Chapter Two: Approaches to Ethics

 This Chapter aim to introduce you to various ethical theories

What is theory?
The Greek word theoria literally means “a way of seeing.”
- Moral theories attempt “to see” or “view” moral phenomena, and hence
understand morality, from a comprehensive perspective.
Main branches of the philosophical study of ethics
 Normative ethics
 Non-normative/Meta-ethics
 Applied ethics
 Normative ethics :- is the study of what makes actions right or
wrong, what makes situations or events good or bad and what makes
people virtues or vicious
- These theories evaluate actions in a systematic way, i.e., they may
focus on outcomes or duties or motivation as a means of justifying
human conduct.
- Normative ethics poses questions of the following kind:
• Are there general principles or rules that we could follow which
distinguish between right and wrong? Or:
• Are there virtues and/or relationships that we can nurture, in
order to behave well?
 In the history of ethics, two major viewpoints emerge: the
consequentialist (based on or concerned with consequences) and
the non-consequentialist (not based on or concerned with
consequences).
• Traditionally these have been called the “teleological” and
“deontological” theories, respectively,
Teleological Ethics (Consequentialist ethics)
What is teleological/Consequentialist ethics?
• It is referred as “the end justifies the means”.
• It believes in purpose, ends or goals of an action, it stress that the
consequences of an action determines the morality or immorality
of a given action.
• if Abebe wants to save his daughter’s life that happen due to lack
of health service and if he lacks money, stolen certain amount of
money in one of his rich neighbor, his act is might be right.
Because he stolen money for the sake of saving his daughters. and
if saves his daughter life by bring her to medical center by the
money he stolen, he is right because his action is evaluated in
terms of the end (saving his daughter’s life). what is the best
consequence?
• Consequentialist ethical theories are
Egoism: Ethical and psychological Egoism
 Ethical Egoism
• The ethical egoist essentially says that human beings ought to act
in their own self-interest,
• Read the following cases
 Some years ago, a Good Samaritan stopped to help a man whose car had
broken down on the freeway. The man shot and killed the Samaritan,
stole his car, and proceeded to lead the police, on a high-speed chase.
Eventually he ran out of gas and began a shoot-out with the police, who
subsequently killed him. This, of course, didn’t bring the Samaritan back
to life. Although most people would admire the Good Samaritan for what
he did and although we may deplore the fact that few people now would
be inclined to follow his example,
• The ethical egoist would say that, the Samaritan did the wrong thing.
• For ethical egoism there is only one rule. Look after yourself you have
no business stopping for anybody on the freeway; indeed, the ethical
egoist would say, if you do stop you are throwing your life away.
• This theory is called ethical egoism simply because it is an ethical
theory, a normative theory about how we ought to behave.
• It suggests that other people’s interests are of no importance.
 If you might advance your own interests by helping others, then
by all means help others but only if you are the main beneficiary.
 Psychological Egoism
• According to Psychological Egoism, every human action is motivated
entirely by self-interest.
• Psychological Egoists say that behind every action that appears to
be altruistic there is really a selfish motive.
• People help others because they believe it will get them into
heaven, or because it will bring them public recognition, or because
they enjoy the gratitude of those they help, etc.
For example, suppose that Fred runs into his neighbors burning house
to save a child trapped there. Fred succeeds, and when asked why
he did it, says “It was the right thing to do. I couldn’t stand by while
a little girl died.”
• But the Psychological Egoist doesn’t take Fred’s explanation at face
value. Perhaps Fred did it because of the positive attention he
would get afterwards; perhaps he did it because he knew he would
feel good about himself. Fred may tell us (and himself) that he was
motivated by a moral judgment and concern for the life of the child,
but in reality his motives are entirely selfish.
 Ethical egoism VS psychological egoism
• Unlike ethical egoism, psychological egoism is merely an
empirical claim about what kinds of motive we have, not what
they ought to be. So, while the ethical egoist claims that being
self-interested in this way is moral, the psychological
egoist merely holds that this is how we are.
• Psychological Egoism is a descriptive theory, according to which
each person in fact pursues only his or her own self-interest.
• Ethical Egoism is a prescriptive (or “normative”) theory,
according to which each person ought to pursue only his or her
own self-interest.
• The main difference between psychological egoism and ethical
egoism is that psychological egoism emphasizes the fact that
people act primarily out of self-interest while ethical
egoism emphasizes the fact that people should act for their self-
interest.
 Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from
wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism.
• Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that
will produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
• It calls for the maximization of goodness in society—that is, the
greatest goodness for the greatest number—and not merely the
good of the agent.
