Though there are views that take true morality as absolute. Only rules that can be universally applied should be considered true moral rules. But such rules are incredibly hard, if not realistically impossible, to find. If we take things logically, a rule designed to create the largest amount of happiness as consequence to the action taken seems to be a very solid one. The view behind this thought process is utilitarianism, and at first glance, there seems to be little to argue about.
Another weakness is the consequences, in some situations when consequences are too severe that many think it is better to break a rule than allow awful thing to happen. The theory is too rigid, sometimes the consequences can change the rightness or a wrongness of an action, but in this theory the person is judged on the action which can be unfair. It’s inflexible as you should be able to break a rule if the individual’s circumstances warrant it. There is no consideration to human emotion, there are situation where individuals break rules because of emotions, for example if a person is scared they may lie to protect themselves which in Kant’s eyes this would be morally wrong. The theory is a priori, some claim we out our duty a priori but it is also argued we need to refer to experience to work out what is right.
For a conscientious observer, this double standard should seriously cause him to question the ability of a consequentialist perspective to prescribe satisfactory moral understanding and guidance. By accommodating an agent’s moral feelings only when they are in accord with utility is indicative of a deeper failure to recognize that such feelings are often expressions of the agent’s own projects and commitments. Thus, to achieve an objective standard of right action, utilitarianism ultimately sacrifices the agent’s integrity by making right action irrelevant to those projects and commitments. The first part of my exposition focuses on what Williams sees as the reason for the popularity of consequentialist ethical theories, which is rooted in an illicit jump from thinking about moral kinds of actions to thinking about moral degrees of outcomes. The rest of my exposition explains how this jump directly leads to the
We promote goodness and happiness using nature and experience, we can work out thus, that murder, for example, is wrong because committing murder does not cause happiness. Ergo, Ethical Naturalism produces universal laws which can be used as a benchmark to measure our own and other people’s moral conduct. Meta-ethics on the other hand believes that no ethical language is universal and objective. Non-naturalists and non-cognitivists such as Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore believe that ethical language is subjective, as by claiming that they are objective is committing the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. This states that it is a mistake to define ‘good’ in terms of things that exist (natural properties) that we already
Psychologists, try to study an individual’s mind to determine the causes of their behaviour’s. According to epiphenomenalists, psychological discourse cannot exist because the mind cannot casually affect anything physical (Foster, 160). However, if that were true, it would be extremely difficult in explaining certain situations that seem linked with human psychology. For example, if X was being tried for the murder of Y, and in the court room, X confessed that the reason why he killed Y was that he felt that Y deserved to die because of Y’s association with rape of an individual. In this case, it would at least seem that one of the reasons as to why X committed the murder was because he does not appreciate or like individuals who rape
This social expectation is crucial to break because society should be encouraging people to be friendly when around strangers, not the opposite. In Thoreau's essay, “Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau exemplifies the ideas Emerson explains in his own essay “Self-Reliance”; therefore suggesting that Emerson would agree with the arguments of Thoreau. Through out the essays of Thoreau and Emerson, they both reiterate the same ideas, yet Thoreau furthers the arguments with an action, implying that the two men would agree with each other. In, “Self Reliance,” Emerson states, “The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good” (16). The “harm” Emerson speaks of is that society, with machines, will no longer with self-sufficient.
This also depends on what kind of person you are. For example, a person that thinks only for himself and his personal interests is going to set his moral values lower and is more prone to commit acts that are morally wrong than a person who helps others in need. History has shown us that sometimes different people with different beliefs on morality can’t get along with each other. This is the case of the antislavery movement in the US. The issue was regarding slavery and it was between the North and South.
The terms morality and ethics are not always interchangeable. Ethics is broader. Ethics deals with what is generally right and wrong and morality with what is right and wrong in relations between people. There is ethical behavior that does not bother with whether it is moral or immoral. Decisions involving other people are moral choices.
In fact, according to Kant, a person who hates helping others but does so anyways because they see it as their societal duty is a good moral agent. On the other hand, a person who enjoys helping others because it brings them joy would be considered selfish and without any moral content. How can this make sense? Hume would argue that it is the passion to help those that are less fortunate that motivates the individual rather than the actual act. In general, the action is produced by a passion to do something, spurred on by feelings of guilt or perhaps philanthropy.
As such, ethical situationalism denies absolute universal moral principles (Fieser and Pojman 43). Here, it is more about adapting and adhering to whatever is demanded by the situation. In other words, ethical situationalism asserts that changing situations may require changing ethical principles. From this we can gather that in different situations, it is possible for moral principles to “outweigh” other moral principles (i.e. one principle has the potential for being more “right” or “better than”, or even “worse than” another principle in any given