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    Midterms Ethics

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    renaedusma29
    Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe human behavior in terms of rights, obligations, fairness, and virtues. It also refers to continuously studying one's moral beliefs to ensure they are reasonable and supported by consistent reasons. Ethics is not the same as following feelings, religion, laws, or social norms, as these can deviate from ethical standards.

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    Midterms Ethics

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    renaedusma29
    5 views1 page
    Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe human behavior in terms of rights, obligations, fairness, and virtues. It also refers to continuously studying one's moral beliefs to ensure they are reasonable and supported by consistent reasons. Ethics is not the same as following feelings, religion, laws, or social norms, as these can deviate from ethical standards.

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    Midterms-Ethics

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    Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe human behavior in terms of rights, obligations, fairness, and virtues. It also refers to continuously studying one's moral beliefs to ensure they are reasonable and supported by consistent reasons. Ethics is not the same as following feelings, religion, laws, or social norms, as these can deviate from ethical standards.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    5 views1 page

    Midterms Ethics

    Uploaded by

    renaedusma29
    Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe human behavior in terms of rights, obligations, fairness, and virtues. It also refers to continuously studying one's moral beliefs to ensure they are reasonable and supported by consistent reasons. Ethics is not the same as following feelings, religion, laws, or social norms, as these can deviate from ethical standards.

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    Ethics: Introduction Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues

    sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever
    “What does ethics mean to you?” society accepts. Some people accept abortion but
    • Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me many others do not. If being ethical were doing
    is right or wrong.” whatever society accepts, one would have to find an
    • Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs. agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.
    Being ethical is doing what the law requires.
    • Ethics consists of the standards of behavior What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things.
    our society accepts. First, ethics refers to well based standards of right and
    • I don’t know what the word means. wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do,
    These replies might be typical of our own. The usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to
    meaning of “ethics” is hard to pin down, and the views society, fairness, or specific virtues.
    many people have about ethics are shaky. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that
    impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from
    Like Baumhart’s first respondent, many people tend to rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud.
    equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues
    clearly not a matter of following one’s feelings. A of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical
    person following his or her feelings may recoil from standards include standards relating to rights, such as
    doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and
    from what is ethical. Nor should one identify ethics the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate
    with religion. standards of ethics because they are supported by
    consistent and well-founded reasons.
    Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development
    standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then of one’s ethical standards. As mentioned above,
    ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what
    applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine
    that of the saint. Religion can set high ethical one’s standards to ensure that they are reasonable
    standards and can provide intense motivations for and well-founded.
    ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined Ethics also means, then, the
    to religion nor is it the same as religion. continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs
    and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that
    Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to
    The law often incorporates ethical standards to which standards that are reasonable and sol
    most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can
    deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War
    slavery laws and the apartheid laws of present-day
    South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws
    that deviate from what is ethical.

    Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing


    “whatever society accepts.” In any society, most
    people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But
    standards of behavior in society can deviate from
    what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically
    corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally
    corrupt society.

    Moreover, if being ethical were doing “whatever


    society accepts” then to find out what is ethical, one
    would have to find out what society accepts. To decide
    what I should think about abortion, for example,
    I would have to take a survey of American society and
    then conform my beliefs to whatever society
    accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical
    issue by doing a survey.

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