Moral Action and Ethics: Understanding Values and Responsibility
Item 7: Moral and Ethical Considerations
1. Are Morality and Ethics the Same?
Moral norms, values, and customs govern the conduct of human beings, individually and collectively. There isn’t only one set of norms and values, a single moral code. Morality varies with the times and places. Ethics is the reflection on morality. When we talk about the diversity of moral codes, we do so from an ethical standpoint, turning morality into a subject of reflection. Ethics also operates in a practical sense, producing changes in the moral perception that humans have of themselves, their circumstances, and their actions.
2. What is Descriptive Ethics?
Descriptive ethics aims at the description of values, standards, uses, and customs that govern the behavior of individuals and groups. It is a purely descriptive approach, more anthropological or sociological than philosophical. It tries to describe and analyze the role of these moral ingredients (values, norms, etc.) within a social group in relation to the behavior and awareness of its members.
3. What are Ethical Rules? What is Metaethics?
Linked to philosophy, ethics should be directed to the questioning and justification of the values and norms that guide the thinking and actions of individuals and groups. We find ourselves again at the level of ethics itself. A challenge is posed to morality (customs, norms, and values) in order to conserve or transform it. Ethics is the reflective questioning, and metaethics is critical. In this third level, the processes employed in the justification of moral norms and values are the subject of a logical analysis and comparison, in which the social sciences provide highly relevant tools and evidence.
4. What is a Moral Norm?
A moral standard is a mandatory formula (a mandate) that sets out what should be done or what should not be done. While possible action is subject to the free choice of the individual or group, they bear the responsibility for the decision and the obligation to comply with what the norm dictates. Moral standards have the following characteristics:
- Universality: The validity of the norm for all human beings, as free and rational subjects.
- Unconditional: Validity of the standard regardless of the purpose and the individual’s subjective motivations.
- Self-obligation: The autonomous nature of action that follows from the standard, since what it dictates is not felt by the subject as an external imposition.
5. What is a Moral Value?
A moral value is an abstract concept that refers to a certain quality and acts as a norm. Two theoretical positions exist on the nature of values:
- An objectivist position, which states that moral values correspond to actual objective qualities of things. Things are in themselves good or bad, just or unjust. Humans discover that value in actions and situations. Moral universalism supports this position.
- A subjectivist position, according to which moral values do not correspond to real qualities of things but have their origin in individuals, groups, or cultures, who project their views onto things. Moral relativism defends this position.
6. What are the Components of Moral Action?
Usually regarded as constituent elements of moral action are acts, attitudes, and habits that make up a character. A circular relationship occurs between these elements: acts shape attitudes and habits, which lead to a character or way of being.
7. Underlying Ethics of Conviction and Responsibility
We must distinguish between intentions and consequences of ethical action. The ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility determine the moral value of actions based on intentions and consequences, respectively.
- The ethics of conviction considers the reason why an act is performed, regardless of the consequences that follow from it. It matters why you’ve done something.
- The ethics of responsibility prioritizes the consequences of the action over the intentions that have motivated it, which cannot be objectively verified.
8. Nietzsche’s Criticisms of Traditional Morality
Morality and freedom are mere illusions but are socially useful and even necessary. These illusions involve the belief that we are free and accountable for our actions because only from that conviction can a social apparatus of rewards and punishments be preserved. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to traditional morality as the metaphysics of the hangman. Only as free beings can we condemn. This is, according to Nietzsche, the truth disguised by morality.
9. Kant’s Idea of Morality
The Kantian notion of morality can be condensed into the following points:
- It is not possible to demonstrate that we are free. However, all our actions may be referred to various psychological or environmental causes. In this sense, the human being is one thing among the things that populate the universe, and their behavior is explicable in relation to an order that only the limitation of human knowledge keeps in ignorance.
- According to Kant, human beings have an intelligible and metaphysical dimension that allows them to act according to laws that reason gives itself.
- For Kant, one is free as long as one can do what one must, without the need for it to correspond to what one wants to do. This establishes a difference between the intelligible or moral dimension of human beings, able to give themselves the rule of their own conduct, and the sensible or phenomenal dimension, which tends to the immediate satisfaction of their appetites and selfish tendencies.
- If you must, then you can. We are free. If I feel an obligation (moral) to do something, I can do it. Morality implies a meta-physical dimension that precludes objective knowledge of its foundations. In short, we think that we are free; nay, we must assume it as a necessary condition of morality, but we cannot objectively know what freedom is. Freedom is not an object of the physical world but a postulate, a necessary assumption of reason in its practical use.
10. Freedom and Responsibility in Moral Action
Responsibility and freedom are two fundamental conditions for moral action. If we are not free, it is not possible to attribute responsibility for our actions. A moral action must be, therefore, freely and consciously decided. For Kant, freedom is a ground other than that which identifies and explains the order of natural phenomena: the subject acts in accordance with the law that reason gives itself.
11. Understanding Freedom and Liberty
From the point of view of the human sciences, freedom is understood in relation to social contexts that, in a broad sense, facilitate or hinder the actions of humans. Two senses of freedom are discussed:
- Freedom from or liberty in the negative, which refers to the absence of constraints, making possible the self-determination of the subject.
- Freedom to, the positive moment of freedom, where the subject acts with a view to the achievement of a freely chosen goal.
Being free means being free from certain burdens or obligations. For example, I am free to attend or not attend a military parade because nobody forces me to do so. I am, therefore, free to do what I want, attend the parade, or stay at home reading a book, for example.
12. Nominal vs. Real Use of Freedom
Avoid using purely formal or nominal freedom of speech, as that in itself is purely metaphysical. The actual use of freedom implies a clear social responsibility. Otherwise, freedom would become a privilege, and the metaphysical dimension could be understood as an excuse, more or less refined, only available to the powerful. Rousseau said, “It is not for slaves to reason about freedom.” Where there are no means to sustain it, there is unlikely to be a reasonable use of freedom. It is the only way to make real use of freedom.
13. Impact of Moral Action: Being and Should Be
Reason, in its theoretical use, is concerned with what is (being). In its practical use, reason is concerned with what is possible through the use of freedom: what should be. The difference between “is” and “should be” explains why a moral law is not invalidated by the fact that it is not fulfilled. Only those who can be cowards can be brave; only those who can be traitors can be fair; only those who can be unfair can be just, and so on. The power to be this or that is the course that demonstrates the fact of liberty: the one who can, can also not (Aristotle). Moral action is distinguished from other areas of human action by the fact that what is sought (the end of the action) and what drives the action itself (intention) go beyond the framework of pure phenomenal determinations. On the contrary, the specificity of moral action is that it produces consequences that affect the sensitive tissue of social life, the basic assumptions of mutual understanding that form the moral framework on which other technical, political, or legal devices are based.
14. Hume’s Naturalistic Fallacy and Kant’s View
Correspondence with moral law should provide a solution to the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Denounced by empiricist philosopher David Hume, this fallacy is to infer what must be based on what it is. In the case of Kantian ethics, what should be not only does not follow from what is, but in many cases, the test of freedom is to act against the egoistic tendencies that humans naturally share. It is not that the human being, to be shown to be free, necessarily has to act against what is, contrary to reality, or against their own desires and natural tendencies. Reactive against this idea of freedom, Kant will argue that there is no other territory for freedom than the territory of experience. This area is, according to Kant, the horizon of the moral autonomy of human beings, capable of giving themselves the law of their own behavior. In this view, reason can give itself the rule of its actions. And so, when the will is resolved to act out of pure respect for duty, the action acquires a moral value that allows us to recognize the fact that we are free.