Moral Agent

A moral agent is a person who has the ability to discern right from wrong and to be held
accountable for his or her own actions. Moral agents have a moral responsibility not to cause
unjustified harm.Traditionally, moral agency is assigned only to those who can be held
responsible for their actions. Children, and adults with certain mental disabilities, may have little
or no capacity to be moral agents. Adults with full mental capacity relinquish their moral agency
only in extreme situations, like being held hostage.By expecting people to act as moral agents,
we hold people accountable for the harm they cause others.So, do corporations have moral
agency? As artificial intelligence develops, will robots have moral agency? And what about
socially intelligent non-human animals such as dolphins and elephants? Indeed, future
philosophers and legal scholars will need to consider moral agency as it applies to these
situations and others.

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are
moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents
in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not
automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming
to at least some of the demands of morality.
This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will
suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality.
So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then
they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of
punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations.
According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should
have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral
law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform
the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that
agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the
relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for
remorse and concern for others.
Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral
agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its
qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses
of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which
sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational
egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the
essential conditions of moral agency.
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https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/moral-agent
MORALITY
Many people find morality extremely useful. Not everyone has the time and training to
reflect on the kind of life they want to live, considering all the different combinations of
values, principles, and purposes. It’s helpful for them to have a coherent, consistent account
that has been refined through history and can be applied in their day to day lives.

Many people also inherit their morality from their family, community or culture – it’s rare for
somebody to ‘shop around’ for the morality that most closely fits their personal beliefs.
Usually the process is unconscious. There’s a challenge here: if we inherit a ready-made
answer to the question of how we should live, it’s possible to apply it to our lives without
ever assessing whether the answer is satisfactory or not.

We might live our whole lives under a moral system which, if we’d had the chance to think
about, we would have rejected in part or in full.

Key features of Morality

1. People experience a sense of moral obligation and accountability

·  One cannot doubt successfully a phenomenon of his own existence—namely,

his moral experience.

·  Even secularists like Kai Nielsen recommend that one “ought”to act or follow some rules,
policies, practices, or principles. [Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God. London: Pemberton, 1973, p.
82.]

·  Even atheist Richard Dawkins declares that there are “moral instruction[s] on how we ought to
behave.” [Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006, p.347.]

·  Fundamental moral concepts (i.e., terms of moral obligation) have “binding force” and
“overriding character” features that explain moral accountability.

2. Moral values and moral absolutes exist

·  It’s hard to deny the objective reality of moral values—actions like rape, torture, and child

abuse are not just socially unacceptable behavior but are moral abominations. [William Lane
Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books,
1994, p. 124.]

·  Even Darwinist Michael Ruse admits, “The man who says it is morally acceptable to rape little
children is just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5.”[Michael Ruse, Darwinism
Defended. London: Addison-Wesley, 1982, p. 27.]

·  Some actions are really wrong in the same way that some things like love and respect are
truly good.
·  There are moral absolutes—truths that exist and apply to everyone, like that “you ought not to
torture babies for fun on feast days.”

3. ‘Moral law’ therefore exists

·  When we accept the existence of goodness, we must affirm a moral law on the basis of which
to differentiate between good and evil.

·  C.S. Lewis (The Case for Christianity) demonstrates the existence of a moral law by pointing
to men who quarrel-- the man who makes remarks is not just saying that the other man's
behavior does not happen to please him but is rather appealing to some kind of standard of
behavior that he expects the other man to know about. [C.S. Lewis, The Case for
Christianity. New York: MacMillan, pp. 5-6.]

4. ‘Moral law’ is known to humans

·  Moral law is also called Law of Nature because early philosophers thought that generally
speaking, everybody knows it by nature. [C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity. New York:
MacMillan, pp. 5-6.]

·  Different civilizations and different ages only have “slightly different” moralities and not a
radically or “quite different moralities”.

·  One can not present a country where a man feels proud for double-crossing all the people
who had been kindest to him.

·  Men may have differed as to whether one should have one wife or four wives but people have
always agreed that one must not simply have any woman he likes.

·  Will and Ariel Durant: “A little knowledge of history stresses the variability of moral codes, and
concludes that they are negligible because they differ in time and place, and sometimes
contradict each other. A larger knowledge stresses the universality of moral codes, and
concludes to their necessity.” [Will and Ariel Durant,The Lessons of History. New York, New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1968, p. 37.]

