— Emphasizes avoidance of pain and suffering than enhancement
of pleasure.
— Believes in minimization of pain and suffering than
maximization of pleasure.
— Believes in the prohibition of excessive and unnecessary
experiments on animals.
— Puts restrictions on animal farming and meat diets.
— Encourages biodiversity on the basis of preservation and
conservation policy regarding forestry and wild animals.
— An act is good if it gives less pain and suffering to the
consumers.
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Perfectionism
Perfectionism

─ Perfectionism believes in self-realization of the individual.

─ Perfection refers to perfection of character or rational control of
feelings, emotions and desires.
─ According to perfectionism happiness is the goal of life which
can be attained by the exercise of the soul.
─ Happiness springs from the harmony of desires done by reason.
─ Perfectionism emphasizes the realization of the ideal rational
or social self in intimate relationship with others in society.
─ Self-realization means realization of rational self and not of the
sentient self.
─ Self-realization refers to the development of personality; it
consists in actualization of immense potentialities of the self.
─ Self-realization means the achievement of health, happiness,
knowledge, beauty and virtue, which are the ideal of human life
and specially achievement of that ideal which fits in with a
person’s inborn aptitudes.
─ Unfolding the aptitudes will raise him to the height of his
personality through which he can make his best contribution to
the progress of humanity.
─ Self-realization of different persons depends upon the
development of different aptitudes.
─ In every case it means the realization of an ideal, rational or social
self in co-operation with society.
─ Self-realization is accompanied with happiness which is an
index of perfection.
─ Prominent perfectionist philosophers are Plato, Aristotle and
Hegel.

Die to Live

─ According to Hegel, the self must die as a narrow, personal

individual and must live the richer, wider life of the spiritual
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universe beyond him.

─ Hegel does not advocate the total destruction of sensibility for
the higher life of the self but control of it by reason and also
transformation of it into an expression of the higher life of
reason. Self-realization can be achieved through self-
abnegation.

Be a Person

─ According to Hegel, we should constitute our personality out of

our individuality.
─ We should realize our higher self by subjugating our lower self.
─ Personality is the identification of a person, we should raise
ourselves to the utmost to realize our personality and also
respect that of others.
─ Hegel says, be a person and respect others as person.
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Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics

─ The study of the ethics of human interactions with and impacts

upon the natural world and natural systems; the branch of
ethics concerned with practical issues (such as pollution and
biodiversity preservation) and matters of principle arising from
such interactions.

Anthropocentrism (human centered)

─ A stance that limits moral standing to humans, confines the

scope of morality and moral concern to human interests and
regards nothing but human well-being as valuable intrinsically.
─ This theory holds that only humans have moral value; we do
not have direct responsibilities to the natural world.

Non-anthropocentrism

─ This theory grants moral standing to such natural objects as

animals and plants.
─ This theory upholds animal rights and taking care of threatened
extinction of many plant and animals species.

Holistic theory

─ A theory which locates independent value in wholes (such as

specie or ecosystems or society as a whole) rather than in
individual organisms or members of society.
─ We have moral responsibilities to collections of individuals
rather than those individuals who constitute the whole.
─ Our ethical duties are drawn to collections or ‘wholes’, e.g.,
species, populations, ecosystem, etc.
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Punishment

Punishment

The goals of punishment

— The goals are several and diverse, including vindicating the law,
crime prevention and offender rehabilitation. Philosophical
disputes over punishment focus on which goal is to take priority
over others and why.
— There are three theories of punishment.

Philosophers: Hume, Kant, Hegel, Bentham, Rashdall.

1.The deterrent theory

— This theory is also known as preventive punishment.

— This theory judges punishment as an example, punishment sets an
example to prevent crime.
— The goal of punishment is to refrain others from doing crimes. It is
said that — punishment on you is not for stealing lamb but that no
one will steal lamb in future, it is for this that you are punished.
— This theory approves of capital punishment.
— According to the deterrent theory the purpose of punishing
anyone who has done wrong is to deter others from doing the
same wrong.
─ This view treats human beings as means to the goals.
— Human beings are not lifeless objects or machines; therefore, they
cannot be treated as means to the ends.
— Moralists criticized capital punishment as creating an example to
the good of others.
— Critics of the theory hold that deterrent punishment alone cannot
restrain offender; punishment frightens, instead of frightening
offender raising moral sentiment in the offender rather plays
positive role in the prevention of crime.
— Moralists often object to this view of punishment because the
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offender is treated merely as a means to the good of others.

