Ethics

Overview

Ethics is a branch of philosophy broadly defined as focusing on questions of right and wrong. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University more precisely defines ethics as being “based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues” (Velasquez et. al., 2010). Also known as moral philosophy, ethics is one of the longest-established areas of philosophical inquiry, with origins dating to the age of antiquity.

Scholars working in the Western tradition often trace the original development of moral philosophy to ancient Greece and particularly to Socrates (ca. 470–399 BCE). The Socratic method, preserved in the works of his student Plato (ca. 428–ca. 347 BCE), primarily functioned to establish some of the foundational principles, terms, and concepts of moral philosophy, with Socrates famously concluding that “[moral] virtue is all one needs to be happy” (Dentsoras, 2008) in finding that high moral standards indicate strength of character and function as a source of personal fulfillment. Later in his career, Plato moved beyond the Socratic conception of ethics to include empathy for others as a core moral good, noting that empathy facilitates the transfer of virtuous values from one person to another.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) largely continued the Platonic ethical tradition, developing complex treatments of concepts including moral naturalism and eudaimonism. Moral naturalism holds that core ethical values have an objective and independent nature and can be demonstrated and proven using techniques like those used to define and explain phenomena in the physical sciences. Eudaimonism, which originated with Socrates, aligns acts of moral correctness with the protection and advancement of an individual’s personal well-being and thus draws a direct link between ethical conduct and self-gratification. Aristotle produced two works centrally focused on ethics, known today as the Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics, which broadly characterize the application of ethical values as a source of happiness.

Over subsequent centuries, Western moral philosophy evolved to include three primary branches known as metaethics, applied ethics, and normative ethics. Metaethics “investigates where our moral values, principles, and language come from and what they mean; it is concerned with ‘what is morality?’ rather than ‘what is moral?’” (“Ethics,” 2023). Applied ethics “seeks to apply philosophical tools to examine specific controversial issues and provide practical solutions to moral problems” (“Ethics,” 2023) while normative ethics “investigates the moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. Theories within normative ethics include utilitarianism, consequentialism, contractualism, virtue ethics, and more” (“Ethics,” 2023).

Utilitarianism, described as “one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy” (Driver, 2022), broadly argues that the most ethically sound actions are those that produce the greatest benefits. Consequentialism holds that the ultimate measure of an action as being morally good or bad depends on its outcome. Actions that lead to positive outcomes are morally good, while those leading to negative outcomes are morally bad. Though many thinkers have problematized the core tenets of consequentialism through compelling demonstrations of its limitations, its central theory remains of interest in limited contexts, particularly regarding initial actions that appear morally neutral or ambiguous. Contractualist positions view ethics as a kind of interpersonal exchange simultaneously driven by a person’s self-interest and their regard for others, with contractual models disallowing people from imposing injustices on others to advance their own interests. Virtue ethics is primarily concerned with specific moral values, positioning good moral values as ideals that should govern an individual’s conduct. For example, virtue ethicists argue that moral standards such as benevolence have inherent value and that people should take actions and make choices that adhere to and advance these moral standards.

Non-Western philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions also include complex and highly developed systems of ethical philosophy. In Confucianism, the philosophical school originated by the ancient Chinese sage Confucius (ca. 551–ca. 479 BCE), morality is heavily rooted in two key concepts known as filial piety and fraternal love. Filial piety “demands respect and obligation to aging parents, honoring the family name, and [emphasizes] group harmony rather than individual identity” (Tsai, 2005), while Confucian conceptions of fraternal love center on deference and respect for one’s brethren and elders.

The Buddhist tradition primarily roots its conceptions of ethics in a set of principles known as the Five Precepts: “in the Five Precepts, Buddha advises abstinence from (1) harming living things, (2) taking things not freely given, (3) sexual misconduct, (4) false speech, and (5) intoxicating drinks and drugs causing heedlessness” (“Buddhist Ethics,” 2017). Observant Buddhists and monks adhere to additional ethical virtues, but the core values covered by the Five Precepts form the essential foundations of the Buddhist moral code and comprise a key part of the tradition’s “Noble Eightfold Path” to spiritual enlightenment.

