How can we know, if at all, that our behaviour is ethical?"

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Ioulia Samouilovskaia.

21.09.05. TOK: ethics and morality.

"How can we know, if at all, that our behaviour is ethical?"

In order to be able to answer this question we must first define what ethics is. Most of the dictionaries and philosophers define it as "a science of morality"; it's the study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person. And therefore in order to answer how we can know whether our behaviour is ethical, we must find out whether our behaviour is moral.

However, there are several different ways to approach this question. For some people religion is the perfect example of what is good and bad, and therefore moral and immoral comes from religion. For others ethical behaviour is doing what the society in your country tells you to do, and the rest just follow their own opinion. This makes it very hard to decide whether our actions are correct or incorrect. In this essay we are going to look at these different groups and to decide which one of them is more ethical than the other.

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As I have mentioned previously, a lot of people identify ethics with religion. And yes, most religions do support high ethical standard, however this doesn't mean that doing everything the religion tells you to do is morally correct. And one reason for this is that the religions differ. For example in Islamic religions it is said that to die for your country is honourable and by doing that all your sins will be forgiven and you will go straight to heaven (e.g. kamikaze), however in a Catholic religion to end your own life, even if its for your country is one of the greatest sins and you will go straight to hell. The other factor is also that a lot of people are atheists and therefore don't believe in religion, which means that they also don't believe the morals that it sets. These examples prove us that we cannot judge from the religion whether our behaviour is ethical or not.

Some people truly believe that as long as they follow the society rules, their behaviour is correct and is therefore ethical. Unfortunately this belief is wrong, because in some cases an entire society can move away from what is ethical. And a good example of such case is Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. In both cases a morally corrupt society was created, however at the same time each country believed that there actions were correct. A lot of people suffered and unforgivable mistakes have been made; it is obvious that in these cases the countries didn't follow the right morals. Even in our times, there are still some disagreements between countries and different societies about what is normal and what is not. For example in some countries abortion is legal, while in the others its not. These also prove us that being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts".

And the last factor that will be discussed in this essay is whether it is right to decide what is ethical and what is not just by your personal opinion. The problem is that the person who is following his or her feeling can often deviate from what is ethical. For example some people believe that there is nothing incorrect in drinking alcohol on special occasions, while the others believe that consuming any alcohol at all is already immoral. People believe that as long as they can justify their actions, their moral values are correct, however the problem is that the people's justifications are not always ethical, depending on their opinion. So as we can see, even our personal feelings cannot tell us whether our behaviour is ethical or not, as everyone has different opinions about how they should live, what they should achieve in life and what ways do they achieve their dreams.

To conclude, I believe that we cannot know whether our behaviour is ethical or not. It can be more or less correct; however whether it is completely ethical it is impossible to say.

How can we know, if at all, that our behaviour is ethical?"

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