Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Society
= Association of people organized under a system of rules
= Rules: advance the good of members over time
= Govern the member of the society (to join, must adhere to certain part of rules of society
known as morality)
Morality
= A society rules of conduct
= What people ought / ought not to do in various situations
= Can be written or unwritten
= Rule which determine right or wrong if you are a part of the society
= Multiple society multiple rules and morality
Ethics
= Rational examination of morality
= Evaluation of peoples behavior
= Official evaluation of morality based on reasoning. (Ethics process)
= Either judge the person, or the act itself.
E.g.: Couple live together, not married with 3 kids but relationship complicated (Morally correct
according to the society there)
We come, and look at the moral system and compare it to best practices which is an accepted
way of living by the world.
1) Look at guidance set by United Nations on relationship
2) Look at heredity. (to have child must be legal and license married)
Why study Ethics?
= Ethics: a way to decide the best thing to do
= New problems accompany new technologies
= Common wisdom may not exist for novel situations brought about by new technologies
More on Ethics
= Rational, systematical analysis
Doing ethics : answers need explanations
Explanations : facts, shared values, logic
= Ethics: voluntary (action taken by that person is not involuntary movement or decision), moral
choices
= Workable ethical theory: produces explanations that might be persuasive to a skeptical, yet
open minded audience.