2. The reformative theory.

— According to this theory the aim of punishment is to reform the

character of the offender himself.
— This theory holds that inflicting pain on a man is the best way to
reform him.
— It is reasonable to believe that the suffering of pain may often
have a good effect on the offender.
— It has been seen that physical pain serves as a warning and a
stimulus to changing one’s habits and the pain inflicted by legal
sentence may in many cases have the same effect.
— Human beings are by nature moral and obedient to laws, it is due
to social mismanagement and due to the errors in the personality
or character that man violates laws and morality.
— If society can cleanse corruptions, inequalities and other social
diseases which lead to corrupt a man we may find less offenders.
— Therefore, this theory does not approve capital punishment rather
upholds punishment as a method to the reformation of the
personality and character of the offender.

3. Retributive theory.

— According to this theory punishment is right in itself, that is fitting

that the guilty should suffer and justice requires punishment.
— Though punishment is evil but the theory holds that the offender
should be punished than prosper more than the virtuous and at
the expense of the virtuous.
— In this view, the function of criminal law is to punish offences or
immorality in order to maintain a kind of cosmic distributive
justice.
— In its simplest form the theory holds that the aim of punishment is
to make the offender suffer what his victim has suffered.
— This theory justifies the law of ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a tooth for
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a tooth’, that is to say, equal punishment to equal offence.

— The offender must get punishment equal to the crime.
— This theory claims ‘as you sow so you reap’ and also supports
capital punishment.
— There are two types of retributive theory

weak sense of strong sense of

retributive view retributive view

Weak sense of retributive view:

— According to this type of retributive theory nature and depth of

the crime as well as the situation and other relevant matters must
be considered.
— There are other factors, like, the situations, provocation,
instigation, intention of the offender, age, mental disposition etc.
which are required to be accounted before taking punishment.
— The weak version does not support capital punishment.

Strong sense of retributive view:

— In the strong sense of the view it is believed that in order to

punish the offender only the type and weight of the crime should
be counted.
— Other background factors of the crime must be avoided or
ignored.
— The strong version supports capital punishment.
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Relativism

Relativism
 In the field of morality there is a theory which argues that
moral rules are not absolute.
 What is right in one society may be wrong in another society.
 Moral rules are variable and changeable, relative to the
community, society or culture.

Absolutism
 Absolutism, on the other hand, means ‘perfect in quality’ or
‘complete’. The term absolute also means ‘not limited by
restrictions or exceptions’.
 Absolute moral ideals are same for everyone and valid for all
time. Absolutism does not believe in cross-cultural principles of
morality.

Cultural Relativism
 Moral rules vary culturally. Moral norms are said to be relative
to particular cultures.
 A theory which holds that morality is relative to specific
cultures is called cultural relativism.
 Ethics deals with value questions, what is good and what is bad.
 Ethics also deals with rules of conduct.
 Regarding the judgment of conduct different societies have
different rules of conduct.
 Judgments of conduct are founded on the rules.
 Since different societies follow different norms or rules it is said
that the rules which are applicable in one society are not
applicable in another society.
 Members of one society may act in conformity with rules of
their own society. Therefore, moral judgments depend on
culturally defined rules.
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 What is good or right depends on what one’s own society

approves of and what is bad or wrong depends on what one’s
own society disapproves of.
 Relativism is the belief that good and bad are determined by
the given moral rules of a particular time and place.
 This theory of moral relativism also upholds that there are no
universal absolute moral rules.
 Moral practices are believed to be changing rules whereas
absolutism believes that moral rules are unchanging and such
rules are applicable to everyone, i.e., moral rules are universal.
 Absolute moral rules are same for everyone and valid for all
time.
 Absolutism does not believe in cross-cultural principles of
morality.

Descriptive Relativism
 Descriptive relativism is a sociological and empirical theory in
moral issues.
 According to this theory there are certain facts about moral
values which can be empirically proved to show that all moral
values are relative to particular culture.
 People of a particular culture follow norms approved by their
own culture.
 A sociologist can prove such a claim empirically and holds that
such rules or norms are not universal
 Descriptive relativism holds that moral norms vary from society
to society and norms are not common in all cultures.
 According to descriptive relativism it is wrong to say that moral
norms are general and universal.
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Rawls’s Theory of Justice

