Ethics
From Encyclopædia
Ethics, or moral
philosophy, the branch of
philosophy concerned with conduct and character, is the systematic study of the principles and methods for distinguishing right from wrong and good from bad. Ethics has various interconnections with other branches of
philosophy, such as metaphysics, the study of reality, and
epistemology, the study of knowledge; this may be seen in such questions as whether there is any real difference between right and wrong and, if there is, whether it can be known.Experiences that have led to ethical inquiry are uncertainty or conflicts of opinion about what ought to be done; the sometimes painful consequences of an action that earlier seemed perfectly acceptable; and awareness of differences in norms and practices among different societies. These experiences give rise not only to questions of practical ethics (What should I do? Is this arrangement fair?) but also to questions of theoretical ethics (Is any one of these standards really right or are they all just arbitrary?). Such experiences are also the main source of moral
skepticism--along with the fact that moral judgments appear unverifiable by observation, because there seems to be nothing in experience corresponding to the rightness of an action. Thus these questions, among others, have been generated: What does it mean to say that something is right or good? What makes right actions right? How can disputes about moral questions be resolved? It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.Philosophical ethics is often called normative ethics and distinguished from descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics is a department of empirical
science, akin to
sociology, that aims to discover and describe what moral beliefs are held in a given culture (see
MORAL AWARENESS). Normative ethics aims rather to prescribe; it searches for norms, not in the sense of what is
average and in that sense normal, but in the sense of authoritative standards of what ought to be.MetaethicsA distinction within ethics of importance in contemporary discussions is that between normative ethics and metaethics. Metaethics (literally "about ethics") is the analytical study of the discipline of ethics itself. The term came into use only in the 20th century and thus cannot be found in the works of any of the classical moral philosophers, although inquiries of the sort that constitute it certainly can. Metaethics attempts to determine the meanings of normative terms, such as right, good, ought, justice, and obligation, to determine their interconnections and whether any of these concepts is basic. It also attempts to analyze the nature of moral judgments and to determine both whether they can be justified and whether they can be true or false. A question of some
prominence in recent discussions is whether an "ought" can be deduced from an "is" and just what the relation is between facts and values.These are questions of both metaethics and traditional ethics, and the importance of the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics is itself controversial, some writers regarding it as essential, others as not. The question at issue is whether it is possible to analyze moral concepts and judgments without at the same time presupposing moral beliefs. If so then metaethics can be morally neutral, otherwise not.Among the main approaches in metaethics are views called naturalism, cognitivism, intuitionism, and subjectivism. Naturalism (represented in different ways by Herbert SPENCER and John DEWEY) maintains that moral terms name complex matters of fact and that moral judgments can be established by scientific or factual investigation; non-naturalistic theories (such as that of G. E. MOORE) deny this. A cognitivist theory maintains that moral judgments can be true or false and can, in principle, be subjects of knowledge or cognition; noncognitivist theories deny this. These two categories overlap, and a cognitivist theory can be naturalistic or non-naturalistic.Intuitionists such as H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross claim that the sort of knowledge we have of right and wrong is immediate and self-evident. Reaction to intuitionism has led to subjectivism, emotivism, and imperativism. Subjectivists maintain that moral judgments state only subjective facts about attitudes and make no assertion about the object; thus if one says that something is wrong one is saying only that one disapproves of it or that society does. The emotive theory (A. J. AYER, C. L. Stevenson) claims that moral judgments do not state anything that is capable of being true or false, even subjectively, but merely express
emotions; moral terms, according to this view, have only emotive meaning, like
oaths or exclamations. Imperativism (Rudolf CARNAP) claims that moral judgments are commands in disguise (so that "You ought to do that" means simply "Do that!") and hence incapable of truth or falsity. Imperativism and emotivism are forms of noncognitivism. Subjectivism, however, is not, although it cannot usefully be classified as cognitivist either.Any philosophical consideration of morality must come to terms with moral
skepticism, and these different metaethical theories are different responses to
skepticism. Any theory that maintains that moral principles cannot be proved, that there are no moral truths, that morality has no rational basis, or that the difference between right and wrong is merely a matter of taste or convention, is a form of moral
skepticism. Subjectivism, imperativism, and emotivism are thus forms of
skepticism. Cognitivist theories, on the other
hand, are usually incompatible with it.A widespread and familiar form of
skepticism is ethical relativism, the view that there is no one correct moral code for all times and peoples, that each group has its own morality relative to its wants and values, and that all moral ideas are necessarily relative to a particular culture. According to this view, cannibals are justified in eating human beings by the standards of their own culture even if not by the standards of Western culture, and there can be no basis for claiming that the standards of Western culture are superior to theirs.Relativism seems to be supported by the most cursory observations of the diversity among cultures and constitutes a problem both for metaethics and for normative ethics. For if there is no right or wrong that can be determined apart from the conventions of one's own culture, the question arises of what ought to be done when different cultures come into conflict. Among the cannibals should I do as the cannibals do or should I act according to the standards of my own culture? Even relativists and other moral skeptics tend to pursue an answer by a process of moral reasoning, which may
appeal to one of the standards of normative ethics. Even if one as a theorist adopts an emotivist or other skeptical stance, one as a human being will confront problems of conduct that call for answers.Normative EthicsAmong the questions of normative ethics are: What makes right actions right? How can we tell what is right? Why should I be moral? Major the?ries are usually classified as consequentialist (teleological) or nonconsequentialist (deontological). Consequentialism maintains that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences. Deontological theories claim, variously, that the morality of an action depends on its intrinsic nature, or on its motives, or on its being in accordance with some rule or principle, and either not at all or only partly on consequences.Teleological theories vary in their determination of what consequences are relevant and in how the value of the consequences is to be determined, but all interpret moral judgments as dependent on values and evaluation, hence on value theory. One such value theory is HEDONISM, the view that only pleasure is good as an end, and teleological theories are commonly classified as hedonistic or nonhedonistic.
utilitarianism (Jeremy BENTHAM, John Stuart
mill), the theory that the greatest happiness of the greatest
number is the test of right and wrong, is hedonistic, since it interprets happiness as a balance of pleasure over
pain. A nonhedonistic form of consequentialism is the "ideal
utilitarianism" of G. E. Moore and
Hastings Randall, which maintains that one ought to do that act of all those available in the circumstances that would produce the most good. Another rival to
utilitarianism is self-realizationism, or perfectionism (
Aristotle, Thomas Hill GREEN), which holds that the ultimate end is the full development or perfection of the self. This is a form of teleological theory, but it is not hedonistic.Some theories do not readily fall under the above classification. One such is the theological (or divine command) theory that it is the will of God that determines whether an action is right or wrong. On this view (
saint AUGUSTINE,
William Paley) the morality of an act depends on neither its consequences nor its essential nature nor its motive, but solely on whether it is in accordance with the will of God. Such theological theories have had wide acceptance and correspond closely to what many religious though nonreflective people uncritically think is the truth about morality. Religion, however, does not necessarily commit one to the theological theory, which has received as much criticism by theists (Richard Whately) as by nontheists (Moore).
