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MORAL VALUES When acting ethically, one is guided and governed by his / her moral conscience, which is telling

from the inside what one should do as a rational and responsible human being. How is it possible that our individual conscience would tell us to do whats universally right or wrong? Why should we listen to the inner voice of our moral conscience? Value is by itself normative: we ourselves impose on us to do or not to do certain things because we appreciate that some things are more important than others.

VALUE: something important, worth of respect

Values are investigated by a specific branch of philosophy, named AXIOLOGY. There are four essential axiological theories: subjectivism, objectivism, relativism and universalism.

MORAL VALUES

subjectivism relativism cultural & ethical objectivism absolutism universalism

SUBJECTIVISM

VALUE

individual taste or PREFERENCE

guided by PLEASURE

Value has nothing to do with the evaluated object; it rests solely on the subjects needs, pleasures, and tastes. Things are what they are there is no value in them. We make things to be worth or not.

John from the UK likes soccer and rugby; he finds American football and baseball stupid. Jack from the US has opposite views.

Benny likes to torture animals; Sam is very fond of raping young schoolgirls; Jane loves to be a hooker and to steal the wallets of her customers.

SUBJECTIVISM

VALUE
spiritual form: truth is important in itself, no matter if A or B likes it or not.

PREFERENCE
psychological fact: A happens to like a certain thing X, whereas B actually hates X, prefering Y. So what?
By contrast to preferences, which are always personal, values are impersonal, above the individual tastes. Value is not something that happens to exist or not, but it is something that should ever exist. Subjective preferences express ones SELF. Our tastes makes us all more or less different than the others.

Our values belong to our spiritual identity with a certain CULTURAL COMMUNITY. Our values make us all more or less the same.

Making morality a matter of personal taste, subjectivism is unacceptable.

CULTURAL & ETHICAL RELATIVISM

VALUE

SOCIAL CONVENTION specific to a certain culture and civilisation

revealed by an intuitive INSIGHT, that cannot be universally true or false

Each cultural community enshrines a system of values, imposed on its members by means of education and by the pressure of the group upon the rebels. Each cultural community has its own specific values, that define its uniqueness, and cannot be properly perceived and understood by any other culture.

Values are general, but never universal.


This is a normative viewpoint that claims there can be no objective or rational standards by which we can resolve disputes and disagreements.

CULTURAL & ETHICAL RELATIVISM


The fact that cultures disagree is not evidence that objective agreement is impossible. [The Earth is flat. Women are inferior to men. Children should be disciplined by physical violence.] We should not confuse tolerance and respect for diversity with relativism. Either respect and tolerance are values that are rationally defensible or they are themselves relative to ones own culture, with no objective meaning. Hence, the values of respect and tolerance are not reasons for accepting the legitimacy of ethical relativism. We should be careful to distinguish disagreement about ethical principles from disagreements over the application of general principles such as the right to life and liberty. We should not ask of ethics mathematical precision and certainty. Instead of certain proof we must accept a rational justification for ethical judgments, just as we do in other fields such as medicine, history, and law.

CULTURAL & ETHICAL RELATIVISM


Why different races, ethnic, and religious groups are compatible only with a specific system of values? There must be a mysterious collective soul, capable of perceiving specific values, but incapable of understanding other groups values. Why, no matter how different, all of the cultures and civilizations worship the same species of values: vital force, utility, truth, beauty, goodness, justice, holyness?

Cultures perceive differently universal values.

ABSOLUTIVISM

OBJECTIVISM

intrinsic PROPERTY VALUE = of an object, just like weight, volume or density The prototype of objectivism is the use value, defined by physical properties.

revealed by an act of KNOWLEDGE, that can be true or false

A good car must possess certain necessary components (wheels, engine, breaks, etc.) and certain measurable properties (power engine, speed, fuel consumption, comfort, security), best known by the experts: engineers and drivers.

OBJECTIVISM

Objectivism is in trouble when it comes to spiritual values.


What are the measurable, physical properties of a fine poem? What are the measurable, physical properties of a good partner, friend, husband / wife or lover? What are the objective traits of a praiseworthy God? MATERIAL VALUES are divisible and two or several people cannot fully enjoy one such value altogether, at the same time. SPIRITUAL VALUES are indivisible and each one can be shared by no matter how many people without any partition.

UNIVERSALISM

We cannot exclude in principle the possibility of universal values, such as human life, health, freedom, happiness, friendship, honesty, courage, etc., even though in time and space different cultures disagree over the specific forms of promoting and protecting such values. The existence of the universal values is not something given once and forever, but rather a historical process of development and evolution of mankind, a never complete project of creating rational standards for ethical behavior in all cultures and civilizations of the world.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARDS

Moral standards deal with matters that we think can seriously injure or seriously benefit human beings: theft, rape, enslavement, murder, child abuse, assault, slander, fraud, lawbreaking and so on.
In the Vandivier case, it was clear that lying in the government report and endangering the lives of pilots were both felt to be serious harms and so both were moral matters, whereas adhering to grammatical standards was not.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARDS

In contrast to laws and legal standards, moral standards are not established by authority or the decision of voters. Instead, the validity of moral standards rests on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify them.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARDS

We feel that moral standards should be preferred to other values, including self-interest.
We feel that Vandivier should have chosen the moral values of honesty and respect for life over the nonmoral value of keeping his well-paid, pleasant, and challenging job.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARDS

Moral standards are based on impartial considerations. The fact that you will benefit from a lie and that I will be harmed is irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong. Moral standards are based on the kinds of impartial reasons that an ideal observer or an impartial spectator would accept.

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF MORAL STANDARDS

Moral standards are associated with special emotions (shame, guilt, remorse indignation, resentment, disgust) and a special vocabulary, designed to express moral judgment and moral sanctions.
Vandivier later felt shame and remorse (he later testified before Congress in an attempt to make things right. Many of us would strongly disapprove of his behaviour, blaming him of giving up his moral responsibilities and acting selfishly.

ETHICAL INVESTIGATION
ETHICS is the discipline that examines one's moral standards or the moral standards of a society. It asks how these standards apply to our lives and whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable that is, whether they are supported by good or poor reasons. But ethical investigation is not the privilege of scholars. A person starts to do ethics when he or she takes the moral standards absorbed from family, church, and friends and asks:
What do these standards imply for the situations in which I find myself?

Do these standards really make sense? What are the reasons for or against these standards?
Why should I continue to believe in them? Are they really reasonable for me to hold? Are their implications in this or that particular situation reasonable?

ETHICAL INVESTIGATION
Ethics is not the only way to study morality. The social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology also study morality, but do so in a way that is quite different from the approach to morality that is characteristic of ethics.

DESCRIPTIVE STUDY
Characteristic of social sciences, a descriptive study is an investigation that attempts to describe or explain the world without reaching any conclusions about whether the world is as it should be. Anthropologists and sociologists may study the moral standards that a particular village or culture holds. In doing so, they attempt to develop accurate descriptions of the moral standards of that culture and perhaps even to formulate an explanatory theory about their structure. However, it is not their aim to determine whether these moral standards are correct or incorrect.

ETHICAL INVESTIGATION

NORMATIVE STUDY
Characteristic of ethics, as moral philosophy, a normative study is an investigation that attempts to reach normative conclusions that is, conclusions about what things are good or bad or about what actions are right or wrong. In short, a normative study aim to discover what should be. In contrast to anthropology and sociology, ethics attempts to determine whether a given moral standard (or moral judgment based on that standard) is more or less correct. SOCIOLOGIST asks: Do Romanians (Americans, Russians, Indians) believe that bribery is wrong? ETHICIST asks: Is bribery wrong?

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