Hinduism has both universal and situational ethical standards. Universal ethical standards, which apply at all times and in all cases, are mainly built around the concept of sadharana dharma, which advocates for a fundamental set of values including honesty (satya) and nonviolence (ahimsa). Situational Hindu ethics are context-specific and cover principles and concepts including personal duty (svadharma), the tenets of which can change over time and depend on a person’s age, job or position, social class, and gender. Both universal and situational Hindu ethics are shaped by a shared set of moral principles, which broadly uphold values including ahimsa as well as purity of mind and spirit (suddha) and the concept of karma, which positions actions and their impacts in a broader cause-and-effect model that shapes the future course of a person’s journey through the eternal cycle of reincarnation (samsara).

The Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism share a common set of moral and ethical foundations. In Christianity and Judaism, these moral guidelines are most famously iterated in a set of principles known as the Ten Commandments, which cover a prescriptive set of values that prohibit such acts as adultery, blasphemy, covetousness, murder, theft, bearing false witness, and values similar to the Confucian notion of filial piety with regard to a person’s parents. The Abrahamic faith tradition broadly positions ethical conduct as a choice that derives from a person’s free will, enabling a person to chart their own course closer to or farther from God through acts of either deference to or defiance of God’s will as defined by these faiths’ prophetic traditions.

Commentators who have studied a broad cross-section of global moral and ethical traditions across extended periods of human history note strong relationships between ethics and culture. While religions and thinkers in both the Eastern and Western traditions have endeavored over the centuries to define certain ethical principles as absolute, relativist views note that ethical principles can rely heavily on context-specific analysis. For example, many people would characterize the killing of children as inherently immoral and would therefore describe ancient child sacrifice practices as, at the very least, intrinsically unethical. However, when considering such practices in their proper cultural contexts, they take on more complex dimensions. For example, pre-Columbian Aztec societies engaged in the ritual sacrifice of children in the belief that such sacrifices were necessary to appease gods, ensure a bountiful harvest, and protect the civilization’s long-term prosperity. These culturally specific beliefs give the act of child sacrifice a utilitarian dimension that is easily overlooked when considering it independently of circumstantial considerations.

Applications

Applied ethics have strong relevance to multiple fields of contemporary scientific and professional practice, with major examples covering medicine, biotechnology, law, and business. The moral philosophy of medicine, known as medical ethics, covers multiple central questions and debates including some highly complex issues that remain unresolved. Medical ethics is built on four central principles often described as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice (Dyer, 2021). The principle of autonomy covers “respecting a patient’s ability to make their own decisions,” while beneficence prescribes that “a doctor should always act to benefit the patient” (Dyer, 2021). Non-maleficence is often described as the functional reverse of beneficence, requiring that caregivers take no action that will result in harm to a patient, while the justice principle is a “reference to a consideration of the law and of the overall benefit to society” (Dyer, 2021). Beyond these foundational guidelines, medical ethics also considers difficult questions related to such issues as euthanasia, how to distribute life-saving healthcare services and resources in situations where they are limited, and whether organ donations should be voluntary or compulsory.

In biotechnology, the field of genetic engineering poses some of the most salient ethical questions in modern science. Recent technological advancements have made it possible to clone organisms including human beings and genetically alter or engineer organisms to display specific traits and characteristics. The accompanying ethical debates have proven fierce and divisive. One view holds that development of these technologies is “fundamental to providing remedies via regenerative medicine through genetically identical human cells, organs, or tissues,” while additional applications cover “cosmetic and reconstructive surgeries, infertility, burn treatments, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes” (Eaves, 2021). Meanwhile, opposing views are rooted in “governmental, scientific, and religious organizations [that] fervently [oppose] genetic engineering due to controversy in the context of safety and moral outcomes” (Eaves, 2021). The attendant questions of right and wrong specific to bioengineering have given rise to a novel branch of moral philosophy commonly known as bioethics.

The professional practice of law has long been defined by moral and ethical questions. For example, the architects of modern legal systems had to grapple with the dilemma of how a lawyer should defend a client they know to be guilty of a crime. The attendant ethical question of whether an attorney should be obligated to defend and attempt to acquit a person they know to have committed a criminal act was resolved by establishing the universal right to a fair trial. The right to a fair trial, which remains a pillar of the legal and criminal justice systems of practically every democratic country in the world, addresses these underlying moral complexities through a concept widely known as attorney-client privilege, which protects the confidential nature of an attorney’s relationship to the clients they represent in civil or criminal cases.

