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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Your approachable guide to ethical philosophy
Ethics For Dummies, 2nd Edition is an easy-to-grasp introduction to the branch of philosophy that deals with living a good life. Learn about the most important concepts and thinkers in the world of ethics, so you can analyze issues in the modern world from an ethical perspective. Explore standards of right and wrong, fairness, virtues, and how different cultures approach the questions of ethics—this book explains it all in clear and simple terms. Plus, it demystifies the writings of great ethicists like Aristotle, Confucius, Descartes, Kant, and Hume. Throughout the book, you practice theorizing on major ethical questions of today, including AI and social media.
Inside:
- Discover non-Western approaches to ethics, including Hindu, African, and Indigenous ways of thought
- Explore ethical questions around race, social constructs, disability, and beyond
- Get help understanding the writings of Aristotle, Confucius, and other famous ethical philosophers
- Apply ethics to your everyday life, for more confident, reasoned decisions
With Ethics For Dummies, 2nd Edition, become more comfortable with the centuries-old study of ethical philosophy, so you can pass your ethics class—or just pass the ethical tests life throws your way.
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Seitenzahl: 846
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Ethics For Dummies®
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please
Chapter 1: Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care?
Knowing the Right Words: The Vocabulary of Ethics
Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical
Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life
Chapter 2: Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion?
Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person’s Opinion
Cultural Relativism: Grounding Ethics in the Group’s Opinion
Emotivism: Seeing Ethics as a Tool of Expression
Chapter 3: Exploring Connections between Ethics, Religion, and Science
Clarifying the Relationship between God, Religion, and Ethical Codes
Because God Said So: Understanding Divine Command Theory
When Ethics Gets in the Way of God: Introducing Kierkegaard
When God Gets in the Way of Ethics: Introducing Nietzsche
The Age of Science: Figuring Out If Ethics Can Exist in a Secular World
Evolution and Ethics: Rising Above the Law of the Jungle
Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories
Chapter 4: Being an Excellent Person: Virtue Ethics
The Lowdown: Virtuous Character Matters
Linking Virtue to Cultivating Your Human Nature
Asking Whether Virtue Guarantees Happiness
Figuring Out How to Acquire the Virtues
Assessing Criticisms of Virtue Ethics
Chapter 5: Maximizing the Good: Consequentialist Ethics
Paying Close Attention to Results: Consequences Matter
Surveying What Makes Consequences Good
Putting Utilitarianism into Action
Focusing On Two Different Ways to Be a Successful Utilitarian
Exploring Traditional Problems with Utilitarianism
Chapter 6: Doing Your Duty: The Ethics of Principle
Kant’s Ethics: Acting on Reasonable Principles
Living by the Categorical Imperative: Reasonable Principles
Surveying the Forms of the Categorical Imperative
Applying the Categorical Imperative to Real-Life Dilemmas
Scrutinizing Kant’s Ethics
Chapter 7: Signing on the Dotted Line: Ethics as Contract
Creating Ethics with Contracts
Restructuring Social Institutions According to Rawls’s Theory of Justice
Beyond the Dotted Line: Criticizing Contract Theory
Chapter 8: Turning Down the Testosterone: Feminist Care Ethics
The Feminist Challenge: Traditional Ethics Is Biased toward Men
Surveying a New Feminist Ethics of Care
Further Developing the Notion of Caring
Considering the Politics of Caring
Reviewing Criticisms of Care Ethics
Chapter 9: Global Morality: Examining Non-Western Ethics
Thinking Differently: Why Cross-Cultural Ethics Matters
Avoiding Ethnocentrism: Seeing Ethics as Embedded in Cultural Contexts
Cultivating Relationships: Confucian Ethics
Reducing Suffering: Buddhist Ethics
Harmony with Nature: Daoist Ethics
Reawakening the Spiritual: Hindu Ethics
Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life
Chapter 10: Dealing with Mad Scientists: Biomedical Ethics
Examining Some Principles of Biomedical Ethics
Taking a Closer Look at the Intractable Issue of Abortion
A 21st Century Problem: Attack of the Clones
Anticipating Ethical Problems with Genetic Technologies
Dying and Dignity: Debating Euthanasia
Chapter 11: Protecting the Habitat: Environmental Ethics
Canvassing Environmental Ethics
Determining Whose Interests Count
Turning to Environmental Approaches
Examining Criticisms of Environmental Ethics
Chapter 12: Looking Out for the Little Guy: Ethics and Animals
Focusing on the Premise of Animal Rights
Experimenting on Animals for the Greater Good
To Eat or Not to Eat Animals: That’s the Question
Chapter 13: Vibing with the Bots: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Focusing on AI: The High Stakes of Computing
Respecting the User: Manipulation and Deception
Seeking the Singularity: The Day AI Outsmarts Us All
Challenging Human Dignity: How AI Will Rewrite the Human World
Chapter 14: Making Accommodations: Disability Ethics
Challenging Normality: Disability Trend Setter
Uncovering Ableism: Hidden Discrimination
Locating Disability: Is It Physical or Social?