For example, assume a hospital has four people whose lives depend
upon receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a
liver. If a healthy person wanders into the hospital, his organs
could be harvested to save four lives at the expense of one life.
This would arguably produce the greatest good for the greatest
number. But few would consider it an acceptable course of action,
let alone the most ethical one.
•
• There are two classical types of utilitarianism: act- and rule-
utilitarianism
I. Act Utilitarianism
- the right act is still that alternative that results in the most utility
• Act utilitarianism essentially says that everyone should perform
that act which will bring about the greatest amount of good over
bad for everyone affected by the act.
• Its advocates do not believe in setting up rules for action because
they feel that each situation and each person are different/ the act
utilitarian believes that one cannot establish rules in advance to
cover all situations and people because they are all different.
• Each individual, then, must assess the situation he or she is
involved in and try to figure out which act would bring about the
greatest amount of good consequences with the least amount of
bad consequences, not just for himself or herself, as in egoism, but
for everyone involved in the situation
• In assessing the situation, the agent (the person who will be
acting or is acting) must decide whether, for example, telling the
truth is the right thing to do in this situation at this time.
• It does not matter that most people believe that telling the truth
is generally a good thing to do; the act utilitarian must decide
with regard to the particular situation he or she is in at the
moment whether or not it is right to tell the truth.
• For act utilitarianism there can be no absolute rules against
killing, stealing, lying, and so on, because every situation is
different and all people are different.
• Therefore, all of those acts that may, in general, be considered
immoral would be considered moral or immoral by the act
utilitarian only in relation to whether they would or would not
bring about the greatest good over bad for everyone in a
particular situation.
ii. Rule Utilitarianism
• It was to provide an answer, to many of the act utilitarian’s
problems that rule utilitarianism was established.
• Rule utilitarianism states that everyone always should follow
the rule or rules that will bring about the greatest number of
good consequences for all concerned.
• The rule utilitarian believes that there are enough similar
human motives, actions, and situations to justify setting up
rules that will apply to all human beings and situations
• For example, rather than trying to figure out whether one
should or should not kill someone else in each situation where
this problem might arise, rule utilitarian’s might form the rule
Never kill except in self-defense.
• Their assumption in stating this rule is that except when it is
done in self-defense, killing will bring about more bad
consequences than good for all concerned, both now and
probably in the long run.
• The fundamental principle of utilitarianism is the principle of
utility:
 Altruism
• In altruism an action is right if the consequences of that action are
favorable to all except the actor.
• Altruists are people who act so as to increase other people’s
pleasure.
• They will act for the sake of someone else even if it decreases
their own pleasure and causes themselves pain.
Suppose, for example, that Abel, who is not good at
swimming, saves a child from drawing in Lake
Tana.
What ultimately motivated him to do this?
It would be odd to suggest that it’s ultimately his own benefit that
Abel is seeking.
After all, he is risking his own life in the process.
 Non- Consequentialist (Deontological Ethics )
• Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right
from wrong.
• For deontologists, it is not consequences which determine the
rightness or wrongness of an act, but, rather, the intention of the
person who carries out the act
• Deontology is often associated with philosopher Immanuel Kant.
• Kant believed that ethical actions follow universal moral laws,
such as “Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t cheat.”
• Deontology is simple to apply.
• It just requires that people follow the rules and do their duty.
• This approach tends to fit well with our natural intuition about
what is or isn’t ethical.
• Unlike consequentialism, which judges actions by their results,
deontology doesn’t require weighing the costs and benefits of a
situation.
• This avoids subjectivity and uncertainty because you only have to follow set
rules.
• Despite its strengths, rigidly following deontology can produce results
that many people find unacceptable.
For example, suppose you’re a software engineer and learn that a
nuclear missile is about to launch that might start a war. You can
hack the network and cancel the launch, but it’s against your
professional code of ethics to break into any software system
without permission. And, it’s a form of lying and cheating.
Deontology advises not to violate this rule. However, in letting the
missile launch, thousands of people will die.
• So, following the rules makes deontology easy to apply. But it also
means disregarding the possible consequences of our actions
when determining what is right and what is wrong.
The most obvious example of such a theory is the Divine
Command Theory
  The Divine Command Theory
• If one believes that there is a God, goddess, or gods, and that He/She
or they have set up a series of moral commands, then an action is right
and people are good if, and only if, they obey commands supposedly
given to them by a divine being, regardless of consequences.
• ethical principles are simply the commands of God.