5. Morality is ‘objective’

·  Morality is absolute—there is a real right and real wrong that is universally and immutably
true, independent of whether anyone believes it or not.

·  Since almost all people assume certain things to be wrong—such as genocide, murder of
babies for feast, and rape—the best explanation is that such things really are wrong and
morality is objective. [Lowell Kleiman, Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature. New
York: MacMillan, pp. 317-324.]

·  How could anyone hold that the truth that “torturing a baby is wrong” is not a moral absolute
but a relative judgment? 
·  Moral relativism is self-defeating—the statement “there are no absolutes” itself implies a claim
for an absolute principle.

6. Moral judgments must be supported by reasons

·  Moral judgments are different from mere expressions of personal preference—they require
backing by reasons, and in the absence of such reasons, they are merely arbitrary.[James
Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy. USA:McGraw-Hill College, 3rd ed., 1999, pp. 16-
17.]

https://ourhappyschool.com/philosophy/notes-ethics-6-features-morality

Aristotle and Moral Responsibility

The concept of moral responsibility is fundamental to any system of ethics, because claiming
that people ought to take certain actions presupposes a choice which determines the action
taken and for which the individual is responsible. Despite wide divergences between
philosophers over theories of moral responsibility, the fundamental answer to how such
responsibility arises is freedom of the will. Because at least some human action is self-caused,
rather than solely a product of instinct or external forces, humans can be held responsible for
those self-caused actions. The philosophical divergences concerning the circumstances under
which moral responsibility result from divergences in the particular accounts of that which is
directly under volitional control, of the acquisition of knowledge of good and evil, and of the
connection between knowledge and action.

When the study of ethics emerged in Greek philosophy through Socrates (as relayed by Plato),
the problems of the origin of responsibility for action and the application of that responsibility to
particular circumstance were almost immediately uncovered. Plato partially addressed these
topics, but because his definition of the good (by his own standards) was never adequate, it
would have been impossible for him to develop a full theory of moral responsibility. It is Aristotle
who is actually able to analyze moral responsibility through his theory of knowledge and the
conceptual distinctions between the voluntary, choice, deliberation, and wish.

Because Plato serves as the background for much of Aristotle's work in ethics, I wish to first
discuss Plato's views as an introduction to those of Aristotle. I then wish to give a full account of
Aristotle's view of moral responsibility, primarily focussing on moral responsibility under
conditions of ignorance and on evil action when the good is known. Finally I will indicate where
Aristotle's account is inadequate, and thus needs to be supplemented in order to fully account
for moral responsibility.

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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/
The difference between a moral issue and a non-moral one.
MORAL STANDARDS

-refers to the norms which we have about the types of actions which we believe to be morally
acceptable and morally unacceptable.

-deal with matters which can either seriously harm or seriously benefit human beings

NON-MORAL STANDARDS

-refers to the rules that are unrelated to moral or ethical considerations.

- basic examples include rules of etiquette, fashion standards, rules in games and house
rules.

a. Etiquette - refers to the norms of correct conduct in polite society or, more generally, to any
special code of social behavior or courtesy

b. Statutes - are laws enacted by legislative bodies

- the law that defines and prohibit theft

How are Moral Standards Formed ?

There are some moral standards that many of us share in our conduct in society. These moral
standards are influenced by a variety of factors such as the moral principles we accept as part
of our upbringing, values passed on to us through heritage and legacy, the religious values that
we have imbibed from childhood, the values that were showcased during the period of our
education, the behaviour pattern of those who are around us, the explicit and implicit standards
of our culture, our life experiences and more importantly, our critical reflections on these
experiences. Moral standards concern behaviour which is very closely linked to human well-
being. These standards also take priority over non-moral standards,

Characteristics of Moral Standard

6 Characteristics of Moral Standard:

1. Moral standards involve serious wrongs of significant benefits.

-Moral standards deal with matters which can seriously impact, that is, injure or benefit human
beings. It is not the case with non-moral standards.

2. Moral standards ought to be preferred to other values.

• Moral standards have overriding character or hegemonic authority. If a moral standard

states that a person has a moral obligation do something, then he/she is supposed to do
that even if it conflicts with other moral non- standards, and even with self-interest.
 • Moral standards are not the only Eleanor principles in society, but they take precedence
over other considerations, including aesthetic, prudential, and even legal ones.