Complicating Disability: Intersectional Ethics
How Disability Challenges Ethics
Chapter 15: Liking and Subscribing: Social Media Ethics
Socializing Online: Social Media as the New Ethical Frontier
Hailing the Almighty Algorithm: Programming the Social Revolution
Calling the Mods: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms
Part 4: The Part of Tens
Chapter 16: Ten Famous Ethicists and Their Theories
Confucius: Nurturing Virtue in Good Relationships
Plato: Living Justly through Balance
Aristotle: Making Virtue Ethics a Habit
Hobbes: Beginning Contract Theory
Hume: Eyeing the Importance of Moral Feelings
Kant: Being Ethical Makes You Free
Mill: Maximizing Utility Matters Most
Nietzsche: Connecting Morals and Power
Rawls: Looking Out for the Least Well-Off
Singer: Speaking Out for Modern Utilitarianism
Chapter 17: Ten Ethical Dilemmas Likely to Arise in the Future
Making Designer Genes to Create Designer Babies
Privacy Absolutism and Erasing Your Digital Self
Managing the Growing Population of Planet Earth
Dealing with Dramatic Increases in the Human Lifespan
Digital Immortality and Uploading Your Mind
Geohacking the Planet to Alter the Climate
Exploring and Terraforming New Worlds
Universal Basic Income — Everyone Gets a Piece of the Action
New Governments in Virtual Reality
Free, Unlimited Energy and the End of Scarcity
Whoa, Dinosaur! Resurrecting Extinct Species
Index
About the Authors
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 4
TABLE 4-1 Cases of Virtue and Their Corresponding Extremes
Chapter 8
TABLE 9-1 Tronto's Components of Caring
Chapter 10
TABLE 12-1 The Different Euthanasia Positions
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Begin Reading
Index
About the Authors
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Ethics For Dummies®, 2nd Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2026 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
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Introduction
As the authors of this book, we feel strongly about the importance of ethics. Ethics marks off one of the most fascinating — and difficult — aspects of human life. Whether you’re a university student who’s taking an ethics course and needs the theories clarified or you’re someone who wants to live a life that’s more aligned with what’s right, Ethics For Dummies is just for you. Philosophy courses on ethics can be filled with complicated material, so this book cuts to the chase and gives you what you need to know while making you smile at the same time.
To take ethics — or the investigation of what ought to be — seriously is to engage head on with the question of value. Of course, it also involves jumping into the thick controversy that involves debating what you ought to do and why. Taking ethics on involves critically thinking through how to interact with other people, animals, perhaps your colleagues at work, and the environment. By the time you’re done reading this book, ethics will no longer be mystifying. It will seem like familiar territory.
About This Book
We — your humble authors — have decades of experience between us as professors teaching college courses on ethics. As a result, we’re well acquainted with how difficult and frustrating the subject of ethics can be for students or for people who know little about it and are approaching it for the first time. We were there once, too.
Our first-hand knowledge of the difficulties of teaching ethics puts us in a good position to write this book for you. We’ve laid out the book in a particular way that helps you get a better grasp on the many topics in ethics that you’re likely to study. Basically, we want to translate these confusing topics into plain English. We hope our explanations help you grasp the main concepts.
Most importantly, we’ve arranged this book so that you don’t need to read it straight through like a novel. Feel free to jump around. Basically, you can open the book wherever you want and start reading. It’s written so that you can understand any part of it without needing to read the other parts. At the same time, the book can also be read straight through from start to end.
We’ve also written this book with humor foremost in our minds. Philosophy and ethics can sometimes be dry, so we’ve done our best to make sure that our book doesn’t come across that way. We want Ethics For Dummies to be informative and helpful, but we also want it to be enjoyable to read.
Conventions Used in This Book
In our book, we’ve used a few conventions to help make the text more accessible and easier to read. Consider the following:
We
boldface
the action parts of numbered steps and the keywords of bulleted lists.
We
italicize
new terms and provide definitions of them so you’re always in the loop.
We also include some conventions that are strictly ethics related. We tend to gloss over some things in this book in order to get the basic points across and not make things too complicated. So instead of constantly using caveats and pointing your attention to fine print or footnotes at the end of the book, keep in mind the following conventions we use:
The uses of terms like
morality
and
ethics
are typically seen as separate in ethics. We use them interchangeably. To see why, head to
Chapter 1
.
We wrote this book as if you believe it’s important to want to be a better and more ethical person. This is a bit of a slide toward virtue ethics, but studying ethics won’t do you much good unless you try to implement what you’ve learned.
We believe that people of all faiths and spiritual belief systems — even those without faith or spiritual beliefs — can join in a critical discussion of ethical issues and their foundations. So, we didn’t write this book for one group or another. Everyone can benefit from reading it.
