Situating Ethics in the Postmodern Period

Important note:
The prefix 'post' evokes the idea of a decisive break.
Postmodernism/ity is hard to define with clarity.
However, there are descriptions/suggestions such as differences, discourses, irony, etc.
A postmodern condition differs from a postmodern thinker.
What is Postmodernism?
Since they (post-modern thinkers) focus on cultural aspects with great significance, they argue that
postmodernism is a break with modernity itself.
Hence, postmodern thinkers...
 Critique all expressions of modernity
 Reject the pretensions of social sciences

For Webster, we should not just limit Postmodernism to the realm of culture.
Postmodernism is an intellectual movement (and not just a cultural shift and rejection) and something
every individual encounters in day-to-day life.

Intellectual Characteristics of Postmodernism

Postmodernism Opposes the Following:
 Enlightenment tradition
 Totalizing attitude
Postmodern thinkers resist the Enlightenment Tradition (Modernity) because of the
following:

 First principle of resistance, the accounts are the construct of the theorist rather than the
accurate studies of historical processes.

 Second and third principle of resistance, is the resistance of the narratives.

According to Lyotard…
Recent history, from fascism, communism, the holocaust, etc. are the outcomes of the
perversions of Enlightenment.
Therefore, he urges a war on totality (of grand narrative and enlightenment).
Thus, in rejection of all forms of totalizing, Postmodernism proposes:
[The principle of relativism]
a. celebrating plurality
b. No TRUTH but only versions of truth
c. Differences of analysis and interpretation

Social Characteristics of Postmodernism

It is important to note that postmodernism wants to unmask the pretensions of the 'true' thinkers.

There is a danger that those truth seekers will become tyrannical and impose their beliefs.
Postmodernism advocates plurality and abandons the notion of "authenticity" and its cognates
such as meaning, real, and even 'true'.
For Postmodern thinkers, let us “celebrate instead the inauthentic (inauthenticity). Why? Because
the "true meaning" is just a fantasy.
That means, “the real or authentic” is just an inauthentic construction. Just a construct.
Question: Why do people look for something real, true, and authentic when they can just feel the
pleasure of experiencing a particular activity?

Thus, Postmodernism emphasizes pleasure or 'sensate' experience and celebrates plurality and
differences.
To add, Postmodernism would like to open the idea of "liberating" the ordinary people for they
have now the opportunity to share knowledge against the imposition of elitist modern
thinkers/people.

Correlating/linking the Postmodern condition and Ethics

The attempt to correlate the postmodern condition to Ethics has led to these essential questions:

Is Ethics dead? Since the idea of true (truth and even the notion of good) is being decentered
or deemed unimportant. Why?
What is the role/mission of Ethics in this postmodern period?
 The Fundamentals of Ethics

*William Golding’s Lord of the Flies speaks about the children being stranded in an island with
no adults/elders/guardians around. The children made an attempt to create an organized
community but conflict arise along the way that turned the children into “monsters/savage
beasts” to the point that they were killing each other particularly the group of Jack (hunting and
overpowering the group of Ralph). To make the long story short, at the end of the novel they
were rescued by the naval officers.

The story of the Lord of the Flies posits a question: Why in today’s context (may it be in the
Philippines or other countries) people commit unethical actions such as killing, stealing,
oppression, etc. when we already have established laws, institutions, religions, guardians,
schools, and the others.

*Our attempt to answer is through the lens of Kagawian. A good habit or kagawian must be a
continuous action.

Why Study Ethics?

1. It deepens our reflection on the ultimate questions of life.
2. It helps us to think better about morality.
3. It sharpens our general thinking.

The Filipino Contextualized Concept of Ethics

Gawa refers to the free action that is oriented toward a particular end.
GAWA
-------------------------------------------------------- END
GAWI
Gawi refers to a free kind of work. However, instead of focusing on a particular end like a
product or fulfillment, gawi refers to the kind of acts that people are used to accomplish(ing).
Thus, kagawian or habitual action/habituation is the Filipino equivalent of ethos in Greek or
Ethics.
“Madaling maging tao, mahirap magpakatao.”
Ethics not only serves as a path to happiness but also reaches out in fullness of reflection for that
action which is an obligation for a human being.
A Filipino student is, therefore, invited to outgrow.
“Kung saan ka masaya suportahan kita and get to sa dapat mong gawin ka talaga sasaya.”

