BINALBAGAN CATHOLIC COLLEGE, INC.

Binalbagan, Negros Occidental

HAND OUTS ON ETHICS

 Rules are important to social beings. They are meant to set order. Rules are not meant to restrict your
freedom. They are meant to help you grow in freedom, to grow in your power to choose and do what is
good for you and for others. Any rule or law that prevents human persons from doing good and being
good ought to be repealed. They have no reason to exist.
 Ethics – comes from the Greek word “ethos” meaning “custom” used in the works of Aristotle, while the
term “moral” is the Latin equivalent. Based on the Greek and Latin etymology of the word “ethics”,
ethics deals with morality.
 or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy which deals with moral standards, inquiries
about the rightness or wrongness of human behavior or the goodness or badness of
personality, trait, or character
 the study of the morality of human acts and moral agents, what makes an act obligatory and
what makes the person accountable
 Morality – is a system of beliefs about what is right behavior and wrong behavior
 deals with how a person relates with others and with the world to promote what is good
 Ethics – both a theory and practice
 One has to know the theories and ethical principles of knowing what is right and wrong and
good and bad actions. However, one has to translate these theories into actions. Knowing
what is right without changing the way one behaves morally is a useless knowledge.
Characteristics of Moral Principles or Moral Standards
1. Prescriptivity – refers to the action – guiding nature of morality
- the principles should intend to guide and direct people what to do or should not do
2. Overridingness – means that moral principles should tower over all other norms or standards of evaluation
- should be given primary or ultimate importance
3. Impartiality – means that moral rule should be neutral
- should apply to anyone regardless of situation or status
4. Autonomous from Arbitrary Authority
– moral standards should be independent, hence be able to stand on its own
- regardless of what the majority says or decides, SOMETHING is moral or immoral. An act should be
based on ethical principles and not on what men say
5. Publicity – since moral standards guide people what to do, they should be made public. Reason dictates that
rules are made and promulgated to advice as well as praise or blame actions.
6. Practicability – rules are made for men to follow. Hence, moral standards exist in which human beings are
capable of doing
7. Moral standards are associated with the vocabulary that depicts emotions or feelings. For example, when
you go against your moral standards you will say you feel guilty, remorseful, or ashamed.

 When judgment is founded on the rightness or wrongness of an action, the criteria is based on one’s moral
standards. In addition, moral standards are norms or prescriptions that serve as the frameworks for
determining what ought to be done or what is the right or wrong action, what is good or bad character.
e.g. Do not lie., Don’t steal., Don’t kill., Don’t cheat others
 Non-moral standards can be considered as relative standards by which something is judged as either good
or bad. The rules of non-moral standards vary because these rules depend on the guidelines agreed by a
particular group.
e.g. Wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts on a very formal occasion, Writing a grammatically incorrect
essay
 It is important to determine what kind of act of which man is morally accountable and responsible. There are
two acts of man:
1. act of man – refers to those acts if which man has no control. Therefore, it is involuntary.
e.g. emotions, circulation of the blood, pumping of the heart, grinding of the stomach, and breathing
2. human act – actions which are within the control of man like walking, talking, eating, thinking, and biting.
It is deliberate, hence, a voluntary act.
Three Essential Elements of Human Act
1. Knowledge – where the doer is aware of what he/she is doing. Obviously, one cannot hold a person fully
responsible for something that he or she is not aware of. But if he does an action with awareness, that is doing
the action knowingly, then the issue of moral responsibility is inevitable. It is because the action has been
acted upon within the level of person’s awareness, thus what he does is a human act which can either be
moral or immoral. Without the knowledge of the doer, the act is ordinarily taken as an act of man.
2. Freedom – in which the act is not done by force. It is a state of being unrestricted from the internal impulse
and external pressure. A person is free when he can exercise control over himself and over his actions, that is,
he can make a wide range of choices whether to do it or not. A human act is therefore a free act. Without
freedom in the performance of the act, a person can never be held responsible for his action.
3. Will – of which the doer has given its consent to do the act. Unless the action is done with consent, no action
can be considered as a human act. The consent of the doer is critical to make a particular act a human act.
Consent is simple the acquiescence or approval of the doer for his action. A person may be free to do it or not
but if he does not allow his will to approve or disapprove an act, his moral responsibility is diminished, if not
extirpated at all.
In other words, for a man to be fully morally accountable of his/her act, it must be done knowingly,
freely, and willfully. The absence of either one or two of the elements may lessen the accountability of the doer
or no accountability at all.
Voluntariness is very much akin to consent. From the Latin word, “voluntas”, it refers to the act of the
will. Without the action of the will, an act is considered involuntary, hence the doer in this case cannot be held
liable for his action. Only an act that proceeds from the command of the will is voluntary. Needless to say, only
a voluntary act is a human act.

