The existence or possibility of the good. The good may take on a number of forms e.g. good ends, right actions, right thought, right will, right intention; and have a number of meanings e.g. desirability, happiness, virtue and so on

The ability to make choices

What is Ethics?

What is ethics? It has to do with choices. Not all choices are thought of as ethical. Common areas of ethical choice are proper actions and ends – what are right actions and what are good ends? Proper actions and ends may be determined by prescription, or according to principles. In practice, since the process of determination involves reflection – including emotion – and trial and selection, the determination is by a combination of prescription and principle. A moral code or a code of ethics is a prescription. Examples of principles are hedonism – happiness is the main good – and utilitarianism – right action is determined by the outcome. There are various ways in which a prescription can be seen as a principle. There is a tendency to reduce ethics to a single principle. This would, if valid, have the effect of making ethics rational – at least in principle

Normative vs. Metaethics

The concern of ethics, as just described, with the determination of right actions and good ends is normative ethics. Whereas ethics is about proper human actions and states of affairs, metaethics is about the nature or meaning of right and wrong and good and evil, about the objectivity of values – metaethics is about ethics. The distinction between normative and meta-ethics is valid and, yet, the boundary is not sharp. This point requires further analysis for validity and, then, further clarification. However, the following question is both normative and metaethical, “Should life be ethical?”

Ethics and Ontology

What is action, what is an “end”? As far as ethics is concerned these questions are important but auxiliary. The nature of actions and ends belong to ontology or metaphysics which are concerned with the study of being in its most general and fundamental sense

What comes first, ethics or ontology – what is more fundamental? The question has no definite answer unless ethics and ontology are clearly distinguished and defined. This, however, is counter to the nature and conception of ontology. As the nature of being, regardless of whether there is a distinction between values and states of being, the concern of ontology must be with both. On the other hand ethics is concerned, say, with action. What is an action? This topic was assigned, above, to ontology. However that may be, the idea that the study of action is not part of ethics must be based on the separability of fact and value. It is not at all clear that there is such a distinction

The General Theory of Value

Axiology – the study of value, metaphysics, and epistemology – the study of knowledge, are, traditionally the three main divisions of philosophy. In a sense indicated in the final paragraph of this introduction axiology is ethics. The distinction between metaphysics and epistemology is blurred – just as is the distinction between ethics and metaphysics. Since knowledge is part of the world metaphysics must include the study of knowledge; additionally, claims about the nature of being cannot be evaluated or completely understood without understanding the real nature of knowledge. Thus, any distinction of fundamental study into ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology is for convenience, according to the special concerns of an age, and limited

Constructive vs. Passive or Prescriptive Ethics

Return to the question of the nature of ethics as that of the right and the good. Consider an individual who asks, “How should I live?” His or her concerns include the response to a variety of situations that are part of life – a friend is deceiving his wife about his unfaithfulness to her, what should one do? Some expositions present the ethical aspect of life as a parade of such situations of varying importance. The resulting view of ethics is rather passive – what is the correct reaction to a situation? However life is not merely a sequence of unrelated situations. An individual may ask, how may I construct my whole life – and according to what criteria? What kind of a person should I be – what is a good person – virtue is related to actions and ends. It is not implied that the individual has a choice about everything or that every aspect of living must be considered. However, there are some main choices that the individual can make – from common themes or from among the individual’s own creations. There are choices from among themes that are commonly considered to be ethical – the division of one’s energies to work, love, voluntary effort and so on. There are also choices of aesthetics – adding to or recognizing beauty in the world. Adding beauty to the world is clearly ethical. Leisure is good – it is enjoyable, allows for the enjoyment of life, of beauty and makes for creativity. Waste, dilution of the good with the mundane displace the good and have, therefore, an ethical dimension. There is little that does not impact ethics. That does not mean that we should be constantly serious or worrying – that is not what ethics is about; play and laughter are values. It is not clear that ends, actions, kinds of persons and lives are fundamentally distinct. There is the question of the individual’s being – what may the individual become? This latter question is metaphysical – what is the possibility of being… but it is also ethical – the choice has impact on the world in which we live and on the lives of others as example and as light. This attitude reveals an ideal of ethics that is an active one, that is concerned with value generally and not just with concerns that are moral in nature, that is concerned with life and living as a whole and not just with unrelated situations, and that, finally, is interwoven with the nature and possibility of being, i.e., with metaphysics

METAETHICS

The nature of ethical theories and judgments

The objectivity of values; some problems

Origins: [if] values have local origin can they be universalized? What happens to “folk” morals when subject to rational scrutiny. Note of course the concept of bounded rationality; and of the necessary relation between rationality and action. Consider honesty as an example. To begin, honesty is saying what one believes to be true. What, then, if one state what one believes is true but allows another person to believe what one believes is not true? Beyond telling the truth, what is ones responsibility to showing the other person what is true? The concept of telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth goes part way toward showing but not far enough and, in some ways, too far. One cannot say everything that one believes to be true – one restricts what one tells to the context. Showing, telling and specifying the context are ongoing, interactive. However, at some point judgment is necessary; investigation and telling come to an end, we move on. So much for honesty, but what is the point to honesty? Is honesty an end in itself? Or is the point to honesty that it improves peoples lives and communication? This is not an ends-means issue. The question is whether honesty is a fundamental value or is there something, such as trust, that is more basic… and what do we do when honesty and trust are in conflict? If we cannot behave in trust to all persons and in all situations, how do we choose?

How are the distinctions between ends and action justified from a metaphysical point of view. I.e., if there are philosophical problems in taking ends and actions as clear in their nature and metaphysically distinct why should an ethicist, just because ethics is named as a separate discipline, merrily carry on his theorizing without regard to the distinction? Although there is some practical value to a metaphysically blind ethics, it needs to be noted that the metaphysical questions have immediate and practical significance

Are value systems complete with regard to all situations? With regard to the entire life of an individual or civilization? With regard to the entire range of choices of an individual or group life?

Are value systems consistent? I.e. how do we know that a given value system requires a unique, single action in any given situation?

Note that these questions apply equally to normative ethics and moral systems as to ethical principles such as the Kantian ethics

The tension among imperatives

The content of this and the next section has been transferred to Journey in Being

Ethics, Metaphysics and other concerns

The tension between individual and group interest

The tension between individual acts and cumulative action

Value vs. significance

NORMATIVE ETHICS

Teleologic Ethics

The ethics of ends or states of affairs. The good

Deontological Ethics

The ethics of actions. The right. The problem of action in an imperfect world

Part way between deontological and teleological ethics is concern with the direction of action

APPLIED ETHICS

Equality

Sex

Animals

Business Ethics

Crime and Punishment

Environmental Ethics

War and Peace

Abortion, Euthanasia and the Value of Human Life

Bioethics

There is a view of ethics as concerned with relatively isolated situations and issues. This view is frequently in evidence in modern discussions of “applied ethics.” Although the term is recent and reflects the professionalization of philosophy, the kind of concern is not new. Above are some topics in applied ethics taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica. These commonly recognized issues have been recognized as significant over the period 1950 – 2000. The actual importance assigned to individual issues may vary over quite short periods of time and the list could be expanded

In keeping with the discussion at the end of the introduction of ethics as an active endeavor with concern for life and living as a whole, the following topics also fall under applied ethics:

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