What is Ethics?
is the philosophical study of morality.
Morality refers to beliefs concerning right and wrong, good and bad – beliefs that can include
judgements, values, rules, principles and theories.
Vaughn, Lewis (Doing Ethics)

Ethics/Morality helps guide our actions, define our values, and give us reasons for being the
persons we are.
The term ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, which means custom, a characteristic, or
habitual way of doing things, or action that is properly derived from one’s character.
The Latin word mos or moris (and its plural mores) from which the adjective moral is derived is
equivalent to ethos. In purely etymological point of view, ethical and moral are, therefore,
synonymous.

What is at stake when we do Ethics?

Everything we hold dear. Hence, a thing that has sense of value.

There are moral values and nonmoral values. Value in a sense of moral/ethical value that a
person is good in an ethical/moral sense. On the other hand, nonmoral value doesn’t have
moral/ethical value for it is just a means for something else.
 Religion and Morality & Moral Reasoning
Hermenegildo G. Mondigo III
Department Of Humanities
2023-2024

OBJECTIVES
I. Critically correlate the movie SILENCE with our study of morality.
II. Know and understand the relation between Religion and Morality
III. Identify Moral Reasoning and its elements.
IV. Integrate and apply the theories/ideas.

OUTLINE
 Religion and Morality
 Silence
 Moral Reasoning

Let's have a recap....

I. SILENCE
1. Summary of the story
2. Explain the moral dilemma of Father Sebastien Rodrigues?
3. If you were Father Sebastien Rodrigues, what will you choose:
 deny your faith to save the converted Japanese Christians or keep (uphold) to
your faith as a firm believer?

RELIGION AND MORALITY

What is Religion?
 "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to
say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single
moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."
 (b) [Religion is] "the self-validation of a society by means of myth and ritual."
(Émile Durkeim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life)
 "[Religion is] the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which
qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the
question of a meaning of our life."
(Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith)

Religion and morality are often regarded as one. Religion is thought as source or basis of
Morality.
However, religion cannot avoid moral reasoning. There are always conflicting [vague] general
rules in relation to its application to specific cases or issues.

When conflicts arise, Ethics steps in. Thus, "moral philosophy [Ethics] supplies the neutral
standard in the form of critical thinking, well-made arguments, and careful analysis. "
(Lewis Vaughn, Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Critical Thinking)

Three skills in Doing Ethics

1.Moral positions should be explained
2.Claims should be supported by reasons
3. Reasoning should be judged by common rational standards
(Lewis Vaughn, Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Critical Thinking)

MORAL REASONING
OUTLINE
TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED
 Moral Reasoning
 Statement and Claim
 Bad Arguments or
 Fallacies

Moral reasoning is ordinary critical thinking.

Vaughn, Lewis, Doing Ethics, 2016

Critical reasoning or critical thinking is the careful, systematic evaluation of statements or

claims.
Vaughn, Lewis, Doing Ethics, 2016

Critical reasoning or critical thinking we use critical reasoning every day to determine whether a
statement is worthy of acceptance - of whether it is true or it holds the truth.
Vaughn, Lewis, Doing Ethics, 2016

Critical reasoning or critical thinking we harness critical reasoning to assess the truth of all sorts
of claims in all of contexts - personal, academic, philosophical, scientific, political and ethical.

CLAIMS AND ARGUMENTS

 a statement or claim is an assertion that something is or is not the case; it is either true
or false.
Vaughn, Lewis, Doing Ethics, 2016

An argument is a group of statements, one of which is supposed to be supported by the rest

(premises)
In an argument, the supporting statements are known as premises; the statement being supported
is known as a conclusion.
Argument 1. Capital punishment is morally permissible because it helps to deter crime.
Argument 2. If John killed Bill in self-defense, he did not commit murder. He did act in
self-defense.
Therefore, he did not commit murder.

ARGUMENT OR A SIMPLE PASSAGE

The number of abortions performed in this state is increasing. More and more women say
that they favor greater access to abortion. This is an outrage.
The number of abortions performed in this state is increasing, and more and more women
say that they favor greater access to abortion. Therefore, in this state the trend among women is
toward greater acceptance of abortion.

INDICATOR WORDS:
Premise indicator: because, since, for, given that, for the reason that, the reason being, assuming
that
Conclusion indicator: therefore, consequently, hence, it follows that, thus, so, it must be that, as
a result.

A moral statement is a statement affirming that an action is right or wrong or that a person (or
one's motive or character) is good or bad.

