Note: the following has been abstracted from the Grolier Encyclopedia.

Ethics

Ethics, or moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy concerned with conduct and character, is the systematic study of the principles and methods for distinguishing right from wrong and good from bad. Ethics has various interconnections with other branches of philosophy, such as metaphysics, the study of reality, and epistemology, the study of knowledge; this may be seen in such questions as whether there is any real difference between right and wrong and, if there is, whether it can be known.

Experiences that have led to ethical inquiry are uncertainty or conflicts of opinion about what ought to be done; the sometimes painful consequences of an action that earlier seemed perfectly acceptable; and awareness of differences in norms and practices among different societies. These experiences give rise not only to questions of practical ethics (What should I do? Is this arrangement fair?) but also to questions of theoretical ethics (Is any one of these standards really right or are they all just arbitrary?). Such experiences are also the main source of moral skepticism--along with the fact that moral judgments appear unverifiable by observation, because there seems to be nothing in experience corresponding to the rightness of an action. Thus these questions, among others, have been generated: What does it mean to say that something is right or good? What makes right actions right? How can disputes about moral questions be resolved? It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

Philosophical ethics is often called normative ethics and distinguished from descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics is a department of empirical science, akin to sociology, that aims to discover and describe what moral beliefs are held in a given culture. Normative ethics aims rather to prescribe; it searches for norms, not in the sense of what is average and in that sense normal, but in the sense of authoritative standards of what ought to be.

Metaethics

A distinction within ethics of importance in contemporary discussions is that between normative ethics and metaethics. Metaethics (literally "about ethics") is the analytical study of the discipline of ethics itself. The term came into use only in the 20th century and thus cannot be found in the works of any of the classical moral philosophers, although inquiries of the sort that constitute it certainly can. Metaethics attempts to determine the meanings of normative terms, such as right, good, ought, justice, and obligation, to determine their interconnections and whether any of these concepts is basic. It also attempts to analyze the nature of moral judgments and to determine both whether they can be justified and whether they can be true or false. A question of some prominence in recent discussions is whether an ought can be deduced from an is and just what the relation is between facts and values.

These are questions of both metaethics and traditional ethics, and the importance of the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics is itself controversial, some writers regarding it as essential, others as not. The question at issue is whether it is possible to analyze moral concepts and judgments without at the same time presupposing moral beliefs. If so then metaethics can be morally neutral, otherwise not.

Among the main approaches in metaethics are views called naturalism, cognitivism, intuitionism, and subjectivism. Naturalism (represented in different ways by Herbert Spencer and John Dewey) maintains that moral terms name complex matters of fact and that moral judgments can be established by scientific or factual investigation; nonnaturalistic theories (such as that of G. E. Moore) deny this. A cognitivist theory maintains that moral judgments can be true or false and can, in principle, be subjects of knowledge or cognition; noncognitivist theories deny this. These two categories overlap, and a cognitivist theory can be naturalistic or nonnaturalistic.

Intuitionists such as H. A. Prichard and W. D. Ross claim that the sort of knowledge we have of right and wrong is immediate and self-evident. Reaction to intuitionism has led to subjectivism, emotivism, and imperativism. Subjectivists maintain that moral judgments state only subjective facts about attitudes and make no assertion about the object; thus if one says that something is wrong one is saying only that one disapproves of it or that society does. The emotive theory (A. J. Ayer, C. L. Stevenson) claims that moral judgments do not state anything that is capable of being true or false, even subjectively, but merely express emotions; moral terms, according to this view, have only emotive meaning, like oaths or exclamations. Imperativism (Rudolf Carnap) claims that moral judgments are commands in disguise (so that "You ought to do that" means simply "Do that!") and hence incapable of truth or falsity. Imperativism and emotivism are forms of noncognitivism. Subjectivism, however, is not, although it cannot usefully be classified as cognitivist either.

Any philosophical consideration of morality must come to terms with moral skepticism, and these different metaethical theories are different responses to skepticism. Any theory that maintains that moral principles cannot be proved, that there are no moral truths, that morality has no rational basis, or that the difference between right and wrong is merely a matter of taste or convention, is a form of moral skepticism. Subjectivism, imperativism, and emotivism are thus forms of skepticism. Cognitivist theories, on the other hand, are usually incompatible with it.

A widespread and familiar form of skepticism is ethical relativism, the view that there is no one correct moral code for all times and peoples, that each group has its own morality relative to its wants and values, and that all moral ideas are necessarily relative to a particular culture. According to this view, cannibals are justified in eating human beings by the standards of their own culture even if not by the standards of Western culture, and there can be no basis for claiming that the standards of Western culture are superior to theirs. Relativism seems to be supported by the most cursory observations of the diversity among cultures and constitutes a problem both for metaethics and for normative ethics. For if there is no right or wrong that can be determined apart from the conventions of one's own culture, the question arises of what ought to be done when different cultures come into conflict. Among the cannibals should I do as the cannibals do or should I act according to the standards of my own culture? Even relativists and other moral skeptics tend to pursue an answer by a process of moral reasoning, which may appeal to one of the standards of normative ethics. Even if one as a theorist adopts an emotivist or other skeptical stance, one as a human being will confront problems of conduct that call for answers.

Normative Ethics

Among the questions of normative ethics are: What makes right actions right? How can we tell what is right? Why should I be moral? Major theories are usually classified as consequentialist (teleological) or nonconsequentialist (deontological). Consequentialism maintains that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences. Deontological theories claim, variously, that the morality of an action depends on its intrinsic nature, or on its motives, or on its being in accordance with some rule or principle, and either not at all or only partly on consequences.