• They derive their validity from God’s commanding them, and they
mean “commanded by God.”
• Without God, there would be no universally valid morality.
We can analyze the DCT into three separate theses:
• Morality (that is, rightness and wrongness) originates with God.
• Moral rightness simply means “willed by God,” and moral
wrongness means “being against the will of God.”
• Because morality essentially is based on divine will, not on
independently existing reasons for action, no further reasons for
action are necessary.
According to DCT
1. Act A is wrong if and only if it is contrary to the command of God.
2. Act A is right (required) if and only if it is commanded by God.
3. Act A is morally permissible if and only if it is permitted by the command of God.
4. If there is no God, then nothing is ethically wrong, required, or permitted.
 Rights Theory
 Most generally, a "right" is a justified claim against another person's
behavior - such as my right to not be harmed by you.
 Rights and duties are related in such a way that the rights of one person
imply the duties of another person
 For example, if I have a right to payment of $10 by Smith, then Smith has
a duty to pay me $10. This is called the correlativity of rights and duties
 The most influential early account of rights theory is that of 17th century
British philosopher John Locke, who argued that the laws of nature
mandate that we should not harm anyone's life, health, liberty or
possessions.
• For Locke, these are our natural rights, given to us by God.
Following Locke, the United States Declaration of Independence
authored by Thomas Jefferson recognizes three foundational rights:
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
• Jefferson and others rights theorists maintained that we deduce
other more specific rights from these, including the rights of
property, movement, speech, and religious expression
 There are four features traditionally associated with moral rights.
• First, rights are natural insofar as they are not invented or created
by governments.
• Second, they are universal insofar as they do not change from
country to country.
• Third, they are equal in the sense that rights are the same for all
people, irrespective of gender, race, or handicap.
• Fourth, they are inalienable which means that I cannot hand over
my rights to another person, such as by selling myself into slavery.
 Kant’s Duty Ethics
- Another famous rule nonconsequentialist theory, often called
“Duty Ethics,” was formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724–
1804) and contains several ethical principles.
- THE GOOD WILL. (KINDNESS)
- Kant believed that nothing was good in itself except a good
will, and
- what is will? he defined will as the unique human ability to act
in accordance with moral rules, laws, or principles regardless
of interests or consequences.
• After establishing good will as the most important human attribute,
Kant then argued that reason was the second most important human
attribute and that it therefore was possible to set up valid absolute
moral rules on a basis of reason alone, not by reference to any
supernatural being or by empirical evidence but by the same kind of
logical reasoning that establishes such indisputable truths in
mathematics and logic as 2+ 2= 4, “No circles are squares,” and “All
triangles are three-sided.”
• Kant’s first requirement for an absolute moral truth is that it must be
logically consistent; that is, it cannot be self-contradictory as the
statement “A circle is a square” would be.
• Second, the truth must be universalizable; that is, it must be able to
be stated so as to apply to everything without exception, not just to
some or perhaps even most things.
• This is exemplified by the statement “All triangles are three-sided,”
for which there are no exceptions.
• Triangles may be of different sizes and shapes, but they are by
definition indisputably and universally three-sided.
• If moral rules could indeed be established in this same manner, as
Kant thought, then they too would be indisputable and therefore
logically and morally binding upon all human beings.
• Of course, some people might disobey these rules, but we could
clearly brand such people as immoral.
 THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE. The Categorical Imperative may
be stated in several ways, but basically it asserts that an act is
immoral if the rule that would authorize it cannot be made into a
rule for all human beings to follow.
• This means that whenever someone is about to make a moral
decision, he or she must, according to Kant, ask first, “What is the
rule authorizing this act I am about to perform?” and, second,
“Can it become a universal rule for all human beings to follow?”
• For example, if a lazy person is thinking, “Why should I work hard
in order to live; why don’t I just steal from everyone else?” and if
this person is aware of Kant’s requirement, he or she will have to
ask himself or herself what the rule is for this contemplated action.
• The rule would have to be, “I shall never work, but steal what I
need from other human beings.” If the person attempts to
universalize this statement, then it will read:
• “No human being should ever work, but all human beings should
steal what they need from each other.” But if no one worked,
there would be nothing to steal.
• How then would human beings live? Who would there be to steal
from? It is obvious that some human beings can steal from others,
but that not all human beings can do so.
• According to Kant, stealing must therefore be immoral because it
cannot be applied to all human beings.
 Ross’s Prima Facie Duties or Moral Guidelines
• A more recent duty-based theory is that by British philosopher
William David Ross (1877 – 1971), which emphasizes prima facie
duties.