Four kinds of voluntariness:

1. Perfect voluntariness – where all elements of human act are present. Man is fully accountable of the act
committed.
2. Imperfect voluntariness – where knowledge is absent. A man who is not aware of the act that he has done
may not be answerable of his act or no accountability at all. A boy giving a box of
chocolates to a lady not knowing it is poisoned is absolved from liability.
3. Simple voluntariness – is simply doing or not doing the act since one has/ cannot do anything about it. It is
either positive or negative. A male student whose house is 10 kilometers from the
school will either ride a jeepney or not. In most cases, he needs to ride otherwise he
will be late.
4. Conditional Voluntariness – when the person is forced to do an act in which in normal condition it should not
be done. When a female employer is forced to give her cellphone to the robber
pointing a knife to her chest being afraid of her life.
Morality of an act can either moral, immoral, or amoral. Moral if it is a good act. Immoral if it is bad. If it
is indifferent or neither good nor bad, then it is amoral. An amoral act may either become moral or immoral
depending on the motive or intention of the doer.
How do we know the morality of the act? The following are determinants of morality.
1. The object or act itself – reefers to the act done by the doer of the action. It is either good or bad. The act of
giving as to the act of killing are examples.
2. Motive or intent – the purpose or reason of doing the act. Like a daughter gave a bouquet of flowers to her
mother celebrating a birthday. Whereas, due to revenge, a certain boy stabbed his
neighbor.
3. Circumstances – this involves the situations that surround the commission of the act. They are basically
practical answers to questions.
a. Who – refers to the persons involved in the act committed, the doer and the receiver or the recipient of the
act. A child who accidentally pulled a trigger against his/her playmate thinking a gun is a toy may not
be accountable compared to an adult doing the same act. A man boxing a woman is greatly
answerable of his act. An educated person is more answerable than an illiterate one.
b. Why – the reason or motive of doing the act. Stealing food because of extreme hunger has lesser
accountability as to someone who stole due to greediness and selfishness.
c. By what means – though the intention is good but attaining the end is unlawful or illicit, then the act is still
immoral. “The end does not justify the means.” A student whose intention is to pass the final
examination in order to graduate but attaining such through cheating, then it is still
considered immoral.
d. Where – refers to the setting of the action. An act done in open places like in the market has greater liability
than in quiet places like in the mountain.
e. When – refers to the time of the commission of the act. Time element is important and in most cases vital to
assess and judge morally the human act. Killing a person while he was sleeping connotes greater
accountability compared to when the person killed was conscious and still has time to defend
himself. Performing the act in broad daylight has different liability while doing it during nighttime.
f. How – raping a woman in front of her husband is a greater crime, Stabbing a person many times indicates an
extreme hatred. Whereas, defaming the person through the use of media is more accountable than
doing it in front of one’s friends.
Generally, circumstances could be aggravating, justifying, mitigating, or exempting. The act of self-
defense is justifying since the person doing the act has no intention of killing at all. It is mitigating when a
person is forced to slap the face of another because he was boxed. A wife, due to rush emotions, killed her
husband and her paramour catching them having sexual intercourse falls under exempting.
Man is an organism that does not act in a vacuum. He responds and reacts to stimulus. Thus, the
accountability of the commission of an act can be modified. The liability can be greater, great, less, lesser, or
none at all. The following are the modifiers:
1. Ignorance – is the absence of knowledge. Everyone should ought to possess and be responsible to have
knowledge.
a. vincible Ignorance – where the lack of knowledge can easily be rectified
 b. invincible ignorance – is difficult to rectify. There is no way of knowing. A courier delivering an item
without having knowledge what is inside the box is a bomb which killed a lot of people inside the house.
When a person is vincible ignorant and no effort on his/her part to repair the loss for the reason of
escaping one’s responsibility has a greater liability. Vincible ignorance becomes affected ignorance.
