What is Morality

What is Morality

• The behavior of making value Judgment
• We are faced with ethical decisions every day.

• What is right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or not?

• People make decisions based a set of values established early in life.
• Values are beliefs, principles, standards, and qualities considered desirable.

Where does morality come from?

• Parents
• Religion
• Peers
• Technology

Parents

• Parents instill ethics and morals in children.
• Example: A child yells at their friend – calling them a name. How does the parent respond?

Religion

• Most religions set guidelines on how to make moral judgments.

• Example: In the Christian religion the ten commandments serve as guidelines for making ethical and moral judgments.

Peers

• Friends affect your moral judgments.  

• Example: A friend or acquaintance might coax you to use drugs. Peer pressure can sometimes cause people to make moral and ethical decisions.

Technology

• Technology provides many opportunities to make moral and ethical decisions.

• Example: Copying computer games and violating copyright laws.

Ethics into
three sub-branches

• Descriptive ethics

• Meta-ethics

• Normative ethics

Descriptive ethics

• We consider the actual conduct of individuals or personal morality and of groups or social morality

• Descriptive ethics aims at empirically and precisely mapping existing morality or moralities within communities and is therefore linked to the social sciences.

Meta-ethics

• Here interest is centered on the analysis and meaning of the terms and language used in ethical discourse and the kind of reasoning used to justify ethical statements

Normative ethics

• Which is concerned with the principles by which we ought to live

• Normative ethics means the methodological reflection upon morality tackling its critique and its rationale.