Philosophical underpinning Flashcards
Must be agreed that
no ethical approach has all the answers
Buddhism: 5 Precepts
- harming living things
- taking what is not given
- sexual misconduct
- lying or gossiping
- taking intoxicating substances e.g. drugs or drink
Confucianism: core values
1) filial devotion
2) humanness
3) ritual consciousness
Islam
17th chapter of the Qu’ran is on ethics
Deontological- basic
Rule based ethics. Actions are judged instead of the outcome
The normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on rules
Deontological approach
Who is most associated with Deontological ethics
Immanuel Kant
Deontological- more detail
- actions have intrinsic moral wealth, regardless of the consequence.
- focusses on the rightness or wrongness of an act
Deontological approach example
e.g. lying is wrong regardless of the outcome (but what if you are lying to save someones life?
deontology assumes that
there are universal wrongs and rights- however who decides these wrongs and rights?
Are ‘wrongs’, acts that if everyone did would not be good for society
deontology research example
it is never okay to like to a research participant- but what about blinding/ use of placebos?
–> lying could save many lives
Utilitarian ethics is part of a broader ethics called
consequentialisms
fathers of utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
Utilitarian ethics- basics
Good outcomes are those that benefit the majority of people- the outcome not the act which is judged to be moral or immoral
source of pleasure does not matter, as long as it brings pleasure to most people
utilitarianism
utilitarianism example
there is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, thee are five people tied uo and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance of in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However you notice that there is one person tied up on the side track. You have two options:
1) do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track
2) pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person
Which is the most ethical
who illustrated utilitarianism with the runaway trolley example
Phillips Foot
negatives of utilitarianism
- who decides what the greater good is
- what of some peoples suffering is so severe it outweighs all the pleasure gained by the majority e.g. forced human/ animal testing
Utilitarianism research example
this ethics suggest that it would be ethical to deceive participants if the research would benefit more people than it would hurt
Deontology vs utilitarianism
a deontologist might argue that a promise ought to be kept simply because it is right to keep a promise, regress whether doing so would have a good or bad consequence. In contract, a utilitarian will argue that we should keep our promises only when keeping them results in better consequences than the alternative
Virtue ethics was developed
by Plato and Aristotle
Virtue ethics- basics
would a virtuous person do the same thing?
Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings developed
Ethics of care within Virtue ethics
Ethics of care
a feminist theory- caring about others is the central virtue
Virtue Ethics- research example
its okay to deceive participants if you are going it because you care about them
negative of virtue ethics
- virtues are different all around the world
- what constitutes as a virtue?
- are you more likely to behave more ethically towards someone you know, than a stranger?
- caring is not innate to all
example of negative of virtue ethics
Harold Shipmen- killed 15 of his patients, but claimed he was doing it as a kindness§