3. Moral standards are not established by authority figures.

• Moral standards are not invented, formed, or generated by authoritative bodies of

person such as nations' legislative bodies. Ideally instead, these values ought to be
considered in the process of making laws. In principle therefore, moral standards cannot
be changed nor nullified by the decisions of particular authoritative body. One thing
about these standards, nonetheless, is that it's validity lies on the soundness or
adequacy of the reasons that are considered to support and justify them.

4. Moral standards have the trait of invisibility.

• Simply put, it means that everyone should live up to moral standards. To be more
accurate, how ever it entails the moral principles must apply to all who are in the
relevantly similar situation.

5. Moral standards are based on impartial considerations.

• Moral standard does not evaluate standards in the basis of the interests of a certain
person or group, but one does not goes beyond personal interests to a universal
standpoint in which each person's interests are impartially counted as equal.

6. Moral standards are associated with special emotions and vocabulary.

• Prescriptivity indicates the practical or action-guiding nature of moral standards. These

moral standards are generally put forth as injunction or imperative. These principles are
proposed for use, to advise, and to influence to action. Retroactively, this feature is used
to evaluate behavior, to assign praise and blame, and to produce feelings of satisfaction
or of guilt.

MORAL DELIMMAS
-is a conflict which you have to choose between two or more actions and have moral reasons
for choosing each action.

A moral dilemma is a situation where:

1. You are presented with two or more actions, all of which you have the ability to perform.

2. There are moral reasons for you to choose each of the action.

3. You cannot perform all the actions and have to choose which action, or actions when there
are three or more choices, to perform.

How to resolve them?

• Be reasonable, not emotional

 • Choose the grater good or the less evil

• Is there an alternative?

• What are the consequences?

• What would a good person do?

Moral Dilemmas in the Organization

-Ethical dilemmas in the workplace are quite common, and they're not always easy to
answer

Why do some organizations stumble when it comes to ethics?

Here are some other common missteps:

1. Senior leaders fail to "walk the talk" -they are guilty of modeling inappropriate behavior.

2. Leaders often have an irrational sense of entitlement, feeling "I should allowed to do this,"
or "I deserve this"

3. Individual may begin cutting corners due to misplaced incentives. When an organization
begins rewarding the wrong things, this can lead to cutting corners on safety, quality, etc.

4. Individual may also feel the need to be obedient to authority, when they are being asked
to do something they feel is wrong.

5. Individuals also have the need for closure, which can lead to conflict avoidance.

6. Defensive "logic" is prevalent. This manifests as " everyone is doing it, so why not me?"
or "why should I stick my neck out?"

Moral Dilemmas in the Health Care Service

Example:

4 ETHICAL DILEMMAS FOR HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

 1. TREATMENT

In the United States, caring for the anticipated surge of seriously ill COVID-19 patients is likely
to involve heart-wrenching decisions for healthcare professionals, Tabery says. "The question is
how do you ration these resources fairly? With treatment—we are talking about ICUs,
ventilators, and the staff—the purpose is you are trying to save the severely sick. You are trying
to save as many of the severely sick as you can."

The first step in managing critical care resources is screening out patients who are unlikely to
need critical care and urging them to self-quarantine at home, he says.

"But eventually, you bump up to a place where you not only have screened out all of the folks
who are at low risk of serious illness, but you have millions of people across the country who fall
into high-risk groups. If they get infected, many are going to need access to ventilators, and the
way you do that ethically is you screen patients based on medical utility," Tabery says.

Medical utility is based on scientific assessments, he says. "You basically look at the cases and
try to evaluate as quickly and efficiently as possible the likelihood that you can improve a
patient's condition quickly." Rationing of critical care resources would be jarring for U.S. clinical
staff. Under most standard scenarios, a patient who is admitted to an ICU and placed on
mechanical ventilation stays on the machine as long as the doctors think the patient is going to
get better, Tabery says. However, the COVID-19 pandemic could drive U.S. caregivers into an
agonizing emergency scenario. "When there are 10 people in the emergency room waiting to
get on a ventilator, it is entirely feasible that you would be removing people from ventilators
knowing that they are going to die. But you remove people from ventilators when your
evaluation of the medical situation suggests that patients are not improving. If a patient is not
improving, and it doesn't look like using this scarce resource is a wise investment, then you try it
out on another patient who might have better luck," he says.

2. TESTING

There has been rationing of COVID-19 testing in the United States since the first novel
coronavirus patient was diagnosed in January.

