USEFULNESS OF ETHICAL THEORIES - University of Kansas

USEFULNESS OF ETHICAL THEORIES

Use them to recognize kind of argument made Use them to make decisions in some hard cases Use them to justify decisions to others

MORAL ANALYSIS OF CASES AND ISSUES

Break down complicated case into parts Look for salient features Use second order principles (e.g., don't steal) In difficult cases or in case of dispute ascend to first order

principles (e.g., utilitarianism) Argue by analogy for new issues, if helpful Test results using several methods Use moral imagination

MORALITY:

Those practices and activities considered importantly right or wrong; the rules that govern those activities; and the values that are embedded, fostered, or pursued by those activities and practices.

ETHICS:

1. As a field of study: the systematic attempt to make sense of our individual and social moral experience, in such as way as to determine the rules that ought to govern human conduct, the values worth pursuing, and the character traits deserving development in life. As any other theory it provides explanation and understanding.

2. As a synonym for social morality, when the term "morality" is used to refer to personal moral beliefs.

ETHICAL THEORY (High level principle from which derive lower level principles)

DO NOT LIE. (Second order general moral rule or principle.)

DO NOT FALSIFY OR FABRICATE DATA. (Instantiation in science of second order principle.)

RECORD ONLY DATA YOU OBSERVE.

(Application to a particular case.)

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