Occasionally it may seem like we’re being preachy or ruling things out too quickly. We usually do this because we’re trying to challenge you, not because we’re holier-than-thou philosophers. And sometimes, it’s because we can only stick so many pages between the covers. Trust us, what’s in these pages are just the tips of the argumentative icebergs.
What You’re Not to Read
Because we poured our hearts and souls into this book, we’d love for you to read everything word for word. However, we also know that, as a student of ethics, you’re likely short on time and want to get what you need and get out. For that reason, we want to tell you up front that you don’t need to read the shaded sidebars that pop up throughout the chapters in this book. They’re super-interesting tidbits that we’re sure you’ll enjoy, and they’ll make you more fun at parties, but they aren’t necessary to be an ethics whiz kid. It’s not unethical to skip them!
Foolish Assumptions
As authors, it’s difficult not to make some basic assumptions about the subject you’re writing about — and, more importantly, about the readers you’re communicating to. So, before we started writing, we made the following assumptions, thinking that at least one or more of them were likely true of you:
You may be a student in an undergraduate ethics course and need some clarification of the confusing topics you’re studying. If so, look through the table of contents. You’ll notice that it’s arranged in a way that makes course referencing easy: You’ll see theories, applications, and starting questions. Typically, university syllabi are organized in a similar manner.
You don’t know too much about the subject, but you have an informal interest in ethics. We’ve tried our best to argue as strongly as we can for all the theories within this book — without taking any sides. It’s important that you make up your own mind about what’s right, so we’ve tried to stay balanced. (However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have our favorite theories. In fact, the two of us don’t agree about which ethical theory is the best one!)
You’re annoyed by some of the crazy stuff going on in the world today and want a way to think about it. If you need a more sophisticated language through which you can express that frustration, we provide it for you.
How This Book Is Organized
If you’d like to get a feel for how we organized this book, the following sections explain the overall aims of each part. This overview may help you to get a feel for where you’d like to get started.
Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please
Ethics is a big field, so there’s a lot to talk about! However, because the landscape is so vast, you first need to get your footing by looking at some basic issues and questions that should be addressed before you dive into the more complex stuff. We provide that footing in Part 1, looking at the basic question, “What is ethics?” We examine some basic vocabulary and distinctions and ask why being ethical is such a big deal. We then move into a discussion of relativism, which examines whether ethics is true, justified, or just a matter of opinion. We end this section with a discussion of the relationship between ethics, religion, and science.
Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories
This part is the meat of the book. We dedicate chapters to each of the central theories in ethics. We start off with what we think of as the “big three” — virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, and utilitarianism. These theories usually are the three main contenders for Most Important Theory, but no one can agree on which of them gets the title. We then move to two other approaches that are popular: ethics as a kind of contract and the feminist criticism that ethics should center more on relationships. We end the section with a deep dive into non-Western ethical theories, such as Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism.
Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life
It’s nice to get knee deep in theory and figure out what it’s implying, but at some point, you really do need to do some work on the ground. In this part, we look at work that has been done in applied ethics. We devote chapters to the following topics: biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, the ethics of artificial intelligence, disability ethics, and finally social media ethics. If you’re most interested in hot, controversial issues rather than theory, you’ll get your fill here!
Part 5: The Part of Tens
All For Dummies books have a Part of Tens, so we’re not about to rob you of one for this book. Here, we list ten of the most popular writers on ethics, pointing out their most famous ethical works and the main ideas in them. We then list ten of the most gripping ethical dilemmas society will likely face in the future, including why they’ll prove so problematic down the road.
Icons Used in This Book
Every For Dummies book uses icons in the margins to identify and point out important text. We use the following icons in this book:
This icon calls your attention to items and explanations that are important to keep in mind when trying to decipher ethical theories.
When you see this icon, you’re alerted to one of those siren-and-red-light-blasting moments when you should beware of possible misunderstanding. This icon says to slow down and think more carefully through the section.
At times, some good juicy primary material from the authors helps to make a point clear. Or sometimes what they say is famous or just plain cool. When you see this icon, it draws your attention to the use of text from the original authors themselves.
This icon tells you when you’ve stumbled upon something strange or counterintuitive — usually assumptions or beliefs that may require further thought.
This icon points out shortcuts and helpful hints that can assist you in figuring out the theory or argument presented.
Beyond the Book
This book has its very own website where you can download bonus chapters. These chapters include ethics as the application of the Golden Rule (yes, the same one you were taught as a kid!), ethics as applied in the professional workplace, and how ethics applies to the subject of sex, including new material on ethics in the transgender debate. Just point your web browser to www.dummies.com/go/ethicsfd2e.
In addition, this book comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that gives you a quick glance into the study of ethics. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Ethics For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box and click on the Cheat Sheets tab.
Where to Go from Here
We’ve arranged this book in a way that makes it accessible for a lot of different purposes, and it can be read in different ways. If you’re just getting started with ethics, you may find it helpful to begin with Part 1, which provides the basics. Or, if you want, jump to the table of contents and index to see what topics we include in the book. If you’re taking an ethics course that deals heavily with major ethical theories, go right to those and check them out. If you’re more interested in applied questions, thumb to Part 4 and read up on one of the subjects that strikes your interest. There’s no unethical way to read this book, so use it in the way that makes most sense to you and your situation!
