Morals and Ethics
¿What is morality?
What is morality? What is its purpose of moral rules and moral values in a society?
Can we live without morality?
Where do moral rules come from?
Do we create (or invent) our moral rules? Or do we discover them? Or are they given to us by someone with authority?
Do different people, living in different societies, have different moral rules? Can you give some examples?
How did you learn the moral rules of your society? Which are the sources of moral knowledge?
What is Ethics?
In daily situations, we use the words "morals" and "ethics" interchangeably. Also de adjectives "immoral" and "unethical" have very similar meanings.
However, it is important to have two different words for naming two very different activities.
Requisites for doing ethics
Moral disagreements
Rule conflicts
People are sometimes unsure about what to do. In some situations we are not sure about what is the right thing to do.
Two moral rules may collide: you must decide which one of the two rules is more important.
Moral dilemmas are situations in which these conflicts between rules arise:
Which rules are in conflict in each of these cases?
What would you do?
Social changes
Sometimes, moral uncertainty arises from new situations. Our society changes and our moral rules may not be ready for those changes. We must improvise and develop new moral rules to cope with new situations.
Science and technology may allow us to do things our parents and grandparents could not do, and we must think for ourselves what is the right thing to do.
What social change is presented in these videos?
What would you do?
Moral changes
And on other occasions, our sense of what is right and what is wrong changes, our morality changes. But not everybody changes in unison.
What moral rule is under change is this case?
From the three options presented, Which one would you choose? Is it different from the one chosen in previous decades or centuries?
The Golden Rule
Some people think that our moral uncertainties will disappear if we employ a single and simple rule: the Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule is widespread: it appears with slight variations in many different cultures and religions:
However, the Golden Rule can be criticized:
