Download ethics and human conduct in the society

NAME: AKINTIMEHIN DAMOLA
DEPARTMENT: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
COURSE:GST 113
ETHICS AND HUMAN CONDUCT IN THE SOCIETY
CHAPTER 19
According to the textbook, the conception of man as ‘zoon politikon’ also known as ’political animal’,
is aimed at portraying human beings as social beings. This portrayal suggests that no man selfsufficient. Everyone needs others in the pursuit of social, political, spiritual, and economic goals,
among others. But the inevitability of individuals living in a community throws up a challenge. The
challenge relates to having a code of conduct that will guide everyone in relating with other problems.
Thus, every society has come to set certain minimum standards which it expects every individuals
under its jurisdiction to adhere to in order to promote the wellbeing of all within the society. However,
the rules in a society do not border strictly on how individuals should relate to one another, they are
also enacted to govern conducts regarding how persons should relate to other things that are of value
to the to the society. As such the realisation of the importance of moral rules dictates how persons
should relate to other people, animals and the environment generally and also touches how people in a
community should relate with celestial beings, thus leading to the systematic study of what is right or
wrong called ethics.
ETHICS AND GOALS:
Ethics is a field of philosophy where the analytical and critical tools of philosophy are focused on
human actions. A school of thought sees it as ‘an inquiry into the moral worth of human conducts.’ As
an inquiry, it touches every facet of life where one can point to one human conduct or the other. This
is the reason for the existence of an ethics of nearly everything:
- Business Ethics
- Environmental Ethics
- Research Ethics
- Work Ethics
- Christian Ethics
- Medical Ethics
- Bioethics, etc.
These different ethics recognise that there are diverse ethical challenges that lurk around in different
disciplines and facets of life that require effective response that is able to ensure that moral principles
are ‘sustained in the various areas of human operations.’
Ethics is a rational inquiry into the grounds of moral conduct which stands in contrast to revelations,
special intuition, mystical insight, and other arbitrary means for obtaining answers to moral questions
Ethicists develop arguments that are meant to persuade actors about how to evaluate moral actions to
be undertaken and why a manner of thinking about an action should be preferred over other
theoretical lens of viewing it. The ultimate aim of ethics, therefore, is to furnish human beings with
standards with which they can make distinctions between those actions that are good and those that
are bad. Ethics points the way to how people should conduct themselves so as to live a good and
happy life- the life of well-being.
METAETHICS:
Metaethics is a sub-branch of ethics dedicated to engendering a better understanding of concepts and
terms employed in ethical discourse so that people are better positioned to interrogate principles of
action in ethical reasoning.
The issues addressed in metaethics has to do with what terms like ‘right,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘good,’ ‘bad,’
‘morality,’ ‘moral judgement,’ among others mean. It is also concerned with the meaning of ethical
statements. Prescriptivism is another metaethical theory that suggests how moral statements should be
understood. This theory holds that when an ethical statement is made, one is making a universal
prescription regarding an act one condemns or approves.
Some metaethical theories however, attempt to address issues relating to the origin or justification for
moral standards. The aim is to understand what makes an action moral or immoral, right or wrong.
There is also another theory, ethical relativism, which is the position that it is the individual, culture,
or epoch that determines the rightness or wrongness of an action.
Some definitions of ethics reduce all of ethics to what is done in metaethics. Also, the second-order
study of the objectivity, subjectivity, relativism, or scepticism that may attend claims made in these
terms. This is a reductionist approach to understanding what ethics is since moral philosophers do not
clarify concepts but in addition generate normative theories that ought to guide moral decisions.
NORMATIVE ETHICS:
Normative ethics is the sub-branch of moral philosophy that deals with this issue. The main focus of
this division of ethics is on determining ‘principles that ought to guide human conduct,’ or ‘the
formulation of moral rules that have direct implications for what human actions, institutions, and
ways of life should be like. In fulfilling this task, moral philosophers have put forward various
normative theories recommending what ought to be considered in determining whether an action is
wrong or right.
The first set of theories is called teleological ethical theories. These theories have in common the
emphasis placed on the consequence of an action in determining its rightness or wrongness. An action
is right if it brings about good result and wrong if it brings out bad results. Some moral philosophers
subscribe to the view that it is the ability of an action to bring pleasure that determines whether the
result of an action is good; while if an action produces pain then the result is bad. The normative
ethical theory called ethical hedonism is an ethical theory that interprets the rightness or wrongness of
an action in this way.
Ethical egoism recommends that the performer of an action should always seek to maximise pleasure
or pleasure for himself. Utilitarianism holds that an action is morally right if it promotes the greatest
number of pleasure or happiness for the greatest number of people.
Teleological ethical theories have some shortcomings one of which is that they require that we foresee
the outcomes of our actions, which incidentally is what humans are not capable of. Some
consequences which are foreseen to bring good results sometimes end up producing bad ones and vice
versa. A major failure of teleological theory is that it makes it appear that the end justifies the means.
The inadequacies of consequential ethical theories made some philosophers to favour deontological
ethical theories. Deontological ethical theories reject the use of the outcomes of an action in judging
its rightness or wrongness. Without accentuating the difference between the two, suffice it to say that,
generally, deontological ethical theories place importance on rules, motives, and the nature of the
action itself in deciding the rightness or wrongness of an action.
CONCLUSION:
My focus on this essay has been on examining how human conduct is influenced by ethics. And the
influence that ethics has could be in two dimensions. The first could be through enabling persons to
have a better understanding of terms, concepts, and statements employed in moral reasoning or moral
discourse. The other is that ethics makes available frameworks of action in form of normative theories
that can guide human actions and, if adhered to, enable people to act rationally and morally.