Part 1
Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please
IN THIS PART …
Ethics is the most practical kind of philosophy, but that doesn’t mean that all you need to study it is basic common sense. You also need to know some of the lingo and some of the basic assumptions about the field. That’s what this part of the book is about.
Here, we discuss some basic distinctions, and then we kindly invite you to ask why you should care about ethics in the first place. Because you also need to avoid some important pitfalls in your ethical thinking, such as the idea that ethics is just a matter of opinion; we devote a chapter to this topic. Getting away from this idea is the start of every great ethical journey. With this understood, you can appreciate the rich debates about ethics in the rest of the book and what they have to do with living an ethical life.
Chapter 1
Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care?
IN THIS CHAPTER
Surveying fundamental ethical definitions and distinctions you need to know
Understanding why you should be ethical
Determining what’s involved in making a commitment to an ethical life
You probably wouldn’t try to make a cake without ingredients, pots, and pans, right? Well, the same goes for preparing a recipe for an ethical life. You need to know some basic terms and concepts to get your materials ready. Luckily, although living an ethical life isn’t always easy, learning those basic terms and concepts is easy to do.
This chapter starts with some basics regarding ethics to help you get a better grasp of the subject. We help you by clarifying some basic terms and distinctions that will quickly emerge during your study of ethics. We also explain why being ethical is important. We finish the chapter with a discussion of what’s involved in making a commitment to living an ethical life. Consider this chapter your jumping-off point into the wonderful world of ethics.
Knowing the Right Words: The Vocabulary of Ethics
Although ethics and morality are essential parts of human life, not many people understand how to talk about them. So many terms! Good, evil, right, wrong, great, and bad: Who could possibly sort through all that mess? Getting a firm grasp on these words and distinctions is important so you don’t fall into any misunderstandings later. The following sections explain important ethics vocabulary words and how to use them.
Focusing on should and ought
Fortunately you don’t really need to sort through lots of different terms. In fact, most of ethics and morality can be boiled down to one simple concept that can be expressed using the words should and ought. “Good” or “right” actions are actions that you ought to do. “Bad” character traits are ones you should try not to develop. “Evil” traits are those you really ought to avoid. Isn’t it cool how just these two words can unify so many ethical concepts?
One way to clearly understand how ethics uses the terms should and ought is by considering why science doesn't use those terms at all. The contrast between them helps you see what ethics is about. Consider the fact that science tries to figure out the way the world is, was, or will be, which means it aims to give the best description of how the world was, is, or will be. The following are all scientific questions (some easier to answer than others) that each have a descriptive answer.
What will be the effect of detonating a nuclear weapon in a major city?
What led to the extinction of the dodo bird?
Is there a beer in the fridge?
Whereas science focuses on the way the world was, is, or will be, ethics focuses on the way the world ought or should be. Ethics isn't trying to be descriptive; it's trying to be prescriptive. We'd say that makes ethics a bit more ambitious! Focusing on how the world should be gives ethical questions a different nature than science questions. Tweaking our last questions, ethical versions would look more like this:
Should we detonate nuclear weapons around large numbers of people?
Should endangered species be protected from human hunting?
Ought I really have that last beer in the fridge before driving home?
Lots of people miss the point about ethical discussions because they assume ethical “ought” questions are “is” questions, which would make them science questions. How many times have you heard someone defend their unjust actions by saying “Yeah, well, maybe life isn’t fair?” Maybe that person is right that the world is unfair, but that doesn’t mean it should be unfair. How the world is and how it should be are different issues.
You probably have a big question dawning on you right about now: How do I find out what I ought to do? It’s a great question; it’s the subject of the rest of this book.
Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality
The terms ethics and morality have two different dictionary definitions, but throughout this book we'll use them interchangeably and won’t make any effort to distinguish between them. The truth is that you can argue all day about whether something is immoral or just unethical, whether someone has ethics but no morals, or whether ethics is about society, but morality is about you. Ethical is often used to describe societal ethics or universal codes, and moral is often used to describe a person's own values.
The reason these arguments don’t matter in this book is that, in the end, both ethics and morality are about the same thing: What you ought to be doing with your life. If it’s true that an act is immoral, then you ought not do it. The situation doesn’t change if the act is unethical instead. It’s still something you ought not do. So, don't do it.
“But wait!” you may say. “Ethics and morality can’t be the same thing. Something can be unethical but still moral.” Some people think, for instance, that Robin Hood’s stealing to feed the poor was unethical but still moral. That's true — we’re not saying that words don’t get used in that way. Robin Hood stole (broke an ethical code) to help the poor (advance a personal moral value, such as compassion).
