Let's consider where morality and ethics
come from
We each have a sense that some things
are right and that some things are wrong,
that some things are moral and some
things are not, that in a given scenario
some courses of action are moral while
others might be immoral. But where does
this come from? Well, it mostly comes from
our upbringing and culture around us.
When faced with a moral choice what
sources should we draw on? What logic do
we use to reason? This is an important
question!
Even when relying on a gut instinct we
are likely drawing (unknown to ourselves)
on one or more of these sources of
morality. So where does morality come
from then when faced with an ethical or
moral dilemma where do people look?
Well, it turns out there are a number of
different sources:
The first moral philosophy we have to
look at is supernaturalism.
Supernaturalism is the view that the
source of moral rules is God. God has
told us what is right and what is wrong
(typically through his prophets) and the
way to live a good life is to do what
God wants. The understanding that
morality comes from God is actually
quite common. However many people who
believe they are following God's rules
underestimate the role culture plays in
their moral decision-making.
Similarly many people who do not believe in God
at all, underestimate the role
supernaturalism has played in the
shaping of the culture in which they
live. Some societies rely heavily on
supernaturalism and their moral and
legal frameworks are based very much on
obeying God's rules. The legal system of
Saudi Arabia for example is based
principally on obeying God's law.
In some cultures there is a view that
personal morality should be distinct
from the law of the land and that the
State's law should be separate and
distinct from God's law. The United
States and France, for example, consider
the separation of Church and State to be
very important.
There is even an argument to be made
that Jesus himself suggested that God's
law and the State's law should be
separate things. We are told that Jesus said
 
In other cultures the distinction is less pronounced.
In Ireland the Catholic
Church held a special place in the
constitutional framework until 1972, when
the fifth amendment of the constitution
removed it. However, God still features
prominently in the constitution of
Ireland. The preamble to the Constitution
clearly indicates God as the source of
all moral authority:
 
 
 
Putting aside the issue of separation of
church and state and returning to
personal morality, supernaturalism still
poses some problems for individuals
trying to decide what is right and what
is wrong. Even people who believe in God
and want to follow his rules can encounter
difficulties. God's Word may be lacking
in specific detail enough to explain
exactly which course of action is moral.
Ethical dilemmas involving new
technologies, for example, might not be
specifically addressed in religious
texts. What guidance is provided might
need to be interpreted and
interpretations may vary.
However, the main problem with
supernaturalism as a source of moral
principles is that there is not
universal agreement on who or what God
is and what it is that he wants. Not all
people believe that there is a single
God. Even among cultures that worship
a single God such as Judaism
Christianity and Islam there is not
agreement on which concept of God is the
true one and therefore there is not
agreement on what God wants. There is
also the problem of people who don't
believe in God at all. How can they
behave in a moral way if they don't
believe in God? Of course many people
don't believe in God at all and the vast
majority of them behave morally.
It's also strange that people who
 don't believe in God
and people who do often agree on what is
right and what is wrong. So perhaps
there's more going on there. Perhaps
supernaturalism alone can't explain
moral choices.  Moral and ethical
decisions based on supernaturalism are
open to attack based on different views
of what God wants. They are especially
poor at convincing those who have a
different view of God and those who
don't believe in God at all. But at the
same time it's important to acknowledge
the role supernaturalism has played and
continues to play in shaping our
cultural moral and ethical landscape.
Another approach to solving moral and
ethical problems is Intuitionism.
Intuitionism proposes that good and bad
our objective properties that can't be
broken down into component parts.
Something is good because it is good. Its
goodness doesn't need justification nor
proving.
Someone who believes in intuitionism
might say "murder is wrong because it's
wrong. It's just wrong." intuitionism
suggests that basic moral truths are
self-evident to people who direct their
minds to them.
Intuition enables the discovery of basic
objective moral truths. George Edward
Moore put it like this in 1902:
 
 
 
 
 
