LESSON 1

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ORIENTATION OF
THE COURSE
 ITRODUCTION
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 It seems that people don’t like rules as they represent
a kind of restriction, but in fact life can’t be organize
without rules.
 People always need rules and laws to be able to live
and together.We need rules to help us get along
together and show respect to each other.
 All rules and laws have the same purpose. They are
design to ensure fairness, safety respect for other
people’s right.
RULES AND ITS IMPORTANCE

 RULES
 Refer to a set of which have been put in place in different countries
and communities and have been accepted by all. Rules are useful
tools in guiding and monitoring the interaction of human in the
society. Rules help guide action towards desired result.
 When appropriately, rules provided sense of predictability and
consistency for people, thereby promoting physical, moral social,
and emotional safety.at the heart of ethics is a concern about
something or someone other than ourselves and our own self
interest.
 Ethics is concerned with people’s interest, with the society, with
God interest, “ultimate goods” and so on.
 Why do we have Rules

 Rules help people in many aspect of life. They enable
people to organize all process correctly, Rules are
specific modes of behavior that secure a regulated
flow of all processes.
 Rules help humanity to avoid chaos and many
problems that may be cause by the lacks of
regulation. Laws dedicate what is proper and what is
wrong.
 Importance of Rules

 Rules are important because they tend to protect the
weaker class in the society as they might be in the
disadvantageous position if rules are broken. When
rules are used in the right way.
 They provide a stable environment and human co
-existence in society which leads to peace and
development. The process of the of setting rules aim
to craft rules in the line with some desire result.
 Rules are vital in one’s life because peace and order
are maintained, an important ingredient for society
development.
 The Subject :ETHICS

 Ethics or moral philosophy, may be defined in a provisional way, as the
scientific study of moral judgments. Ethics is the discipline concerned
with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong. The term is also
applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles.
 The subject of Ethics consists of the fundamental issues of practical
decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate
value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or
wrong. They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives. Ethics
is concerned with what is good individuals and society and is also
described as moral philosophy.
 The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which mean custom,
habit, character or disposition. Our concepts of ethics have been derived
from religions, philosophies and cultures. They infuse debates on topics
like abortion, human rights and professional conduct. Ethics is not only
about the morality of particular courses of action, but it's also about the
goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life. Virtue
Ethics is particularly concerned with the moral character of human beings .
 Branches of Ethics

 One way to try and define morality is through ethics, the philosophical study
of morality. In the field of ethics, morality is often defined in one of two ways.
 First is normative, in which actions are judged by their merits, allowing
societies to develop codes of conduct for behavior. The Golden Rule, do unto
others as you would have them do unto you, is a classic example of normative
ethics, since you are determining morality through your actions .If your
actions to another person align with how you want to be treated, they are
moral.
 The other side of this is descriptive ethics. If normative ethics try and define
how people should act, descriptive ethics ask what do people think is moral?
This branch of ethics does not actually claim that things are right or wrong,
but simply studies how individuals or societies define their morals. What
makes something right or wrong in a specific culture?
 While there are many more, most of them can be broken into the same
divisions as these two. Some theories define what is right and wrong as
objective truth, others see morals as entirely subjective, only definable through
their respective societies.
 Why Study Ethics?

 The study of Ethics will enable a person to understand better what
his conscience is, how he acquired it, how far he is likely to be able
to trust to its deliverances with safety, and how he can improve it
and make it more intelligent. He will gain a clearer insight into his
claims upon society, and the duties that he owes to society. He will
learn to discriminate between the respects in which all individuals
are mutually interdependent and those in which each is responsible
for his own life, and ought to insist upon freedom of initiative.
Finally, while a book on Ethics can by no means prescribe for
anyone what should be his vocation in life, or his avocations, it can
at least proffer some considerations, from the standpoints of self-
realization, self-sacrifice, and service, that ought to help anyone in
making such decisions.
 LESSON 2

The Moral Agent
 INTRODUCTION

 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 fulfill some of the essential conditions of moral
agency.
 
It is well, however, that reason should know its limits,
and we are not to seek for the origin of moral obligation
in any of what are merely results of its exercise. The
constitution of moral agents, and the grounds and
conditions of moral action are matters open to the
investigation of reason; but the sense of obligation can
result ‘only from Divine authority apprehended or
believed to be somehow, manifested or revealed.

 MORALITY

 Morality can be defined as the standards that an
individual or a group has about what is right and
wrong, or good and evil. Morality is not imposed from
outside, but innate and can even be unconscious. We
have a fundamental urge to connect. Ultimately, it’s our
moral qualities that force us to live in harmony with the
unconscious; doing so is the highest form of morality.
 Morality informal public system applying to all rational
persons, governing behavior that affects others, and has
the lessening of evil or harm as its goal.
 