But in the end, what do you really want to know about Robin Hood? You want to know whether he ought to have been doing what he did. Ditto with something that seems immoral but may still be ethical, like selling goods at hugely inflated prices. The practice appears motivated by greed (a bad moral value for the seller) but it's not necessarily unethical (in ethical theory) to have high prices. If ethics and morality say different things, you still need to find out as the storekeeper what the relationship between you and your customers should be and how you should act, feel, and think toward them based on that relationship.
So, seriously, don’t worry about the difference between ethics and morality. Your ethical conversations will make a lot more progress if you just concentrate on the “oughtness” of things. Professional philosophers don’t bother distinguishing between the two a lot of the time, so you shouldn’t either. Keep things simple so you can focus on what's most important.
Putting law in its proper place
Even though you don’t need to differentiate ethics and morality, you should distinguish between the concepts of ethics (or morality) and legality. If you don’t, you may confuse the ethical thing to do with the legal thing to do. There’s some overlap between ethics and the law, but they also often come apart. For example, consider speeding. Speeding is illegal, but that doesn’t mean it’s always unethical. It's ethically acceptable to speed to get someone to the hospital for an emergency, for instance. You may still be punished according to the law, but that doesn’t automatically make your act unethical.
The law also sometimes permits people to do unethical things. Cheating on your partner is ethically wrong, for instance. But breaking romantic commitments or failing to be faithful isn’t typically illegal (and even where it is, laws against adultery aren’t usually enforced). People who try to make more excuses for their behavior by asking, “There's no law against it, is there?” are wrongly suggesting that legal permissibility entails moral permissibility. They are confusing ethics and legality. Don't fall for it.
Should all unethical things be illegal? Probably not, but it’s worth noting that unless ethics and legality are separate concepts, it’s not even possible to ask that question. The law may be inspired by ethical standards, but in many cases it’s better not to make laws about unethical behaviors. People usually sort out these kinds of things on their own. After all, you don't want partners to be faithful because they worry about going to jail if they aren't. Instead, you want people to be faithful to one another out of love and because it's the morally right thing to do.
Besides, it could simply be too expensive to enforce some laws. Lying is usually considered unethical, but how full would prisons be if they had to incarcerate all the liars in addition to the thieves, tax-cheats, murderers, and rapists? Let's let people in the moral community deal with the liars by condemning their behavior. The prison population is too big already.
If ethics and legality were the same thing, all laws would be ethical, and all ethical acts would be permitted under the law. In other words, an unjust law (legal but unjust) couldn’t exist. But this thinking seems to be false. Congress could pass a law that all brown-haired people had to wear polka-dotted pants on Thursdays. This law would be terribly unjust. But it could only be labeled unjust if an independent ethical standard existed against which laws can be evaluated. Because ethical standards can be used to judge laws, ethics and legality must be separate concepts.
Perhaps the best historical example of an unjust law would be the slavery of Black people in the South before the Civil War. Whether or not people knew it then (and it’s a fair bet they had some idea), by today’s standards this law is seen as deeply flawed and immoral. Slavery was legal, but morally wrong. But without the separation between ethics/morality and legality, criticizing that law from the standpoint of ethics wouldn’t be possible.
Requiring, forbidding, permitting: Even when you know your ethics terms, you still need a way of explaining your position on issues. You can use words like right, wrong, evil, bad, or good to explain what ought to be done, or say what position should be taken, but your prescription still needs to be very precise.
The best vocabulary for classifying any position, action, or character trait is to put it in one of three classes: “ethically required,” “ethically permitted,” and “ethically forbidden.” These three classifications fill the gaps left by simple distinctions between good/bad, right/wrong, and so on. (Keep in mind that because ethics and morality are one and the same, we could have just as easily used “morally” required, permitted, and forbidden. See the earlier section “Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality” for more information.)
Consider the ethical issue of capital punishment for murderers. People’s positions vary, but usually they think the practice is either right or wrong. Those who think it’s wrong don’t have a difficult time making their point. They think people ought to be forbidden from performing capital punishment. But the crowd that thinks capital punishment is right has some further explaining to do because saying it is “right” could prescribe two different options that you need to disentangle.
It can mean that society is ethically
required
to kill all murderers, which would be a strangely extreme and absolutist view.
It also can mean that society is ethically
permitted
to kill murderers for their crimes if the circumstances are awful enough. This leaves the door open to not use capital punishment for other murders. Most supporters of capital punishment hold this position.
Just using the term right can cause one to overlook the differences between these two conflicting options and lead to a lot of unnecessary misunderstanding.
Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical
During your studies of ethics, you probably have wondered about the most basic question of all: Why be ethical? Without an answer to this question, you don’t have a lot of reason to continue reading this book! We want you to get to the end of the book, so this section looks at the two basic responses that will help you get ethically motivated.
Why be ethical 101? It pays off!
People often ask, “Why should I be ethical?” One answer that never seems to go out of style is: Ethics can be in your self-interest. In other words, ethics pays off. In the real world, people tend to get annoyed when you steal their stuff, kill their friends, or cheat on them. Therefore, they tend to do things like call the cops, try to kill you in return, or take your kids and move to Idaho. Your life doesn't go so well when you fail to be ethical at a basic level.