The Notion of Original Position

 This is also known as the argument of original position which
Rawls has used in his book A Theory of Justice in order to arrive
at conclusions about fairness and justice.
 If you were given the opportunity to choose the principles which
should govern the best possible society you might be biased in
various ways towards your own class, profession, gender,
religion, ethnicity and so on.
 Rawls here proposes a kind of thought experiment, a
hypothetical situation in which all the facts about your self are
kept hidden from you behind a veil of ignorance.
 You have to imagine not knowing whether or not you have a job,
what sex you are, whether you own a family, where you live,
how intelligent you are, whether you are an optimist, a
pessimist, a drug addict.
 At the same time, you have a good understanding of politics and
economics, the basis of social organization and laws of human
psychology.
 You are also aware of some basic goods which are required for
almost any lifestyle, and these include certain freedoms,
opportunity, income and self-respect.
 Rawls calls this situation of ignorance about your own place in
society ‘the original position’.
 In this hypothetical state of the original position which principles
would it be rational for someone to adopt for the society?
 The idea of asking this question is to eliminate all the non-
relevant features of our actual lives, which otherwise tend to
intrude in our assessment of what sort of society there should
be.
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 Rawls assumes that principles of rationally chosen under the

conditions of the original position would have a special claim to
being just once, and that, other things being equal, we should
adopt them.
Two basic principles
 Rawls is in search of basic principles which shall guide our
state/society so that there should be no difference between any
individuals, because in the original position all the elements that
distinguish us one from another are already been removed.
 The principles then, should be ones on which the participants
would agree.
 Through this thought experiment, Rawls comes up with two
basic principles, one is concerning with liberty, the other with
the just distribution of goods.
 These principles hold his basic political conclusions which are
liberal and egalitarian.
1. The liberty principle
 The liberty principle states that a rational person would want
that everyone in the society is entitled to have the same right to
basic liberties as anyone else, otherwise that person might end
up a victim of discrimination.
 What are these basic liberties?
 These are liberty of conscience, freedom to entertain whatever
religions or secular beliefs you may find convincing are the
examples.
 The basic freedoms a state is not justified in curtailing.
 State may intervene only when one’s liberty is threatened by
another.
 The rule of law is necessary to guarantee the various liberties
which each member of a society has a right to.
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2. Just distribution of goods

 Principle of just distribution of goods consists of two other
principles — a) the fair equality of opportunity principle and b)
the difference principle.
 a) The fair equality of opportunity principle states that social or
economic inequalities associated with particular offices or jobs
can only exist if these offices or jobs are open to everyone under
condition of fair equality of opportunity.
 No one should be excluded from, for instance, the best-paid
jobs, on non-relevant grounds such as sexual orientation or race.
 This principle of equality of opportunity includes provision of
education to allow all people to develop their talent.
 b) The difference principle insists that any social or economic
inequalities should only be tolerated on condition that they bring
greatest benefits to the most disadvantaged members of the
society.
 This is an implementation of a strategy known as ‘maximin’.
 Maximin means ‘maxmise the minumum’ which explains that
choose the option which gives the best deal for the worst case.
 Consider the example of fair wages in a just society.
 Imagine two situations:
 In the first situation, most people earn a high wage, but ten
percent of the population can barely earn enough to survive.
 In the second situation, although the average standard of living
is far lower, the worst off ten percent of the population have a
reasonable standard of living.
 Rawls claims that the second of the two situations is preferable
because it guarantees that everyone in the society will be
achieving a reasonable standard of living, the worst off are not
that badly off.
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 In the first situation, however, although there is a good chance

of ending up quite well off, there is also a significant risk of being
on a wage that barely allows you to survive.
 Adopting the maximin strategy, we should minimize the worst
risks, and should opt for the second situation.
Difference Principle
The principle chosen by rational people from behind the veil of
‘ignorance’, is explained in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls
holds that due to the veil of ignorance no one knows the identity
of the person and in this situation everyone is equal. The principle
requires that social benefits and burdens are allocated in such a
way as to make the position of the least well-off as good as it can
be.
Distributive Justice
The problem is to lay down principles specifying the just
distribution of benefits and burdens; the outcome of which
everyone receives their due. A common basis is that persons
should be treated equally unless reasons for inequality exist; after
that the problems include the kind of reasons that justify
departing from equality, the role of the state in rectifying
inequality and the link between a distributive system and the
maximization of well-being.
Retributive (rectificatory) justice
This is the idea of seeking to balance an injustice by rectifying the
situation, or by regaining an equality that the injustice overturned.
It is most simply summed up in the principle of ‘an eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth’. Rectification suggests taking from the
offender and giving to the injured party, whereas retribution
acknowledges that this is sometimes impossible (e.g. if the victim
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is dead), but embodies the idea that an office may ‘cry out’ for
punishment, and that the moral order is out of balance until this is
administered. Retributive justice could provide the safeguard in
the sense that not only the violators are identified following a fair
process but also that they are punished accordingly and the harm
is repaired.