 
The idea that moral truths are
objective facts that can be discovered
is attractive, but it has many critics.
There's no way to distinguish between
something that is right and something
that merely seems right to a particular
person. Also if intuitionism worked
properly we would expect more people to
come to the same conclusions
on moral issues, but they don't. If there
were objective moral truths surely they
would be the same for everyone,
but different people come to different
conclusions. Many philosophers don't
think that there is such a thing as an
objective moral truth. Moral statements
aren't factual statements about the
world they're just opinions.
Even if there is such a thing as an objective
moral truth can we ever know what it is?
There's no way to test it scientifically.
Consequentialism is yet another approach
to solving moral and ethical problems.
Consequentialism proposes that the
morality of an action depends not on the
action itself but on the consequences of
it. So an action isn't inherently wrong
or right. To assess the action we must
look at what occurs as a consequence of it.
So for a consequentialist no act is
inherently wrong, not even murder.
It all depends on the consequence of the action.
If murdering one person results in
saving the lives of a hundred then it
was morally right, not wrong.
Consequentialism is very attractive. We
usually make decisions by considering
the consequences. So it makes sense to
base ethics on consequences.
Consequentialism is simple and it seems
to make sense.
There are two kinds of consequentialism
act consequentialism and rule consequentialism.
Act consequentialism requires us to take a fresh look at every moral choice.
We can conclude that a 
particular moral choice is good only if
the consequences that
most of it are good. act consequentialism
Act Consequentialism is very flexible because it can take
account of any set of circumstances.
But it can be a bit impractical to treat
every moral decision as a separate
choice to be fully evaluated. Researching
all the possible outcomes and eventual
consequences can be time-consuming. This
could be paralyzing and sometimes
delaying a decision might even make
things worse. So in addition to Act
Consequentialism we have Rule Consequentialism.
Rule consequentialism bases moral rules on their consequences. We have a set of rules that tells us if
acts are good or bad. Following the rules
results in the correct choices. Now this
is still consequentialism because the
rules are chosen based on their
consequences. But following the rules
means we don't have to evaluate each
moral choice afresh. The hard work has
been done in deriving the rules. So rule
consequentialism is practical and
efficient. But it's not as flexible as
act consequentialism. Sometimes the
general rules don't produce the best
possible outcome for a particular
situation. Consequentialism is very
attractive but it's problematic. It's not
always possible to predict the
consequences of a choice. There may be
unintended consequences. This is
especially true when dealing with
ethical and moral choices related to new
technologies. Also measuring and
comparing the different outcomes is
difficult. Consequentialism is interested
only in consequences it doesn't consider
intent. If people mean well but the
consequences of a choice they make
are bad, does that make the choice in an immoral one?
Utilitarianism is a special kind of consequentialism. Utility is the sum of all the good that
comes from an action minus all the bad that comes from it.
The choice that maximizes utility is the
moral one. The choice that does the most
good for the most people is the most
moral choice.
It seems sensible to base morality or
ethics on increasing happiness and
reducing unhappiness. Utilitarianism is
especially seductive when outcomes can
be quantified. Things like income, life
expectancy, test scores, days of work missed,
can all be measured and policies that
improve them on average can seem like
very good choices. But attempts to do the
most good for the most people can lead
to clearly immoral choices. Imagine it
was possible to objectively measure
happiness in a society and everyone was
given a happiness figure ranging from
0 to 10 (where low values represent
unhappiness and people with high values
are very happy) Let's suppose that the
happiness level for most people was
around 6. Now it's tempting to think
that if the consequences of an action
result in higher average happiness, then
that action is morally good. Suppose it
is proposed that all of the blonde
people (who make up 10% of the population)
should be enslaved. A consequentialist
would evaluate the rightness or
wrongness of that choice based on how
happy people would be as a result of the
choice.
Let's further suppose that being freed
from mundane chores like cooking and
cleaning and laundry made most people
happier and that increased each one's
happiness by 2. Of course the people
who have been inflamed would be a lot
less happy. Let's say their happiness
level was reduced to 1. If you do the
maths, it turns out that the average
level of happiness would increase from
6.0 to 7.4.  A utilitarian
would be forced to conclude then that
slavery is a morally sound choice.
But clearly it's not. Maximizing average
utility doesn't necessarily result in
morally sound choices. Doing the most
good for the most people isn't always
fair, yet such arguments are often used
in making decisions about health care or
education or economics. Anywhere you can
put numbers on good, there's a temptation
to maximize the average value.
Researchers into the way people make
moral choices use the Trolley Problem.
The Trolley Problem is a thought
experiment that teases out how people
think about moral issues and variations
of it have been used for over a century.
Imagine a street trolley is careering out of
control down the street and five people
are in its path. They will most likely be
killed.
You are standing by a switch that can
divert the trolley down a different path.
If you pull the switch the five people
will be saved but one other person will
die. The difficult question is should you
pull the switch? When faced with this
scenario most people believe that
pulling the switch would be the morally
sound choice. Most people think that
causing the death of one person to save
five is the right choice The Fatman
variant of the trolley problem is
slightly different. In this variant a fat
man is standing next to you at the
platform. If you push the fat man off the
platform into the path of the trolley
you would stop it and save the five
people in the trolley's path.
Should you push the fat man?
Most people are reluctant to push the
fat man into the path of the trolley.
Even those who were prepared to pull the
switch are typically reluctant to push
him. However, on the face of it the
calculation is the same: 1 life in
exchange for 5. Yet somehow it's
different. Researchers are interested in
what makes it different. What do you
think? There are many variations of the
trolley problem that try to tease out
different issues. But it's used to
illustrate that sometimes the logic we
use for making moral choices is more
complex than it seems at first. Although
the trolley problem was just a thought
experiment initially there is renewed
interest in it now that we have
self-driving cars on horizon. The
software in a car may actually have to
make these kind of choices.
Humans would expect a car to make
morally sound choices, but codifying this
morality is actually quite difficult.
Teasing out exactly what a car
should do in a given scenario is very complex.
 
