moral systems

Moral Systems

Assumptions and Principles

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Basic Assumptions

• What constitutes a workable and livable moral system?– It should be rationally based and yet not

devoid of emotion.

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Basic Assumptions

– It should be as logically consistent as possible but not rigid and inflexible.

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Basic Assumptions

– It must have universality or general application to all humanity and yet be applicable to particular individuals and situations

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Basic Assumptions

– It should be able to be taught and promulgated

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Basic Assumptions

– It must have the ability to resolve conflicts among human beings, duties, and obligations.

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Basic principles, individual freedom, and their justificationThe problems of morality center

essentially upon two areas– How to attain unity and order by working

with basic principles so as to avoid the chaos of situationism and intuitionism.

– How to allow individual and group freedom to work with such principles meaningfully.

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Basic Principles Slide 1

1. The Value of Life Principle– Human beings should revere life

and accept death– No ethical system can function or

persist without some statement, positive or negative or both, that reflects a concern for the preservation and protection of human life.

– Most ethical systems have some sort of prohibition against killing, even the most primitive societies

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• 1. The sheriff in a southern town is guarding the courthouse against a mob that is about to storm it by force, in order to capture a black prisoner and lynch him even before his trial. If the mob is frustrated, many people may be killed in the ensuing riot. Should the sheriff deliver the prisoner to the mob?

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• Apply Basic Assumptions and the value of life principle

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Basic Principles Slide 2

• The Principle of Goodness or Rightness is ultimate to any moral system, and it requires that human being attempt to do three things– Promote goodness over badness and do

good– Cause no harm or badness– Prevent badness or harm

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Basic Principles Slide 3

• The Principle of Justness or Fairness– The type of justice referred to here is

distributive, meaning that human beings should treat other human beings justly and fairly when attempting to distribute goodness and badness among them.

– Theories about, and ways of distribution, good and bad have been fully described in Chapter 6.

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• 2. Should the wealthier members of society be forced to pay through taxation, for the poorer members? If so, how much?

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Basic Principles Slide 4

• The Principle of Truth Telling or Honesty– Provides for meaningful communication– Example of loaning money

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• 5. You are on a country road and see two neighbouring farm houses on fire. One is yours and the other belongs to a new couple who just moved in. Your wife and child are at home as are your neighbours. You can only save one house. Which one do you save?

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Basic Principles Slide 5• The Principle of Individual Freedom

– States that people, being individual with individual differences, must have the freedom to chose their own way and means of being moral within a framework of the first four basic principles!

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Importance of the situation and context of moral problems and

basic principles• The situation or context is important because

morality always occurs in particular situations to particular people, not in the abstract

• We must start from a broad yet humanly applicable, near-absolute principle so that there will be some basis for acting morally and avoiding immorality

• Humanitarian Ethics is an eclectic approach, a “mixed deontological,” or combined consequentialist-nonconsequentialist and act-rule, approach to morality