![]() Most moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and euthanasia for starters. ![]() However, ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral issues. They argue that if a person realises that it would be morally good to do something then it would be irrational for that person not to do it.īut human beings often behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even when their head suggests a different course of action. Some philosophers think that ethics does do this. If ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way human beings behave. Applied ethics looks at controversial topics like war, animal rights and capital punishmentĮthics needs to provide answers.Normative ethics is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for what is right or wrong.It looks at the origins and meaning of ethical principles. Meta-ethics deals with the nature of moral judgement.Philosophers nowadays tend to divide ethical theories into three areas: metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. They infuse debates on topics like abortion, human rights and professional conduct. Our concepts of ethics have been derived from religions, philosophies and cultures. moral decisions - what is good and bad?.The term is derived from the Greek word ethos which can mean custom, habit, character or disposition. They affect how people make decisions and lead their lives.Įthics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society and is also described as moral philosophy. Also, it is not necessarily inconceivable that plants, relatively simple machines, or even fundamental physical processes, can experience pleasure or pain, although there are very few proponents of these views.At its simplest, ethics is a system of moral principles. Some philosophers argue that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence would be capable of experiencing these feelings, or that sufficiently detailed computer simulations of people would have the same experiences that flesh-and-blood people do. Third, it is possible that beings other than human and nonhuman animals are sentient (see artificial sentience ). A conservative cut-off of this sort might include only primates, and a liberal cut-off might go so far as to include insects. This is the most common view: that other creatures such as chimpanzees, dogs, and pigs also have internal experiences, but that there is some cut-off point beyond which species such as clams, jellyfish, and sea-sponges lie. Second, it is possible that only sufficiently advanced nonhuman animals are sentient (see animal sentience ). For instance, the 17th- century philosopher René Descartes put forward influential arguments to the effect that animals lack internal experience, and until several decades ago animal experimenters and veterinarians were taught to disregard apparent pain responses. This is currently an uncommon view, although it has a long history. Philosophers and scientists discuss three broad hypotheses on what entities are sentient.įirst, it is possible that only humans are sentient. Views about the distribution of sentience (Sometimes the term is used more narrowly to refer to the capacity to feel pleasure or pain.) It is generally accepted that possessing this capacity is a necessary condition for counting as a moral patient. Sentience is the capacity to feel, or have conscious experience.
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