Types of Ethics: Where does ethics come from?
Philosophers have several answers to
this question:
- God and religion
- Human conscience and intuition
- a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and their effects
- the example of good human beings
- a desire for the best for people in each unique situation
- political power
God-based
ethics - supernaturalism:
Supernaturalism makes
ethics inseparable from religion. It teaches that the only source of moral
rules is God.
So, something is good because God says
it is, and the way to lead a good life is to do what God wants.
Intuitionism:
Intuitionists think
that good and bad are real objective properties that can't be broken down into
component parts. Something is good because it's good; its goodness doesn't need
justifying or proving.
Intuitionists think that goodness or
badness can be detected by adults - they say that human beings have an intuitive
moral sense that enables them to detect real moral truths.
They think that basic moral truths of
what is good and bad are self-evident to a person who directs their mind
towards moral issues.
So good things are the things that a
sensible person realises are good if they spend some time pondering the
subject.
Don't get confused. For the
intuitionist:
- moral truths are not discovered by rational argument
- moral truths are not discovered by having a hunch
- moral truths are not discovered by having a feeling
It's more a sort of moral 'aha' moment
- a realisation of the truth.
Consequentialism
This is the ethical theory that most
non-religious people think they use every day. It bases morality on the
consequences of human actions and not on the actions themselves.
Consequentialism teaches
that people should do whatever produces the greatest amount of good
consequences.
One famous way of putting this is 'the
greatest good for the greatest number of people'.
The most common forms of
consequentialism are the various versions of utilitarianism, which favour
actions that produce the greatest amount of happiness.
Despite its obvious common-sense
appeal, consequentialism turns out to be a complicated theory, and doesn't
provide a complete solution to all ethical problems.
Two problems with consequentialism are:
- it can lead to the conclusion that some quite dreadful acts are good
- predicting and evaluating the consequences of actions is often very difficult
Non-consequentialism
or deontological ethics:
Non-consequentialism is concerned with
the actions themselves and not with the consequences. It's the theory that
people are using when they refer to "the principle of the thing".
It teaches that some acts are right or
wrong in themselves, whatever the consequences, and people should act
accordingly.
Virtue
ethics:
Virtue ethics looks
at virtue or moral character, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the
consequences of actions - indeed some philosophers of this school deny that
there can be such things as universal ethical rules.
Virtue ethics is particularly concerned
with the way individuals live their lives, and less concerned in assessing
particular actions.
It develops the idea of good actions by
looking at the way virtuous people express their inner goodness in the things
that they do.
To put it very simply, virtue ethics
teaches that an action is right if and only if it is an action that a virtuous
person would do in the same circumstances, and that a virtuous person is
someone who has a particularly good character.
Situation
ethics:
Situation
ethics rejects prescriptive rules and argues that
individual ethical decisions should be made according to the unique situation.
Rather than following rules the
decision maker should follow a desire to seek the best for the people involved.
There are no moral rules or rights - each case is unique and deserves a unique
solution.
Ethics
and ideology:
Some philosophers teach that ethics is
the codification of political ideology, and that the function of ethics is to
state, enforce and preserve particular political beliefs.
They usually go on to say that ethics
is used by the dominant political elite as a tool to control everyone else.
More cynical writers suggest that power
elites enforce an ethical code on other people that helps them control those
people, but do not apply this code to their own behaviour.
