Ethics Flashcards
What is the fraud triangle?
Opportunity (controls), rationalization (values) , pressure (culture)
is the act of raising concerns about one or more acts that
co-workers, superiors, or others connected to the company are performing
that are essentially illegal.
Whistleblowing
Is business business?
Business is business if it is ethical. If it is not ethical, it is bad business.
Ethics cannot be isolated from other fields.
A person is late for work. Determined to make it on time, he speeds and passes by a red light. Do you think this action is justified?
No because a law has been broken. Where do laws come from? Legislators at various levels of government. What makes the legislators decide on what to base laws on? Most commonly, we receive the response: because those laws are wrong. But why are they wrong? This is where ethics arises.
What is the focus of ethics?
Moral situations - situations in which there is a choice of behavior involving human values
What is ethics?
Ethics is the study of right or wrong conduct
Can the majority err?
Majority ignorance is as common as majority wisdom. In ancient times, majority believed in human sacrifice as a practice. They believed in slavery. They believed that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
What is natural law?
These are laws that are intrinsic to the human being.
- Conservation of the human being
- Inclination of the conjugal union of man and woman
- Inclination towards a relationship with God
- the tendency towards communication which is also an expression of human sociability
- the inclination towards knowledge and towards the different forms of art & culture [must
seek & communicate truth, not falsehood, not pornography, must seek education, etc.
Does human happiness consist in wealth?
There are two sorts of wealth: Natural and artificial.
Natural - the things that help human beings meet their needs such as food, shelter, clothing.
Now it is evident that human happiness cannot consist in natural wealth, since natural wealth is sought for the sake of something else—namely, to preserve human nature—and so it cannot be the ultimate end for human
beings
Does human happiness consist in pleasure?
Bodily pleasure, however, cannot follow from the complete good even in
the way just discussed. The reason is that it follows from a good
apprehended by sense, which is a power of a soul that makes use of a body;
and a good that belongs to the body—a good that is apprehended by
sense—cannot be the complete human good
any such good is negligible by comparison with a
good of the soul. This is why Wisdom 7:9 says that “all gold, by comparison
with wisdom, is a speck of sand.”
Is it possible to have happiness in this life?
One can have some share in happiness in this life, but perfect and
genuine happiness cannot be possessed in this life. We can establish this
conclusion in two ways. The first way looks at the general notion of
happiness. Because happiness is a perfect and sufficient good, it excludes
all evil and fulfills every desire; but in this life it is not possible to exclude all
evil. Indeed, this present life is beset by many evils that cannot be avoided:
ignorance on the part of the intellect, inordinate affection on the part of
appetite, and many punishments on the part of the body, as Augustine
carefully explains in City of God XIX. And similarly, the desire for good cannot
be fully satisfied in this life. You see, human beings naturally desire to retain
the good that they have, but the goods of the present life are transitory,
since life itself—which we naturally desire and would want to retain forever,
since human beings naturally shrink from death—is transitory. For those
reasons, it is impossible for anyone to possess genuine happiness in this life.
The second way takes into account the particular thing in which happiness
consists, namely, the vision of the divine essence, which human beings
cannot achieve in this life …
Does every human being desire happiness?
One cannot desire what one does not know … And many people do not
know what happiness is: as Augustine says in On the Trinity XIII, this is
evident from the fact that “some placed their happiness in the pleasure
of the body, some in the virtue of the soul, and some in other things.”
Therefore, not everyone desires happiness
The Harvard Study of Adult Development may be the longest study of adult life that’s ever been done. For 75 years, they’ve tracked the lives of 724 men. The greatest lesson:
Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.
3 great lessons about relationships
1. Social connections are really good for us and that loneliness kills.
- It’s not about the number of friends you have, but it’s the quality of your close relationships that matter.
- Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains. Their memories stay sharper longer.
The good life is built with good relationships.
Sources of morality
- Object
- Motive
- Circumstance
What is declaration of nullity?
Declaration of nullity applies to marriages that are null and void from the beginning (void ab initio), due to the absence of at least one of the essential or formal requisites of marriages.