While there are clinical benefits to COVID-19 testing such as determining what actions should
be taken for low- and high-risk patients, the primary purpose of testing during a pandemic is
advancing public health, Tabery says.
"The primary purpose of the test is pure public health epidemiology. It's about keeping track of
who has COVID-19 in service of trying to limit the spread of the disease to other people. When
that is the purpose, the prioritization isn't so much about who is at greatest risk. It's about who is
more likely to interact with lots of people, or who is more likely to have interacted with more
people."

A classic example of rationing COVID-19 testing based on public health considerations is the
first reported infection of an NBA player, he says.

"For the Utah Jazz player who had symptoms, it made sense to test him very quickly because it
was clear that he had interacted with a lot of people. Once he tested positive, the testing of the
other players was not because public health officials thought the players were more valuable
than the average person on the street. It was because the players had come into contact with
more people than the average person on the street."

3. HEALTHCARE WORKERS

The COVID-19 pandemic involves competing obligations for healthcare workers, Tabery says.
"On the one hand, they have a set of obligations that inclines them to go to work when they get
the call. On the other hand, healthcare workers have their own interests—they don't want to get
sick, which can incline them not to work," he says.

"The punchline is there is an ethical consensus that healthcare workers have a prima facie duty
to work because of everything that has been invested in them, because of their unique position
where not just anybody can replace them, because society looks to them to serve this function,
and because they went into this profession and are expected to go into work," he says.

However, the obligation of healthcare workers to show up for their jobs is not absolute, Tabery
says. "If hospitals don't have personal protective equipment, they are in no position to tell their
staff to show up and work. If a hospital cannot provide even a basic level of safety for their
employees to do their job, then they are turning their hospital not into a place to treat patients—
they are turning it into a hub to exacerbate the problem."
4. VACCINE

When a vaccine becomes available, policymakers, public health officials, and healthcare
providers will face rationing decisions until there is sufficient supply to treat the entire U.S.
population, Tabery says.

"When the vaccine comes out, the first group you are going to want to prioritize are healthcare
workers, who are at risk of getting infected by doing their jobs and saving lives. You would also
want to prioritize people who serve essential functions to keep society going—the people who
keep the water running, the lights on, police, and firefighters. Then you want to start looking at
the high-risk groups," he says.

https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/4-ethical-dilemmas-healthcare-organizations-
during-covid-19-pandemic

THE PHILIPPINE HEALTH CARE DELIMMA

Caring for the health of people is a most sensitive and demanding profession because it
directly affects life itself and the quality of a person’s existence. For this reason, as can be
gleaned from inscriptions on ancient clay tablets, medical practice has been reserved for the
most respected, credible, ethical and compassionate intellectuals in the community. Which
gives us an idea of how the medical profession was looked up to since time immemorial.
The clay tablets were found by a German archaeologist among the artifacts recovered from an
excavation of ruins in the Sumerian city of Babylonia. The German archaeologist discovered the
ruins under the Arabian desert between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers of Mesopotamia.
In Greek mythology, Hammurabi and Asclepius, both physicians, became gods after death
because they were benevolent icons of power and good behavior. But since physicians in those
days came from rich, influential and powerful families, Hippocrates, a Greek philosopher and a
genius with foresight, had some reservations about the profession, which he expressed during a
council meeting: “Who will watch the gods in their activities?” So, he composed the Hippocratic
Oath, which became the creed by which doctors have lived by through centuries and
generations, and up till now.

In modern times, medical practice has become more complex, comprehensive and far-reaching
but, fortunately, more precise and effective because modern technology can now clearly
demonstrate the absence of disease; or can define its extent or limits whenever or wherever it is
a problem. Indeed, modern technology can indicate the consequence of treatment by serial
monitoring. Ergo, the diagnosis and management of illness have become more definitive
because it is evidence-based. Erstwhile, the art of healthcare relied on experience and crude
technology support.
In the Philippines, the quality of healthcare has been upgraded to international levels because of
the 150,000 Filipino physicians spread around the world, 80,000 have opted to establish their
practice at home. Many of them pursued postgraduate training overseas but they decided to
return home and have diversified their fields of interest. And they have not limited themselves to
private practice; they have ventured into government service and the academe as well.
Because of excellent nursing care, together with modern pharmaceutical remedies, reliable
paramedical assistance and technological facilities, all of which are accessible in the country’s
modern medical centers, healthcare service in the Philippines has been categorized as world-
class.