In contrast, although some ethical rules and practices may put a serious damper on a good party, by and large people who follow those rules tend to live in harmony with those around them. Contributing to basic social order and stability through ethics creates a certain amount of happiness for individuals. Your own ethical conduct can have a clear return on investment (ROI) — if you demonstrate that you can be trusted with wealth, you benefit materially.
The ethical life also can pay off in other ways. Barring some bad luck along the way, ethical people often have less stress in their lives than unethical people. They don’t have to worry about the stress of hiding lies (or bodies!). Ethical people also seem capable of living happier, more fulfilled social lives. They can even develop much richer relationships with those around them because those people trust the ethical person to do what’s right — and not to throw them under a bus whenever it may be more profitable.
Heck, even society gets an ROI from ethics. If you don’t believe us, consider the words that famous English philosopher Thomas Hobbes used to describe life before people came together to cooperate in an ethical manner. He said life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes believed that choosing a sovereign leader to judge and enforce right from wrong allowed human beings to leave that nasty and unwelcoming state in order to live together and create things. This arrangement is far better for everyone than living in the brutish state of nature. Refer to Chapter 7 for more on Hobbes.
So far in this section you’ve seen how ethics may be a benefit to you in this life. But some religions, particularly the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, promise benefits after death to those who follow the right ethical path. If that promise doesn’t get religious people to be ethical, especially with the threat of hell hanging over their heads when they aren't, it’s difficult to see what would motivate people to be ethical at all.
Why be ethical 201? You’ll live a life of integrity
When answering the question “why be ethical?” consider the possibility that some compelling reasons for being ethical have nothing to do with payoff. Living with integrity is the most important of those reasons. Having integrity means having and holding to an ethical system or code even when it is difficult and demanding. Lacking integrity, on the other hand, is not having an ethical code or not holding to it when things get difficult, which suggests a kind of cowardliness or weakness. In our discussion, two features of integrity stand out:
Internal integrity involves a state of wholeness or completeness. This state of wholeness implies that the person you are right now matches the ideal moral sense of who you think you ought to be. You’re whole, and what you do isn’t in tension with what you think you ought to do, or how you ought to be.
Being able to compare your present life to how you think you ought to live is a distinctively human activity. Animals don’t sit around asking themselves what type of life they ought to live and then bemoan their lack of integrity when they fail to measure up. Animals act on what instinct leads them to do, which is often the path with least discomfort. This is why lacking integrity looks animal-like, because in important situations discomfort leads such persons to abandon their principles
External integrity requires living in accord with ethical principles, embodying ethical character, or performing ethical behaviors. Although attaining internal integrity is crucial, external integrity points to the additional need of making sure that the principles, character traits, or behaviors that compose your ideal way of living are the right ones. Think about it: A serial killer could attain internal integrity if their ideal moral self is a murderer. To avoid this, you want to make sure that your sense of who you ought to be lines up with what is ethically justified. If it isn't, this book provides the tools you need in order to make the appropriate adjustments.
In fact, this need for external integrity highlights a central component of being motivated to be ethical: It’s just right. Can’t that reason be compelling on its own? It may be nice if morality and ethics pay off (and they often do). However, getting away from the fact that ethics can be compelling in and of itself is difficult. If murdering small children is wrong, it shouldn’t matter whether it would pay off to do otherwise.
Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life
In order to get your ethical life moving, you need to create an ethical life plan. Doing so is particularly important because making a commitment to being ethical is important. Of course, we realize that you may want to read this book just to discover the ins and outs of the theories, and if that’s your goal, this book can meet your needs. However, all the authors of the theories in this book would hope that as you read along you think a bit more about the importance of you living the ethical life. The following sections walk you through the actions you can take to start down the ethical path.
Taking stock: Know thyself
When trying to figure out how you ought to live your life in the future, start off with a solid understanding of where you are now. To do this, you need to start by identifying your ethical intuitions and beliefs. In order to take stock of yourself, do the following:
Increase your mindfulness.
Determining where you are now ethically requires what the Buddhists call
mindfulness.
A mindful person is one who’s aware at all times. Mindful people pay close attention to what they normally do, to how they feel in response to certain situations, and to how they feel about certain actions. Mindful people are sensitive to their own thought patterns and are acutely aware of the beliefs and intuitions that form the moral core of who they are. These skills situate a mindful person well to survey, criticize, and refine their moral core.
Develop a mindfulness routine. Keep a record of your feelings and thoughts about a range of ethical topics.
Is family important to you? (Check out Confucianism in
Chapter 9
.)
Do you think it is permissible to eat meat? (Our animal ethics discussion is in
Chapter 12
.)
Do you think artificial intelligence (AI) systems should have rights? (Skip to the discussion on the ethics of AI in
Chapter 13
.)
Do you think abortion is wrong? (See the bioethics discussion in
Chapter 10
.)