 Morality is a complex of concepts and philosophical
beliefs by which an individual determines whether his or
her actions are right or wrong. Often, these concepts and
beliefs are generalized and codified in a culture or group,
and thus serve to regulate the behavior of its members.
Conformity to such codification is called morality, and
the group may depend on widespread conformity to
such codes for its continued existence. A “moral” may
refer to a particular principle, usually as informal and
general summary of a moral principle, as applied in a
given human situation (Darwall, 2005).
 
 There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single
definition of morality will be applicable to all moral
discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be
used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and
normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be
used either.
 1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward
by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an
individual for his/her own. Behavior, or
 2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given
specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational
persons.
 KEY FEATURES OF
MORALITY

 To understand morality in its true sense, let us identify the six (6) features:

 1. People experiençe 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. (Nielsen, 1973)
 Even atheist Richard Dawkins declares that there are "moral instructions on
how we ought to behave." (Dawkins, 2006).
 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. (Craig, 1994).
 Some actions are really wrong in the same way that some things like love
respect are truly good. There are moral absolutes-truths that exist and apply to
everyone.
 
 3.Moral law does exist. 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 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. (Lewis, 2003).

 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. Different civilizations and different ages only have “slightly
different” moralities and not a radically or “quite different moralities”. One
cannot 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.” (Durant, 1968).

 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.
 
 6. Moral judgments must be supported by reasons.
Moral judgments are different from mere
expressions of personal preferencethey require
backing by reasons, and in the absence of such
reasons, they are merely arbitrary. (James, 1999)
 MAN AS MORAL
AGENT

 A moral agent is a being that is “capable of acting
with reference to right and wrong”. A moral agent is
anything that can be held responsible for behavior or
decisions. “It is moral agents who have rights and
responsibilities, because it is moral agents whom we
take to have choices and the power to choose”. If you
do not believe that anything or anyone should ever
be blamed or deemed responsible, then you are
going against the idea of moral agency, and denying
the concept of responsibilities and rights.
 
 A moral agent is an intelligent being who has the power of
choosing, and scope to act according to his choice; one to whom the
Supreme Governor has given a cognizable law, with its proper
sanction, by which to regulate his volitions and actions, and who is
placed in circumstances which present no physical obstruction,
either to obedience or disobedience. Moral action, therefore, is
action which springs from choice, and is not necessitated either by
mental propulsions or external circumstances: intelligent, free, and
account able, it is distinguished on the one hand from instinctive
action, which is the result of an undeviating and unfailing but blind
propulsion, and on the other from Divine action, which though
certain as instinct, is yet in the fullest sense intelligent and free.
 
 When something or someone is deemed a moral
agent, it does not necessarily mean that they are
successfully making moral decisions. It means that
they are in a category that enables them to be
blamed. If someone is unable to be blamed, then they
do not have rights. Being a moral agent means that
they can be held responsible for their decisions and
behaviors, whether they are good or bad.
 
 A moral agent must be a living creature, as they must be able to
comprehend abstract moral principles and apply them to decision
making. They must have “self-consciousness, memory, moral
principles, other values, and the reasoning faculty, which allows him
to devise plans for achieving his objectives, to weigh alternatives,
and so on”. Also, in order to weigh the options in decision making, a
moral agent must “attach a positive value to acts that conform to his
moral principles and a positive value to some of the results that he
can achieve by violating his moral principles”. This means that in
order to be a moral agent “you must live in a world of scarcity rather
than paradise”. If all of your values could be easily and immediately
be achieved, you wouldn’t have to pick between moral and non-
moral goals, and you couldn’t practice moral agency.
 
 In order to be a moral agent who makes decisions about
justice and takes action based on those decisions, one
must live in a society with others who they consider to
have moral rights. If one lives alone or with others who
do not have moral rights, then they are unable to make
decisions regarding other’s rights. In order to morally,
one must be free to act. If one is unable to act, then they
do not responsibility. As long as each person does not
violate the rights of ve other moral agent, then each
moral agent has the right to make decisions and take
action on these decisions.
 
 A being capable of moral agency is one who
possesses the means of judging rightly, and power to
act accordingly; but whether he will do so or not,
depends on the voluntary exercise of his faculties.
 ARISTOTLE AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY

 Aristotle was the first to discuss moral responsibility. He
stated that it is “sometimes appropriate to respond to an
agent with praise or blame on the basis of his/her
actions and/or dispositional traits of character”. He
discusses that “only a certain kind of agent qualifies as a
moral agent and is thus properly subject to ascriptions of
responsibility, namely, one who possesses a capacity for
decision”. From Aristotle’s perspective, “a decision is a
particular kind of desire resulting from deliberation, one
that expresses the agent’s conception of what is good”.
 
 In reference to modern ethical theories, which
separate actions and questions about them, Aristotle
would not agree. “Praiseworthy and blameworthy
actions are not those which match up to a particular
template of rules or principles. Rather, they are ones
which flow from, and reveal a certain type of
character”. Moral agency is not just about which
rules to follow, it comes from a way of life which
Aristotle called the virtuous life, which necessitates a
unison of thought and feeling.
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