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A Study of
Ethical Thinking
You get to decide what
works for You.
Why Study Ethics?
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Why speak in hypotheticals?
Ethics allows you to live an authentic life. An
authentic and meaningful life requires you to
live with a sense of integrity
Integrity is making commitments and sticking
to them through thick and thin — no matter
how much violating them may benefit you.
Having a firm character or set of principles to
guide your life and the choices you make is
what ethics is all about
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Ethics provides for a stable society.
When people live ethical lives, they tell the
truth, avoid harming others, and are
generous. Working with such people is easy
On the other hand, callous and insensitive
people are distrusted, so it’s difficult for them
to be integrated well into social
arrangements. A stable society requires
ethical people working together in highly
coordinated ways. If society were mostly
composed of unethical people, it would
quickly crumble (*link this back to our HN
discussions)
1 . Notice what moral values are at stake in
a variety of situations
2. Clarify the reasons behind moral
judgments and decisions
3. Make some sense out of changing and
conflicting moral values
4. Decide where you will stand on difficult
ethical choices you face
5. Understand why being ethical matters
Descriptive component
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How things are & how we know
1. What is the fundamental nature of reality?
2. How do we know about and judge reality?
3. Does God exist?
4. Do we have free will?
This branch includes METAPHYSCIS-what there
is and EPISTOMOLOGY –how we know
Normative component (value
judgments)
How things ought to be
 1. Aesthetics – what is beautiful? Why?
 2. Moral philosophy- what is morally right
or good
 3. Political philosophy – how should
societies be structured? What makes
societal structures legitimate?
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Normative Theory
 Normative
ethics is the study of ethical action. It is
the branch of philosophical that investigates the set
of questions that arise when considering how one
ought to act, morally speaking. Normative ethics is
distinct from meta-ethics because it examines
standards for the rightness and wrongness of
actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning of
moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts
 Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive
ethics, as the latter is an empirical investigation of
people’s moral beliefs. To put it another way,
descriptive ethics would be concerned with
determining what proportion of people believe that
killing is always wrong, while normative ethics is
concerned with whether it is correct to hold such a
belief
Recap from last Unit:
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Egoist: the theory that one’s self is, or should
be, the motivation and the goal of one’s own
action (i.e., your action is morally correct if you
are looking out for your own interests)
Kantian: is based on the view that the only
intrinsically good thing is a good will; an action
can only be good, therefore, if its maxim – the
principle behind it – is duty to the moral law.
Central to Kant's construction of the moral law
is the categorical imperative, which acts on all
people, regardless of their interests or desires
(i.e., can your action be prescribed as a
universal action for all people?)
Utility: holds that the proper course of action is
the one that maximizes utility, usually defined
as maximizing total benefit and reducing
suffering or the negatives
Virtue Ethics
 Virtue
ethics may, initially, be identified as
the a system of ethical thinking that
emphasizes the virtues, or moral
character, in contrast to the approach
which emphasizes duties or rules
(deontology) or that which emphasizes
the consequences of actions
(consequentialism)
LASA Honor Code
 “On
my honor I have neither given nor
received any unauthorized aid on my
work, nor do I tolerate academic
dishonesty in others.”