• The term prima facie means “at a first sight” or “on the surface.”
• By prima facie duties, Ross means duties that dictate what we
should do when other moral factors are not considered.
• Stated another way, prima facie duties are duties that generally
obligate us; that is, they ordinarily impose a moral obligation but
may not in a particular case because of circumstances.
• An actual duty is the action that one ought to perform after
considering and weighing all the prima facie duties involved.
• Duties of Self-improvement: The duty of self-improvement is to act so as
to promote one’s own good, i.e., one’s own health, security, wisdom,
moral goodness, virtue, intelligence and happiness.
• Duties of Non-maleficence: The duty of non-injury (also known as non-
maleficence) is the duty not to harm others physically, emotionally and
psychologically: to avoid harming others health, security, intelligence,
character, or happiness
Virtue Ethics
• Virtue Ethics is not a new theory, having had its beginnings with the
Greeks and especially Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., although
its origins in Chinese philosophy are even more ancient.
• It has become significant to many contemporary ethicists.
• Virtue is defined as “moral excellence, righteousness, responsibility,
or other exemplary qualities considered meritorious.”
• Emphasis is on the good or virtuous character of human beings
themselves, rather than on their acts, consequences, feelings, or rules
 The virtues are dispositions both to act and to feel in particular
ways, and one must create virtuous feelings within oneself, not
merely act virtuously.
• By practicing being honest, brave, just, generous, and so on, a person
develops an honourable and moral character.
• According to Aristotle, by honing virtuous habits, people will likely
make the right choice when faced with ethical challenges.
The Good Character
• People have a natural capacity for good character, and it is developed
through practice. The capacity does not come first--it's developed through
practice
• The sequence of human behavior raises the question of which is
preeminent--acts or dispositions.
 Their interaction is broken by Aristotle's distinction between acts which
create good dispositions and acts which flow from the good disposition
once it has been created.
• Arete is a disposition developed out of a capacity by the proper exercise
of that capacity
• Virtue, arete, or excellence is defined as a mean between two extremes of
excess and defect in regard to a feeling or action as the practically wise
person would determine it. The mean cannot be calculated a priori.
• In the ontological dimension, virtue is a mean; in the axiological
dimension, it is an extreme or excellence. E.g., Hartmann's
Diagram

• Phronesis or practical wisdom is the ability to see the right thing

to do in the circumstances.
• Friendship: a person's relationship to a friend is the same as the
relation to oneself. The friend can be thought of as a second self.
• The Contemplative Faculty--the exercise of perfect happiness in
intellectual or philosophic activity.
• A summary of Aristotle's ethics clarifies several important
distinctions between happiness and pleasure.
 eudaemonia implies leisure and self-sufficiency as an
environment for contemplation.
 Eudaimonia: the state of personal wellbeing,
having self-worth; exhibiting a zest for life;
radiating energy; achieving happiness, "good
spirit," or self-presence
- The good person, the one who has
attained eudemonia, is the standard as to
what is truly pleasant or unpleasant.
 Non-Normative Ethics/Meta-ethics
• Meta-ethics tries to answer question, such as:
– What does “good,” “right,” or “justice” mean?
– What makes something good or right?
– Is moral realism true?
– Is morality irreducible, cognitive, or overriding?
– Do intrinsic values exist?
• [Meta ethics] is not about what people ought to do. It is
about what they are doing when they talk about what they
ought to do.
• Some examples of meta ethical theories are moral realism,
non-cognitivism, error-theory and moral anti-realism.
Generally, Meta-ethics:
• Examines the meaning of moral terms and concepts and the relationships
between these concepts.
• Explores where moral values, such as ‘personhood’ and ‘autonomy’, come
from.
• Considers the difference between moral values and other kinds of values.
• Examines the way in which moral claims are justified.
Meta-ethics also poses questions of the following kind:
• What do we mean by the claim, ‘life is sacred’?
• Are moral claims a matter of personal view, religious belief or social
standard, or, are they objective in some sense?
• If they are objective, what make them so?
• Is there a link between human psychology and the moral claims that
humans make?
• Quiz 10%
1.List the main branches of philosophical study
of ethics
2. List down at least three theories of
consequentialist
 Quiz 10%
1. ___________ are people who act so as to
increase other people’s pleasure by
decreasing their own pleasure and causes
themselves pain
2. list down Consequentialist ethical theories
 Quiz
• What is etymological definition of theory?
• List main branches of the philosophical study
of ethics