The same with pretended ignorance, professing of not knowing when one really knows in order to flee
from being blamed.
2. Concupiscence or passion – refers to the emotions whether positive or negative desire. They are neither
moral nor immoral. But, man has to regulate or control his emotions and must be submitted to the control of
reason. Passions can either be antecedent or consequent, Antecedent tends to weaken the will power of
the person and so interfere with the freedom of the will. The consequence is intentionally aroused and
where the doer willfully plays his emotions.
3. Fear – is the disturbance of the mind when a person is confronted by danger or harm to oneself or loved
ones. It is a form of emotion. Fear is an instinct for self-preservation. When a child runs upon seeing a mad
dog and fell in a manhole because of fear, then the child is not accountable for his act.
4. Violence – happens when a physical force is exerted to a person by another for the purpose of compelling or
forcing the person to act against his will. When an accused was compelled to be a witness against himself
to stop the bodily torture done against him by the authority is not accountable of his act. Such confession is
not admissible in court.
5. Habits – are frequently repeated acts. It may be good or bad. In most cases, habits are becoming
involuntary since they assume the role of a second nature. It is not easy to overcome or alter habits. It takes
a strong-willed person to correct a bad habit, Nevertheless, the person is still accountable of one’s habits
since the first time the act was done there is already awareness of the consequences or effects of the act.
Moral Dilemmas
Dilemma – is a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially
equally undesirable ones. Thus, when you find yourself facing a problem but the solutions available to you will
create another problem or worse create more problems, then you are in a moral dilemma.
A moral dilemma is a situation where:
1. There agent is required to do each of the two (or more) actions which are morally unacceptable.
2. The agent can do each of the actions;
3. but the agent cannot do both ( or all) of the actions.
The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what she does, she will do something wrong (or
fail to do something that she ought to do). This means that moral dilemmas are situations where two or more
moral values or duties make demands on the decision-maker, who can only honor one of them, and thus will
violate at least one important moral concern; no matter what she decides to do.
Moral dilemma – presents situations where there is tension between moral values and duties that are more or
less on equal footing. The decision-maker has to choose between a wrong and another wrong. The decision-
maker is in a deadlock.
False Dilemma – is a situation where the decision maker has a moral duty to do one thing, but is tempted or
under pressure to do something else. A false dilemma is a choice between a right or wrong. For example, a
lawyer or an accountant can face an opportunity to prioritize self-interest over the client’s interest.
Three Levels of Moral Dilemma
1. Personal moral dilemma – is when your decision in a situation where there is moral conflict is the cause of
either your own; that of another person; or a group of people’s potential harm
2. Organizational Dilemma – is when a member or members of the organization is in a situation where there is
moral conflict, and the decision will potentially harm either some members of the group or entire organization.
3. Structural Moral Dilemma – is when a person or group of persons who holds high level positions in the
society faces a morally conflicting situation wherein the entire social system is affected.

What to do when faced with a moral dilemma?

You have to decide based on your best judgment or choose based on the principle of lesser or greater
good or urgency.
Resolving Moral Dilemmas
1. Thinking of available alternative options revealing that the dilemma does not exist.
For instance, one is experiencing a dilemma between stealing or not stealing otherwise his family will
either die of hunger or survive. The creative moral agent will try to think of other alternatives.
2. Choosing the greater good and lesser evil, or one may apply the situation ethic approach, one must do only
what he can where he is. Do not resort to extraordinary or supernatural means.
3. Joseph Fletcher offers some principles in resolving moral dilemmas. He uses Kant’s “ought implies I can”
rule. If I ought to do something, then I can do it. By contraposition, if I cannot do something, then I cannot be
obliged to do it. Or by implication, either I cannot be obliged to so something or I can do it. In other words, one
is only obliged to do something if and only he can do it.