It is an irrefutable fact that we should help each. However sometimes help to others poses some danger to either us or others. Thus Peter Singer’s argument that, “we ought to prevent evil whenever we can do so without sacrificing something of comparable moral significance” in my view is a better school of thought or a sound moral law. We shall find out how he arrives at this conclusion and how convincing he is. Singer begins his argument by outlining some very important facts about human beings.
People also have the ability to think morally for themselves so morality is relative to someone’s point of view. The main point favoring the cultural relativism argument is that if there are no moral principles, then the principles can only be relative to culture. If someone were to express their opinion about the morals of a culture that they didn’t agree with, including what the culture already believed to be right, then that person would lose the argument without any question. This can be easily disproved because in one culture, not every person is going to have the same moral judgments about what is right or wrong and people can establish objective moral principles. A culture also can’t think of them as having the power to decide which is right and
This would turn morality into something subjective. An action cannot be good and bad at the same time. The real issue that we encounter here is this question: is something good because God says so or does God say so because something is good? The conclusion that Socrates arrives about this dilemma is that a person can be good independent of a god. What is good is good within it.
Sinnott defines consequentialism as: Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same
Meta ethics tries to make sense of the terms and concepts used in ethical theories. Some people believe that ethical language is extremely meaningful as they argue it is essential to be able to define terms such as “good” and “bad” before we can even begin to discuss ethical theories. However others disagree with this and argue that moral statements are subjective so cannot be meaningful as they cannot be described as either true or false. Those who hold cognitive theories about ethical language would argue that ethical statements are meaningful as they are about facts and can therefore be proved true or false. Ethical Naturalism is a cognitive theory of Meta ethics which holds the belief that ethical statements are the same as non ethical ones, so can be verified or falsified in the same way.
One major strength of virtue ethics is that it allows the moral agent to make ethical decisions based on his or her moral well-being, not just based on what is legally right. Therefore this ethical system can be seen to have a greater weight over others as someone who follows it are doing so because they believe it’s right rather than following rules. This then also acknowledges that morality is complex and so rejects simplistic maxims as a basis for moral truths. However, this can also be seen to be one of the weaknesses of virtue ethics. Robert Louden stated that as virtue ethics is focused on the individual, it neither resolves nor attempts to resolve big moral dilemmas.
Therefore, deontologists follow the belief that certain actions are inherently good if they follow the stated rules even if the action has bad consequences, it can still be defined as moral. In contrast, teleological ethical systems focus completely on the outcomes and consequences of an act. Teleology is a theory of ethics according to which the rightness of an act is determined by it's end. Also known as consequentialism, actions that result in what can be considered as a good consequence must be good and so the end result will justify the reason that the act was committed in the first place. Both deontological and teleological ethical systems use opposing ethical guides yet they both have the same aim, to help people make moral decisions.
Of the remaining criteria we might consider, only sentience―the capacity of a being to experience things like pleasure and pain―is a plausible criterion of moral importance. Singer argues for this in two ways. First, he argues, by example, that the other criteria are bad, because (again) they will exclude people who we think ought not be excluded. For instance, we don't really think that it would be permissible to disregard the well-being of someone who has much lower intelligence than average, so we can't possibly think that intelligence is a suitable criterion for moral consideration. Second, he argues that it is only by virtue of something being sentient that it can be said to have interests at all, so this places sentience in a different category than the other criteria: "The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way" (175).
The basis of rational choice is having an understanding or reason of why the choice should be made, while weighing the consequences, and then choosing to act (James 1:14-15 NIV). According to this theory, conscious choice is at the heart of criminals making wrong moral choices. In Deuteronomy 30:15, God speaks of the choice to make moral decisions, “See that I have set before thee this day life and good and death and evil.” It is not enough just having an
For utilitarian school of thought, an individual strives to do the most good, even at the expense of the minority. Utilitarianism and Kantianism find the basis of their differences in the idea that the ends justify the means. Utilitarian beliefs support this idea while Kantian philosophy rejects this. Modern ethics were devised from these two basic ethical beliefs in an attempt to combine the best aspects. Generally, the morally “right” action benefits the majority while affecting the fewest amount in a negative way.