Transcript Key concepts in ethics - Personal web pages for people of Metropolia

Ethics : an overview
by William Scarff,
UWBS
Key concepts in ethics
Teleology
Stipulates that acts are
morally right or acceptable
if they produce some
desired result such as
realization of self interest
or utility
Key concepts in ethics
Egoism
• Defines right or acceptable
actions as those that
maximize a particular
person’s self interest as
defined by the individual
Key concepts in ethics
Utilitarianism
• Defines right or acceptable
actions as those that
maximize total utility, or the
greatest good for the
greatest number of people
Key concepts in ethics
Deontology
• Focuses on the
preservation of individual
rights and on the intentions
associated with a particular
behaviour rather than on its
consequences
Key concepts in ethics
Kant’s 3 categorical imperatives
• Act only according to that maxim by which
you can at the same time will that it should
become a universal law.
• Act so that you treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in that of another
always as an end and never as a means
only.
• Act only so that the will through its maxims
could regard itself at the same time as
universally lawgiving
Key concepts in ethics
Question
• Maxim 1 – consistency
• Maxim 2 – human dignity
• Maxim 2 - universality
• But in an allegedly post modern world can
universality, or indeed ethics in general,
provide transferable frameworks??
Key concepts in ethics
Relativist
• Evaluates ethics
subjectively on the basis of
individual and group
experiences
Key concepts in ethics
Virtue ethics
• Assumes that what is moral in
a given situation is only what
conventional morality requires,
but also what the mature
person with a ‘good‘ moral
character would deem
appropriate
Key concepts in ethics
OR MORE SIMPLY
• Deontology: we follow rules,
no matter what the personal
costs might be
• Teleology: we suit ourselves,
disregarding any
laws/rules/regulations which
might restrain our behaviour
Key concepts in ethics
The vexed question of social
responsibility
• ‘The purposes for which
companies should act and
the limits of their freedom to
act’
• or ‘social responsibility
arises from social power’
Key concepts in ethics
Against ethics.
• Nietzsche’s challenge. Weakness is
supported by ethics.
• Strong people do not need ethics and
morality.
• Emphatically he felt that religion should
not provide bases for morality.
Key concepts in ethics