Do you think it's okay to treat others in ways you yourself may not appreciate? (Head online to the bonus chapter on the Golden Rule:
www.dummies.com/go/ethicsfd2e
.)
Do you believe in recycling? (See our description of environmental ethics in
Chapter 11
.)
What do you think about the abuse of subordinates at work? (Read up on professional ethics in a bonus chapter located at
www.dummies.com/go/ethicsfd2e
.)
Do you think social media companies are manipulating their users? (See
Chapter 15
)
There's a lot there to cover!
Take stock in how you tend to characterize your responses to such ethical issues. In each of these cases, think about whether you consider right actions to be obligatory, forbidden, or perhaps just plain permissible. For instance, maybe you think abortion is forbidden, or that it is permissible to pollute, or obligatory that we respect human rights.
As you are doing all that work, you may notice that some of your practices and core intuitions conflict. In addition, perhaps some of your actions and customary habits do not line up with what you think is ethically right. Being self-critical is important here, because building an ethical life plan is serious business. You need to know what you do, what you think, and how you ethically feel about things.
Don’t worry too much about inconsistency at the start. It happens. Everyone spots these in themselves to different degrees. That said, to have internal integrity, you want to work on resolving those conflicts at some point, but at this early stage just be mindful that they exist. Eventually, your goal should be to align your practices so that they should flow from your moral core in a consistent way. If not, you’re living out of sync with ethics, or at least out of sync with your own conception of what ethics is.
Building your moral framework
Although it’s important to figure out where you are now (see the preceding section to find out how), you also may realize that your current moral core is ill-founded. Some of your moral intuitions could be all wrong. Figuring this out involves thinking more about ethical theories to see whether any of them are consistent with your moral intuitions. It also requires criticizing your intuitions from the standpoint of opposing theories. Out of this engagement with the theories and their applications to different important issues and problems, you’re sure to emerge with a stronger moral core.
This book is well designed to help you study your moral framework. As you read through each of the theories (which you can find mostly in Part 2), you encounter a different perspective on what’s right and how to think about ethics. Be mindful of your intuitions and use them to identify the theory that most closely approximates your way of thinking. You may strongly identify with the core values proposed by one theory in particular. If so, try to understand that theory to the degree to which you can use it to really hone your intuitions. Building your moral framework requires serious work. In fact, it may even involve rejecting some of your habitual practices, but that’s the price of taking ethics seriously.
When you identify your favorite theory, don’t forget the others! Read through all of them as a way of criticizing your way of conceptualizing what is right or good. Or just do it as a scholastic exercise to see which one has the best arguments. Take every theory seriously and see each one as a worthy contender. After all, those theories may have suggestions that will make you think, leading you to tweak your moral intuitions. When you dismiss claims or assumptions, make sure you can articulate why. All these theories have weak spots and criticisms that have been lodged against them. So even if you pick one as the best one, don’t shy away from trying to pick away at solving some of the biggest attacks against it.
Seeing where you need to go
Solidifying your moral intuitions and coming up with a solid moral core are only two parts of the journey in developing an ethical life plan. In addition to making ethical judgments, you have to go and do things! Figure out what your moral intuitions call upon you to do. They may require you to do things that you don’t currently do. They may even make demands on you to reject some of your old habits. Don’t complain: If ethics isn’t difficult, then it’s just not worth doing. Your task is to align your current self with your ideal moral self and then act on it.
A real commitment to the ethical life can't just be contained in your head. You also need to fashion a life of action out of your choices. If, for instance, your chosen principles or character traits call for relieving suffering wherever possible, you may determine that you need to give up eating meat. A person with a true commitment to ethics tries to avoid making excuses for herself when things get tough. If you’re a utilitarian (see Chapter 5), meat eating is difficult to justify. So if you find utilitarianism to be the most similar to your way of thinking, don’t ignore the glaring problem that there’s a steak on your plate. You can’t opt out of applying ethics to your life when it gets difficult. Integrity is crucial. Figure out who you need to be, and make sure that you follow through, assuring that your life plan and actions reflect your core intuitions and values. There’s no other way to live ethically and to live with integrity. So, get to it.
MAKING YOUR OWN (PIECEMEAL) MORAL THEORY
With the information in this chapter, you can construct your first “map” of your moral intuitions. This map is a simple form of moral theory in the form of a table. For each vertical column of the table, write in an issue or action that you have an ethical position on. Then put an X in the box to designate whether you believe it’s ethically required, permissible, or forbidden. For instance, take a look at the following table.
Try it yourself! Make a table with as many ethical issues as you can think of and try to figure out which box you think the X goes in. Then, after you’ve read more of this book, come back and see whether any of the theories you studied give you a more systematic way of deciding where the X goes.
Eating meat
Working on the Sabbath
Refraining from killing people
Ethically required
X
Ethically permissible
X
Ethically forbidden
X
Chapter 2
Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion?
