Deontological ethics

In Foot’s paper, she takes a goddess of the choice viewpoint to her theory of moral action. Foot begins her paper by outlining how Kantians say that moral judgment cannot be a hypothetical imperative and only a categorical imperative. The reasoning behind this conclusion lies in the concept that “should and “ought” in moral contexts are different; a “should” can only be used in statements related to hypothetical imperative and “ought” only apply to statements related to categorical imperatives.…

Ethics Are Not Relative W.T. Stace argues in favour of ethical absolutism - the principle that ethics are not relative. I will be arguing that this is indeed the case: ethics are not relative; morality is an absolute that, no matter how much it is meddled with to suit the needs of someone, will not change. Ethics is the study of a way of life and its values, including a system of general moral principles and the conception of morality and its foundations. Ethical relativism states that ethics…

James Liang, a senior engineer at Volkswagen, helped develop an emissions cheating device and lied to emission regulators. According to the Department of Justice, James knew that the car was being marketed to the public as a “clean diesel” vehicle and did nothing. James worked with coworkers to hide and cover-up the cheating device from the us regulators. James should have told the regulators and the general public about the emissions cheating device. His actions in the Volkswagen emissions…

Immanuel Kant’s interpretation of Copernicus in cosmology states that the latter observed movements not in the objects of the heavens but in their observer. In relation to this, Kant rejects the traditional theory that the subject must conform to the objects. In his Copernican Revolution, Kant introduced a way of thinking regarding the relation of the human mind to the objective world. A powerful method of moral reasoning is established as Kant explains how both rationalism and empiricism…

A major point raised in the article against the ALS ice bucket challenge was moral licensing, which can be defined in context as people feeling less obligated to donate if they have done so in the past. Within this notion, several questions can be raised, such as can the action of donating to a charity ever be truely unethical? And more specifically, Is it morally problematic if charitable donors believe they are doing more good than they actually are? The example used in the text is that…

• Question 1: According to Lewis in Book I Chapter 1, ‘The Law of Human Nature,’ how does he define the Law of Human Nature/Moral Law? And using examples from Lewis, how does he distinguish this law from other laws? In the beginning of Book 1 chapter 1 Lewis sets up an argument stating that the existence of a moral law is considerably based upon simple logic and reason. The establishment of this law forms two Very important purposes. First, it establishes that people tend to acknowledge through…

What it means to have Integrity The basic definition of integrity, consists of having strong morals, honesty, and being complete or whole, but what does integrity truly mean? It typically depends on the type of person and their opinions; some might think that being completely honest makes a person have integrity, or that having great ambitions counts. Morals are classified as having strong beliefs, but this greatly depends on the person; someone might think that executing a criminal…

I’ll start by saying that Utilitarianism is the thought that some action is acceptable as long as they will bring more happiness over pain. Mills believed that the best decisions are the decisions that is going to give the most happiness and because of this he was very much criticized many found him selfish. When it came to his principle on greatest happiness he thought that the most moral action is the action that will bring on the most happiness, even if this meant a personal lost for one…

Ethical Dilemma: is it Ethical for Jack and his tribe to kill Simon The book, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, tells the story of a plane full of boys that have been evacuated from England. Their plane crashes on an island. Upon crashing, the pilot and all the other adults have died, and the young children have been left alone on the island. The oldest child is named Ralph, who is 12 years of age. Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, teams up with his friend Piggy, and gather the…

This could be seen in the following: If you want to torture children, you should seek psychiatric help. You want to torture children. Therefore, you should seek psychiatric help. While this seems perfectly valid, suppose we replace the first premise with a hypothetical imperative: If you want to torture children, you should volunteer as a babysitter. You want to torture children. Therefore, you should volunteer as a babysitter. Thus, when we affirm the first premise as a hypothetical imperative,…