BAD ARGUMENTS/ FALLACIES

An argument that has a false premise or a conclusion that does not follow (to a good or
logical argument).
A good argument shows that its conclusion is worthy of belief or acceptance; a bad
argument fails to show this. A good argument gives you good reasons to accept a claim; a bad
argument proves nothing.
Vaughn, Lewis, Doing Ethics, 2016
BEGGING THE QUESTION
 The fallacy of arguing in a circle - that is, trying to use a statement as both a premise in
an argument and the conclusion of that argument.
Example:
1. God is real because the Bible says so, and the Bible is from God.
2. Everyone wants the new iPhone 15 pro max because it is the hottest new gadget on the
market!

EQUIVOCATION
 The fallacy of assigning two different meanings to the same term in an argument.

Example:
A fetus is an individual that is indisputably human. A human is endowed with rights that cannot
be validated, including a right to life. Therefore, a fetus has a right to life

APPEAL TO AUTHORITY
 The fallacy of relying on the opinion of someone thought to be an expert who is not

There is a fallacy when.

1. a person cites experts who are not experts on the field.
2. a person cites non-experts as experts.

SLIPPERY SLOPE
 The fallacy of using dubious premises to argue that doing a particular action will
inevitably lead to other actions that will result in disaster, so one should not do that first
action

Example:
Person A drinks a beer, then when person A is on his/her way home, car accident happened that
injured him/her. Therefore, one must not drink beer
FAULTY ANALOGY
 The fallacy of using a flawed analogy to argue for a conclusion.

Example:
Humans feel pain, care for their young, live in social groups and understand physics. Apes also
feel pain, care for their young and live in social groups/ Therefore, apes can understand nuclear
physics.

APPEAL TO IGNORANCE
 The fallacy of arguing that the absence of evidence entitles us to believe a claim

It is an Appeal to Ignorance when.

1. because a statement has not been proven false, it must be true.
2. because a statement has not been proven true, it must be false.

STRAW MAN
 The fallacy of misrepresenting someone's claim or argument so it can be more easily
refuted.

Example:
Person B is advocating Black Lives Matter, then Person C tries to argue saying "So you mean
only Black people matter? But All Lives Matter. So you are exclusivist.

APPEAL TO THE PERSON

 The fallacy of (also known as ad hominem) of arguing that a claim should be rejected
solely because of the characteristics of the person who makes it.

HASTY GENERALIZATION
 The fallacy of drawing a conclusion about an entire group of people or things based on an
undersized sample of the group
NOTES ON CULTURAL RELATIVISM
 • “GOOD” means “socially approved”.
• For Cultural Relativism good or bad are relative to culture. What is “good” is what is
“socially approved” in a given culture.
• There are no objective facts.
• Attitudes vary with time and place.
• Morality is a cultural construct.
• There is no sense in asking which side is “correct”.
• “Wrong” is a relative term.
• There isn’t “to the left” absolutely, only “to the left of” this or that.
• There isn’t “wrong” absolutely but only “wrong” in this or that society.
• The myth of objectivity says things can be good or bad “absolutely” not relative to this or
that culture.
• Cultural relativism can eliminate the “we’re right and you are wrong” attitude.
• Cultural relativists are more tolerant.
• Cultural relativism (CR) forces us to conform to society’s norm – or else we contradict
ourselves.
• In CR, we can’t also consistently disagree with our society’s values.
• CR principle boils down to this:
• Such and such are socially approved.
• Such and such are good.
However, we can consistently affirm that something is “socially approved” but also can deny
that it is “good”.
• In CR, you have to accept the majority view on all moral issues – even if you see that the
majority is ignorant.
• CR proposes that wrong or right is relative. Hence, CR is more tolerant of other cultures.
• However, CR is ironically intolerant to the minority. For them, the minority is always
wrong – since what is good is, by definition, what the majority approves.
• CR, would make us uncritical about the norms of society.
• For example: Racism and Moral Education
 • CR sees moral diversity but ignores the subgroup problem.
• We are part of a specific nation, state, city, town, and the like. However, we are part of
various family, professional, religious, and peer groups.
• CR denies objective values (objective view or moral realism) - it claims that things are
objectively right or wrong, independently of what anyone may think or feel.

NOTES ON SUBJECTIVISM

• For Subjectivism (SB):

• “X is good” means “I like X.”

- Pick your moral principles by following your feelings.

