Understanding Human Action: Ethics and Morality
What Is Meant by Human Action?
Action refers to something we do consciously, being aware of our actions. Actions arise from the free will of man. Actions are grouped into two categories:
- Involuntary/Forced: Implies responsibility.
- Due to Ignorance: May or may not imply guilt and responsibility.
- Voluntary/Mixed: Implies responsibility.
- Purely Voluntary: Implies responsibility.
Action Items
Intention
When we say a person has a tendency to do something, we are saying that person has an inclination to do something. When we speak of intention, we refer to the determination of the will in order to achieve an end. It is assumed that actions are conscious and accepted by us. For an action to be considered as such, it must have an intention.
Ends and Means
A wish we intend to make conscious and explicit. For a desire to become my action, I must consider this desire as feasible for me. Any action seeks an end (goal); if an action is not pursuing anything, it is a “meaningless” action.
Consequences
These are the results of an action. In principle, a subject can be held accountable for both the intended result of their actions and the predictable consequences. For unpredictable consequences, the agent cannot be blamed.
Meaning
We can understand the ‘why’ of things. It is what makes action comprehensible and intelligible. To understand, it is required to know the symbols and beliefs that the agent executes. That is the difference between moral knowledge and technical knowledge. Purpose is not intended for anything other than the act itself, and the technician is a means to an end. Under the type of known beautiful and useful objects, those with technical skill produce specific assets, and those who know how to act morally have wisdom or pursue happiness.
Morality and Ethics
- Moral: A set of beliefs and standards of an individual or social group that determine the act (i.e., guiding about good or evil of an action or actions).
- Ethics: The study of what is moral, how to rationally justify a moral system, and how to apply it subsequently to the different areas of social life. Its tasks are:
- To clarify what morality is.
- To establish a basis for morality.
- To apply the findings to guide human action in various areas of personal and social life.
- Immorality: Contrary to morality and decency.
- Amoral: Not following any kind of value or standard (lacking such capability).
What Is Moral Relativism?
Moral relativism is more easily understood in comparison with moral absolutism. Absolutism claims that morality depends on universal principles (natural law, conscience, the Golden Rule). Absolutist Christians believe that God is the ultimate source of our common morality, and therefore it is as immovable as He is. Moral relativism asserts that morality is not based on any absolute standard, but rather on ‘truths’ that depend on the situation, culture, sentiments, etc. Moral relativism is gaining popularity nowadays.
- Cultural Relativism: A socio-political ideology that advocates for the validity and richness of all cultural systems and denies any absolute moral or ethical valuation of them. It opposes ethnocentrism.
- Contextualism: We can only know if an action is right or not by knowing the context in which it occurred.
- Ethnocentrism: We can only justify our actions to those who share our way of life because they are the only ones who can understand us.
- Skepticism: We have no possibility to distinguish whether something is truly fair or not.
- Subjectivism: A philosophical position that considers the primary factor for all truth and morality to be individual psychic and material subjectivity, ever-changing and impossible to transcend into an absolute and universal truth.
- Ethical Emotivism: A current of metaethics that states that value judgments are emotions emanating from the individual and that they aim to persuade others to feel the same way, trying to get different people to value what is observed in the same way.
- Dialogic Morality: Ethical wisdom; to be happy with justice.