Yet another ethics is Deontology.
The deontological approach is in complete contrast to
consequentialism because it focuses on
the rightness or wrongness of actions
themselves rather than their
consequences. The deontological approach
to ethics would never propose pushing
the fat man in front of the trolley no
matter how many people had saved.
The good consequences of that action could
never justify it. Deontological ethics
focuses on rules duty and obligations.
This type of ethics is typically
associated with Moral Absolutism. Moral
Absolutism is the belief that some
actions are always wrong no matter what
the circumstances are consequences.
Immanuel Kant famously argued that it
was always wrong to tell a lie even if a
murderer is asking for the location of a
potential victim. A person who subscribes
to the deontological view of ethics
might find himself saying things like
"it's the principle of the thing that
matters". Moral Relativism on the other
hand proposes that there are no
objective nor universal moral rights or
wrongs. Social, cultural, historical, and
personal circumstances can influence
whether an action is moral or not. Moral
relativism is most often invoked when
discussing other cultures. Someone
might say that "in my culture that choice
would be immoral but it's not for me to
say how people from other cultures
should live their lives". The idea that
democratic values, human rights like
freedom of expression and freedom from
torture are universal values it is
resisted by some governments. Moral
relativism can be used as an excuse not
to condemn immoral acts.
Sometimes it can be used too easily to
let others off the hook. A moral
relativist might say "it's not for me to
say it's not for me to judge others".
Virtue ethics focuses on an individual's
character as a guiding force it is less
about rules acts and their consequences.
It's all about being virtuous and living
a good life. Patience, for example, is a
virtue.
One should be patient. Compassion is a
virtue. When faced with a moral dilemma a
proponent of virtue ethics typically
asks "what a virtuous person would do in
that situation?" She might ask:
 
One of the criticisms
are virtue ethics is that people in
different cultures have vastly different
views on what constitutes a virtue.
It's difficult to predict what conclusions
virtue ethics might come to in a given
situation. When faced with the trolley
problem what would Gandhi do? What would
Jesus do? Who knows? Virtue ethics can be
difficult to apply.
When we consider how we make moral and
ethical choices it is easy to ignore the
influence of culture. The culture in
which we live has a huge influence on
our moral compass. It can be difficult to
hold views that differ from those that
prevail in one's culture. We may think we
are carefully considering a moral
question for ourselves, but our values
and our reasoning will be influenced by
our upbringing. Even if we come to a
conclusion that is at odds with the
prevailing view, it may be difficult to
act on it. There may be a price to pay
for acting morally. That's a challenge we
may face in our professional and
personal lives. But when we do encounter
moral arguments it's important to
identify on which ethical traditions
they are drawing. That can help us to
fully understand the choices someone is
advocating and may also help to
identify possible counter-arguments. 
So to summarize: we've considered several
different sources of moral values
several different kinds of reasoning
that people apply to work out what they
should do in a particular situation.
When faced by an ethical or moral dilemma
people may be drawing on one or many of these.
 