Teleological theories vary in their determination of what consequences are relevant and in how the value of the consequences is to be determined, but all interpret moral judgments as dependent on values and evaluation, hence on value theory. One such value theory is HEDONISM, the view that only pleasure is good as an end, and teleological theories are commonly classified as hedonistic or nonhedonistic. Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill), the theory that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the test of right and wrong, is hedonistic, since it interprets happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain. A nonhedonistic form of consequentialism is the "ideal utilitarianism" of G. E. Moore and Hastings Rashdall, which maintains that one ought to do that act of all those available in the circumstances that would produce the most good. Another rival to utilitarianism is self-realizationism, or perfectionism (Aristotle, Thomas Hill Green), which holds that the ultimate end is the full development or perfection of the self. This is a form of teleological theory, but it is not hedonistic.

Some theories do not readily fall under the above classification. One such is the theological (or divine command) theory that it is the will of God that determines whether an action is right or wrong. On this view (Saint Augustine, William Paley) the morality of an act depends on neither its consequences nor its essential nature nor its motive, but solely on whether it is in accordance with the will of God. Such theological theories have had wide acceptance and correspond closely to what many religious though nonreflective people uncritically think is the truth about morality. Religion, however, does not necessarily commit one to the theological theory, which has received as much criticism by theists (Richard Whately) as by nontheists (Moore).

In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, for one's action to be morally right one must be able to will one's maxim to be a universal law, that is, be willing to have everyone act in the same way. Kant imported another element into the discussion by introducing the concept of moral worth, insisting that one's action, even if right, has moral value only if one's motive for acting was to do what is right. Moral worth, then, depends on one's motive or intention, and not on what is actually done.

Egoism (Thomas Hobbes), basing itself on the idea that everyone acts always out of self-interest, maintains that an action is right only if it is in the interest of the agent. This view is consequentialist, but it is not utilitarian; on the utilitarian view of what is right in conduct everyone's interest must be given equal weight. Egoism, however, is not just another version of normative theory; it is, rather, a challenge to ethical theory itself. The challenge of egoism is that it raises the questions Why should I be moral? What's in it for me?, which rest on the idea that if there is no advantage in being moral, the agent can have no reason to be. Theological theories find it extremely easy to answer this question; others find it more difficult. The attempts to answer it have led to many inquiries into the basis of human motivation, the sanction for morality, the possibility of disinterested action, and the proper organization of society.

Situation ethics, which has come into prominence only recently, claims that the morality of an action depends on the situation and not on the application of a law to the case. This is a form of particular-case intuitionism and is opposed to utilitarianism and Kantianism as well as the divine-command theory. The original idea can be traced back to Aristotle, who held that the decision in a particular case "rests with perception," and the idea can be found in Ross (an intuitionist and nonnaturalist) as well as in Dewey (a naturalist and consequentialist).

Religious Ethics

One of the main problems of moral philosophy is the connection between morality and religion. Religious moralists tend to claim that there can be no morality without religion, because without God there can be no reason to be moral. Philosophers (with exceptions) tend to deny this, even take the opposite view. Philosophers as opposed as Mill and Kant held that religion rests on morality, since religion itself depends on the distinction between good and evil, an ethical concept.

Social Ethics

Some philosophers distinguish between personal ethics and social ethics. Personal ethics is taken as comprehending how one should act in relation to oneself, social ethics how one should act in relation to others. Such a distinction rests on differentiating between duties to oneself and duties to others, and one standard question of ethics is which of these is primary. Other thinkers (Dewey, for instance) regard the distinction as spurious, however, and regard all morality as essentially social, as comprehending problems that arise in a social setting.

In recent years some moral philosophers have returned to considering the questions of ethics in closer relation to those of political and legal philosophy. A paramount question is that of the justice of social institutions, especially (though not solely) the law. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), which takes the basic structure of society as the primary subject of justice and attempts to derive laws for individual conduct from the principles for institutions, has sparked great debate. In the process new interest has developed on the nature of a just law, on whether one has a moral obligation to obey the law, and on whether law itself can be defined independently of morality. These are questions both in moral philosophy and in philosophy of law, as is the question of whether morality can be legislated, which is involved in disputes over racial integration and over legal restrictions on sexual relations and abortion.

Normative and Professional Ethics

In recent years, owing to rapid social change and unprecedented technological developments, there has been a great resurgence of interest in normative ethics. One aspect of this is the attention given by scientists, engineers, lawyers, physicians, journalists, and others to the ethical problems involved in the practice of their professions. Some of these occupational groups have formal codes of ethics, which set forth principles of conduct deemed appropriate to the special objects and responsibilities of each profession. The code of the medical profession, for instance, has characteristically prohibited advertising; that of the advertising profession never has. There has, at the same time, been great interest in the moral problems that arise in the course of the professional activity itself. These include problems about how scarce resources, such as dialysis machines or organ transplants, should be allocated, and on how open and honest physicians should be with their patients, especially those with a terminal illness. The very objectives of the medical profession (derived from the Hippocratic Oath)--to save life, to cure disease, and to alleviate suffering--now seem to be in some cases conflicting. Devices are available that can prolong life at the cost of increasing suffering, and the problem of the morality of euthanasia thus becomes more pronounced. Similar problems affect other professions.

New fields of ethics, such as bioethics, engineering ethics, and environmental ethics, dealing with issues not previously contemplated and with problems of concern to all, are now developing rapidly. Abortion and euthanasia are familiar examples of moral problems in medicine becoming moral problems for the wider society. Another area of serious debate concerns the propriety and limits of experimentation on both human subjects and animals. Thus current discussions exemplify the interplay between theory and practice, in this case in the area of ethics, that has always been most fruitful for both.