hu4640.u7.ps2_powerpoint_2.ppt

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ethics: Theory and Practice

Jacques P. Thiroux Keith W. Krasemann


Chapter Eight

Setting Up a Moral System: Basic Assumptions and Basic Principles


Conflicting General Moral Sense

• Consequentialism v. Nonconsequentialism• Self v. Other-interestedness• Act v. Rule• Emotion v. Reason


Basic Assumptions• What constitutes a workable and livable moral

system:– Rationally based and yet not devoid of emotion– Logically consistent but not rigid and inflexible– Universality or general application to all humanity

and yet be applicable in practical ways to individuals and situations

– Able to be taught and promulgated– Ability to resolve conflicts


Basic Principles, Individual Freedom, and Their Justification

• The problems of morality center essentially upon two areas:– How to attain unity and order by working with

basic principles so as to avoid the chaos of situationism and intuitionism

– How to allow individual and group freedom to work with such principles meaningfully



• The Value of Life principle states that human begins should revere life and accept death

• The Principle of Goodness or Rightness is ultimate to any moral system, and it requires that human beings attempt to do three things: – Promote goodness over badness and do good– Cause no harm or badness– Prevent badness or harm



• The Principle of Justice or Fairness– This is distributive justice, meaning that human

beings should treat other human beings justly and fairly when attempting to distribute goodness and badness among them

– Theories about, and ways of distributing, good and bad have been fully described in Chapter 6


Priority of the Basic Principles

• There are two ways of establishing the priority of the five moral principles

• In the first, or general, way, the principles are classified into two major categories based upon logical and empirical priority


Priority of the Basic Principles• First Category:• Value of Life principle– Because without life there can be no morality

whatever

• Principle of Goodness– Because it is the ultimate principle of any moral

system

• Both are logically and empirically prior to the other three principles



• Second category: • Principle of Justice of Fairness– Because in most human actions more than just

one person is involved, and some form of distribution of goodness and badness must be established

• Principle of Truth Telling or Honesty– Because it follows from the need to be fair and

just in one’s dealings with others



• Second category (cont’d):• Principle of Individual Freedom• Because each individual is the only one truly able

to decide what is good for himself



• In the second, or particular way, priority is determined only be referring to the actual situation or context in which moral actions and decisions occur


Situation or Context

• Importance of the situation and context of moral problems and basic principles– The situation or context is important because

morality always occurs in particular situations to particular people, never in the abstract

– We must start from a broad yet humanly applicable, near-absolute principle so that there will be some basis for acting morally and avoiding immorality

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