Health maintenance organizations subsidize excellent healthcare and has enabled a larger
number of patients with limited budgets for health to access the same. Which in effect has
extended the life span of the Filipino from 40 years before World War II to 70 years at present.
Contributory to good quality healthcare and its resultant wellness is the strict ethical mode
required of health providers. For physicians, the ethics of medical practice include:

1) appearance and behavior, which should be beyond reproach;

2) medical knowledge and expertise, which should be updated;
3) ability to determine, with the aid of modern technology, the state of health of the patient, the
absence or presence of illness, what is necessary to restore health, what would be the outcome
if treatment is administered, or the consequence if no remedy is instituted, and how much it will
cost to underwrite the proposed necessary healthcare;
4) cordial relationship with their colleagues and other healthcare providers;
5) mindset and ability to work together in harmony and mutual respect in the delivery of
healthcare;
6) primary concern for the welfare of the patient, with professional fees only a secondary
consideration and commensurate to patient’s capacity to pay;
7) readiness to cooperate with the authorities in promoting and providing community healthcare.
The Philippine Medical Association (PMA) oversees the ethical, moral and legal responsibilities
of physicians, as provided for in the Medical Act of 1959, as amended. Because physicians are
also human, it is possible for them to commit errors in their practice and in their service to
patients. Such incidents do happen occasionally— given the human factor of healthcare. But as
part of its public service, the PMA has set up a structure through which aggrieved parties can
seek redress.

https://opinion.inquirer.net/94186/healthcare-ethics-in-ph

Moral Standards and their Characteristics

Moral standards are norms that individuals or groups have about the kinds of actions believed to
be morally right or wrong, as well as the values placed on what we believed to be morally good
or morally bad. Basically, moral standards promote what is “the good” like the welfare and well-
being of humans as well as animals and the environment. Thus, it prescribes what humans
should do in terms of rights and obligations.
According to some scholars, moral standards are the sum of combined norms and values. In
other words, norms plus values equal moral standards. On the one hand, norms are understood
as general rules about our actions or behaviors. For example, we may say “We are always
under the obligation to fulfill our promises” or “It is always believed that killing innocent people is
absolutely wrong”. On the other hand, values are understood as enduring beliefs or statements
about what is good and desirable or not. For example, we may say “Helping the poor is good” or
“Cheating during exams is bad”.
According to many scholars, moral standards have the following characteristics, namely: 1)
moral standards deal with matters we think can seriously injure or benefit humans, animals, and
the environment, such as child abuse, rape, and murder; 2) moral standards are not established
or changed by the decisions of authoritative individuals or bodies. Indeed, moral standards rest
on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify them. For sure, we don’t
need a law to back up our moral conviction that killing innocent people is absolutely wrong; 3)
moral standards are overriding, that is, they take precedence over other standards and
considerations, especially of self-interest; 4) moral standards are based on impartial
considerations. Hence, moral standards are fair and just; and 5) moral standards are associated
with special emotions (such as guilt and shame) and vocabulary (such as right, wrong, good,
and bad)
Moral Standards and their Characteristics
Moral standards are norms that individuals or groups have about the kinds of actions believed to
be morally right or wrong, as well as the values placed on what we believed to be morally good
or morally bad. Basically, moral standards promote what is “the good” like the welfare and well-
being of humans as well as animals and the environment. Thus, it prescribes what humans
should do in terms of rights and obligations.
According to some scholars, moral standards are the sum of combined norms and values. In
other words, norms plus values equal moral standards. On the one hand, norms are understood
as general rules about our actions or behaviors. For example, we may say “We are always
under the obligation to fulfill our promises” or “It is always believed that killing innocent people is
absolutely wrong”. On the other hand, values are understood as enduring beliefs or statements
about what is good and desirable or not. For example, we may say “Helping the poor is good” or
“Cheating during exams is bad”.
According to many scholars, moral standards have the following characteristics, namely: 1)
moral standards deal with matters we think can seriously injure or benefit humans, animals, and
the environment, such as child abuse, rape, and murder; 2) moral standards are not established
or changed by the decisions of authoritative individuals or bodies. Indeed, moral standards rest
on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify them. For sure, we don’t
need a law to back up our moral conviction that killing innocent people is absolutely wrong; 3)
moral standards are overriding, that is, they take precedence over other standards and
considerations, especially of self-interest; 4) moral standards are based on impartial
considerations. Hence, moral standards are fair and just; and 5) moral standards are associated
with special emotions (such as guilt and shame) and vocabulary (such as right, wrong, good,
and bad)