In the business world, the applications of moral philosophy are often described as exploring points of divergence between legal and ethical standards. Business ethics experts often characterize this difference by noting that policies or actions may not be ethical even if they are technically legal. Key examples relate to the disclosure of information surrounding investments, their attendant risks, and their potential for generating positive returns in the form of profit. Investors assume these risks anytime they commit their money to an investment, but ethical questions apply when such financial commitments are undertaken on the advice or direction of an advisor or other third-party agent who stands to profit from guiding a client to make certain investments. The extent to which such third parties are morally and ethically responsible for the investment and financial decisions of another individual are often but not always defined by law, creating complex ethical limits.

Ethics also has extensive applications in political science and government. This branch of ethics, which is known as political ethics, political morality, or public ethics, contains two main branches. One is the ethics of process or office, which considers “public officials and the methods they use” (“Political Ethics,” n.d.). The other is the ethics of political policy itself. Key concepts and questions in the ethics of process or office revolve mainly around “whether the ethical principles that govern political office differ from those that govern moral life more generally.” For example, a political ethicist might ask, “To what extent are politicians permitted to take actions that would otherwise be wrong?” (“Political Ethics,” n.d.). In examining such questions, ethicists acknowledge that “political leaders [must] avoid harming the innocent, but [their official duties] may also obligate them to sacrifice innocent lives for the good of the nation” (“Political Ethics,” n.d.). Beyond examining the moral and ethical value of specific laws or policy decisions, the ethics of policy “further asks what conclusion should be adopted as policy and coercively enforced as law when citizens reasonably disagree about the values at stake, or when they belong to different communities and nations” (“Political Ethics,” n.d.).

Issues

In the twenty-first century, numerous emerging ethical issues surround technology, its applications, and the near-term course of its continued development. Holistic viewpoints note that the origins of technology ethics as a distinct subtopic within ethics occurred with the mass mechanization introduced by the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1760–ca. 1840). However, contemporary issues in technology ethics remain more firmly rooted in questions first posed by the rapid technological advancement that occurred over the course of the twentieth century: “in the past few decades many new ethical questions have appeared because of innovations in medical, communications, and weapons technologies” (Green, 2023). For example, “there used to be no need for brain death criteria, because we did not have the technological power to even ask the question of whether someone were dead when they lost their brain functioning [because] they would have soon died in any case” (Green, 2023). A similar concept applies to novel military technologies such as nuclear weapons: “We never used to need to ask the question of how we should avoid a civilization-destroying nuclear war because it simply wasn’t possible” (Green, 2023).

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly emerging as another area of focus among technology ethicists examining the moral implications of evolving advancements. Beyond asking whether human beings should be developing AI at all, technology ethicists also ask what the best use of AI technology is, and what it should be: “Could we perhaps apply it to...social issues such as the best way to structure an economy or the best way to promote human flourishing? There are lots of good uses of AI, but are we really aiming towards those good uses, or are we aiming towards lower goods?” (Green, 2023).

Generative AI, a branch of artificial intelligence defined by technologies that create original outputs based on user-directed inputs, also poses novel ethical questions. One major example relates to AI bias, a noted result of the human-programmed algorithms that AI technologies use when carrying out their functions and responding to user queries. The very act of writing this computer code inscribes “the beliefs, values, and assumptions” of human programmers and developers “in the very way the code is written and structured” (Heider, 2023). This fact not only requires human users to account and correct for potential biases inherent to the design of AI technologies they use, but also has significant implications for the future uses of AI technologies. Many observers expect AI to become increasingly integrated into systems and institutions that govern critical aspects of human society, including employment, education, and the economy. Ethical questions revolving around AI biases and whether the deliberate importation of certain biases may have beneficial impacts on society, continue to emerge as points of debate amid growing calls to regulate and reduce the speed at which AI technologies are being developed.

About the Author

Jim Greene is a Canadian-born, European Union-based freelance writer, editor, and researcher specializing in academic research and student reference materials covering the social sciences and humanities. An editorial professional since 2001, he holds a BA from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from the University of Southern California.

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