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding subjectivism and its flaws
Putting cultural relativism under the magnifying glass
Looking at some of emotivism’s troubles and victories
One of the phrases we hear a lot when discussing ethics is that it’s all just a “matter of opinion,” which is often a way of saying that it isn’t possible to say anything useful about ethics. But of course, if there wasn’t anything useful to say about ethics, you wouldn’t be reading this book.
In fact, when people get into arguments about whether something is right or wrong, they often end up frustrated with each other. Sometimes that frustration gets so intense that it causes one person to blurt out, “But that’s just your opinion!” And after that, it’s difficult to know what to say, right? After all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. How can my opinion be better than yours, especially when the subject is ethics?
In this chapter, we survey three theories (subjectivism, cultural relativism, and emotivism) that attempt to base ethics on some kind of opinion or feeling. To give away the ending a little, many philosophers have found these theories to be seriously flawed. We survey them here because they represent thoughts that everyone has about ethics from time to time, and it’s important to see why they don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person’s Opinion
The idea that ethics is really about opinion may seem obvious to you. In fact, that idea is so obvious to so many people that philosophers have given a name to this view: subjectivism. Subjectivism says that ethical statements really are just statements of personal opinion and nothing more. However, if all ethical statements are just statements of personal opinion, then ethical arguments that aim at the ethical truth are pretty senseless. In other words, subjectivism tries to capture the thought that what’s right and wrong could be radically different for everyone. But if everyone’s opinion counts equally and ethics is just based on opinion, there probably isn’t much sense in arguing about it, right?
One way to think about what the subjectivist is trying to say about ethics is to think about issues that are just about personal opinion. Take pizza, for example. Chris grew up in New York City and tends to be very opinionated about his pizza. (Adam grew up outside of St. Louis and shouldn’t be taken seriously on the subject of pizza.) But plenty of people don’t like New York pizza, especially people from Chicago. It may be interesting to hear a New Yorker debate someone from Chicago about which pizza is best. But in the end, everyone knows that the best pizza is simply a matter of personal preference or opinion. No one has yet figured out an objective way of determining which pizza is really the best because, well, neither one really is the best. Pizza is a matter of subjective taste, not objective fact. Even Chris admits this in the end.
If subjectivism is true, ethics is exactly like pizza. Everyone grows up exposed to different views of what’s right and wrong, which leads to disagreements about ethical issues. But in the end, these disagreements aren’t over anything objective. Instead, ethics is a matter of personal opinion, which is to say, a matter of taste. So arguing about it is likely to get you about as far as arguing about which kind of pizza is best.
In the following sections, we expand on what the subjectivist view says about ethical statements. We then look at some of the logical consequences of the view, because a lot of philosophers think this view turns out to be really hard to defend.
Right for me and wrong for you: The subjectivist position
Subjectivists believe that ethics is simply a matter of personal opinion. But most ethical arguments don’t sound like arguments about personal opinions (favorite football teams and pets, for example), do they? Instead, they sound like arguments about something more substantial (think religion and abortion). According to subjectivists, the following general statement must be true if ethics is just personal opinion:
“X is right” just means “X is right for me,” and “X is wrong” just means “X is wrong for me.”
Another way of stating that something feels “right to you” or “wrong to you” is to say “I like X.” What subjectivists are saying is that “X is right” just means “I like X” and that there’s nothing more to ethics.
You may have heard of relativism, a view of ethics that has everybody worried. Well, this is it! Or at least one form of it. Subjectivism is a form of relativism, because it says right and wrong are completely relative to our own subjective preferences. If you believe that something is ethically permissible, even that cold-blooded murder is perfectly permissible, subjectivism says that’s true — but only for you.
To illustrate how the subjectivist sees an issue, consider the following example with shoplifting, which is a bit more heated than which type of pizza is best. The subjectivist believes that when you say, “Shoplifting is right,” you really mean “I like shoplifting; it’s okay for me to shoplift.” And when your friend says, “Shoplifting is wrong,” they really mean they dislike shoplifting; it’s wrong for them. But if this is what ethical statements mean, then you aren’t contradicting one another. In fact, what both of you are saying can be correct. You’re just stating different facts about yourselves and what you allow yourself to do. And of course, subjectivists don’t just translate statements about shoplifting. They believe it about all ethical statements.
When subjectivists talk about ethics, they think that at no point are you ever talking about what’s right and wrong for the other person. Rather, you’re talking about yourself — namely your personal opinions, your likes and dislikes. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that something like shoplifting could be both right and wrong for everyone. But if it’s right for one person and wrong for the next, no one has to worry about it because there’s no contradiction at all. Just like chocolate ice cream can taste best for Chris and vanilla can taste best for Adam; for a subjectivist, something can be right for one person and wrong for another. It’s like people have different ethical tastes.
Recognizing that subjectivism can’t handle disagreement
Subjectivism, which says that ethics is just about personal opinion and ethical statements are personal preferences, is an interesting way of escaping lots of debates about ethics. But should you believe this view?
