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Ethics: Theory and Practice Jacques P. Thiroux Keith W. Krasemann Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Chapter Eight Setting Up a Moral System: Basic Assumptions and Basic Principles Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Conflicting General Moral Sense • • • • Consequentialism v. Nonconsequentialism Self v. Other-interestedness Act v. Rule Emotion v. Reason Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Basic Principles, Individual Freedom, and Their Justification • 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Basic Principles, Individual Freedom, and Their Justification • 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Priority of the Basic 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Priority of the Basic Principles • Second category (cont’d): • Principle of Individual Freedom • Because each individual is the only one truly able to decide what is good for himself Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Priority of the Basic Principles • 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.