Therefore we use our emotions as a way of judging if we are being ethical. Religion also plays a role in one’s perception of ethical behaviour. Every religion has a collection of doctrines that separate right from wrong. In Buddhism for example there are five precepts one must live by in order to go further down the path to enlightenment; which say things like one should not kill, one should not steal and so on. Therefore doctrines like this would greatly influence the actions of any religious individual; where he/she would think “is this the correct thing to do according to my religion?” This is similar to norms of society where there is a known code of conduct to abide by in order to gain acceptance or respect. Some behaviour in each society which is considered ethical and some not, but it is not necessarily the same behaviour in every culture because beliefs are greatly varied Thus we can see that in religion and society people belong to a group that have a shared code of behaviour which is considered ethical and this is what is used to know and distinguish ethical behaviour. However just because society or religion deems it so, are these codes of conduct actually ethical? Can anyone prove that they are ethical? Religious customs and beliefs are rooted in rational reasoning. However over time the practicality and the applicability to life have become more obscure as people’s lifestyles have changed dramatically. Therefore it has moved from something rational, to a faith.
Another way of knowing what is ethical is consequentialism. According to the internet encyclopaedia of philosophy, “"Consequentialism" refers to a class of normative moral theories which maintain that an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favourable than unfavourable.” Furthermore, this theory can be divided into three components.
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Ethical Egoism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable only to the agent performing the action.
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Ethical Altruism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent.
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Utilitarianism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone.
However, there are times when these principles clash. For example, if one’s actions were to help a victim of an accident (a criminal) who inflicted harm on someone else who must therefore be put into custody, should one help that person? From the principle of ethical altruism one should help because the consequences of any assistance to the victim would be more favourable. However from the principle of utilitarianism helping the criminal would not benefit society as a whole. Therefore what would one do? This is where it comes down to the decision of the individual; one would make a decision based on one’s own feeling or opinion on the matter.
Can we know what is ethical through rationalism or reasoning? An 18th Century Philosopher was of the opinion that only emotions enable us to make true ethical judgements. "Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions."(David Hume) I disagree with this view because some ethical judgements are based on a reason or a justification, of our own or of a community. For example one could say one shouldn’t steal because it causes unhappiness in the other person or infringes the other person’s rights of ownership. At the same time there are things that cannot be investigated rationally or through reason. For example it is proven that children diagnosed with A.I.D.S can attend school and not infect other children, but still people sometimes refuse to send their children to such schools out of fear for their own children. Here people are making an ethical judgement with no logical reasoning but based on emotion. Thus in a sense ethical judgements are similar and dissimilar to mathematical theorems. They are similar because there are some instances where it can neither be proved nor disproved through reasoning. It is dissimilar because ethics isn’t knowledge that is based upon a set of rules, where mathematics is.
Ethics are relative. What we have seen so far is how one individually makes judgements about one’s own behaviour. But is it fair to judge the behaviour of others? The world is diverse in cultures and societies, many that are different to one’s own. “There is no universal principle or set of principles by which to judge the morality of an action. Instead each society or culture has its own set of moral rules…” (Henri-Claude de Bettingnies). I agree with this statement because, for example if one says that “that society treats children unethically” about a society that forces children into hard labour, one is in fact applying one’s own standards another society which has different code of ethics. Some argue that there is a basic code of ethics that everyone must follow which distinguishes humans from animals. But who is one to say what the other society is doing is wrong, just because one’s code of ethics is different? Thus ethics are relative.
Thus we can see that one has an individual code of ethics that have been influenced by the society one lives in and often one’s religion. These ethical judgements are also made based on emotions, consequentialism and reasoning. Thus each person uses this knowledge to determine if they are being ethical in their actions. Above all ethics are relative and one cannot judge the ethicality of the actions of individuals and societies that do not share the same ethical code. Hence I think it apt to end with the words of Henri Claude de Bettingnies; “Ethics cannot be reduced to some master list of rules applicable to everyone. There are no ethical principles that everyone should follow. There are only ethical principles that apply locally…”