Subjectivism – says that moral judgments describe how we feel. To call something “good” it is to say that
we have positive feelings toward it.

• Subjectivism (SB) disagrees with the notion of CR the good=socially approved.

• CR denies every person the freedom to form each one’s personal judgement.

• For SB, moral freedom is very important.

• Subjectivism (SB) disagrees with the notion of CR the good=socially approved.

• CR denies every person the freedom to form each one’s personal judgement.

• SB doesn’t want to be forced (just like CR) to accept all of society’s values.

• For SB, moral freedom is very important

• SB affirms CR that “good” is relative. However, not to society but to the individual.

• For SB: My value judgements are about how I feel, not about how the society feels.

• For SB: My value judgements describe my own emotions.

• For SB, moral freedom = process of growing up.

• For SB: We expect children to parrot the values they were taught. On the other hand, we expect
adults to think things out and form their own values.

• SB holds that truths are relative to the individuals.

 • Values exist only in the preference of individual people. Hence, no preference is objectively
correct or incorrect.

OBJECTION ON SUBJECTIVISM

• For SB:

• I like X.

• X is good.

• The biggest problem is that subjectivism makes goodness depend completely on what we like.

• Say for instance:

• I like getting drunk and hurting people.

• Getting drunk and hurting people is good.

• SB gives a very crude approach to morality, whereby we simply do as we like.

• SB confused what we like and what is good.

• If a person is morally immature, he/she may like thinks what he/she thinks bad.

• SB suggested about our freedom to form our moral beliefs but did not say how to use this
freedom in a responsible way.

• SB suggested to follow our feelings but did not suggest how to develop our wise feelings.

NOTES ON EMOTIVISM

“X is good” is an emotional exclamation (not a truth claim) and means “Hurrah for X!”

Pick your moral principles by following your feelings.

EMOTIVISM says that moral judgments express positive or negative feelings.

“X is good” is equivalent to the exclamation “Hurrah for X!” – hence can’t be true or false. So there can’t
be moral truths or moral knowledge.

Logical Positivism holds that only two types of statements make genuine truth claims (claims that are
true or false).

1. Empirical statements – in principle, these can be shown or tested by our sense experience to be true
or at least highly probable.
2. Analytic statements – these can be true because of the meaning of words.

Example:

1. Empirical (testable by sense experience):

“It’s raining outside.”

2. Analytic (true by definition):

“Frozen water is ice.”

Science is empirical while mathematics is analytic.

If one’s statement is not empirical or analytic. It is meaningless.

“True reality is spiritual.” – example of meaningless statement.

Moral judgements aren’t empirical and analytic.

Therefore, we don’t actually express our truth claims but at most our feelings about things.

Emotivism sees a moral judgment as an expression of feeling, not a statement that’s literally true or
false.

Moral judgements are exclamations: “Ex is good” means “Hurrah for X!” and “X is bad” means “Boo on
X!”

An exclamation (!) doesn’t state a fact and isn’t true or false. Since moral judgements are exclamations,
there can’t be moral truths or moral knowledge.

What if we feel cold? Is it something true?

Emotivism (just express feelings):

“Brrr!”, “Ha,ha,ha!”, “Wow!”

Subjectivism (truths about feelings):

“I feel cold.”, “I find that funny.”, “I’m impressed.”

Moral reasoning = to appeal not to reason but emotion.

Ex: Terrorism or Nazi – appeal to emotion. Turning hatred into feelings of friendship.

Morality is about feelings and not about truths.

PROBLEMS ON EMOTIVISM

“*Any genuine truth claim is either empirical (testable by sense experience) or analytic (true by
definition).
*Moral statements aren’t either empirical or analytic.
* Á Moral statements aren’t genuine truth claims.”
The central claim of Logical Positivism (Emotivism) is self-refuting.

Moral judgements aren’t always emotional.

A view must be testable by sense experience or else it makes no sense.

(This claim is self-refuting)

For emotivism we can’t progress anymore by reason (at any given conflicts) but we can try to change
other’s feelings.

However, the same feeling can also be used to manipulate other feelings.

By denying moral knowledge and moral truth, it seems to water down morality.

Synthesis:

Emotivism says that moral judgement express positive or negative feelings. Since moral judgements are
exclamations, they can’t be true or false. Moral judgements can’t be tested by sense experience. They
aren’t genuine truth claims. So moral judgments only express feelings.