A Provisional Definition

• In everyday conversation, people often make statements like “He ought not to have done this” or “It is always right to speak the truth”, but such statements are often contradicted, showing they are not as simple as they seem.

• Disagreement about a person’s character can arise because one person knows facts the other does not, or because both know the same facts but use words like good and bad with different meanings.

• Ethics deals with the true meaning of such words as good, right, and ought and seeks agreement on their meanings.

• Once meanings are agreed upon, further questions arise about whether it is possible to know if someone is good or bad, and on what grounds a person should change from bad to good actions.

• Ethics can be defined as the normative science of human conduct in societies, judging it as right or wrong, good or bad.

• A science is a systematic and relatively complete body of knowledge about a specific set of related events or objects.

• Scientific knowledge is different from haphazard ordinary knowledge because it is arranged in a coherent system.

• A science aims at providing as complete a knowledge as possible, though no science is perfect; unnecessary details may be omitted for clarity.

• Knowledge is not considered scientific until accepted by those learned in the field (e.g., new medical cures are not scientific until recognized by capable doctors).

• Each science has a limited sphere: botany deals with plants, psychology with minds, and ethics with judgments about human conduct.

• Positive sciences describe phenomena as observed through senses or introspection without making value judgments.

• In positive science, if a botanist or psychologist makes a judgment of good or bad, they move outside their scientific role.

• Normative sciences deal with the standards or criteria by which we make judgments, e.g., aesthetics (beautiful or ugly), logic (true or false), ethics (right or wrong).

• Normative sciences are also concerned with the validity of these standards, not just describing them.

• Ethics asks why certain rules are valid and on what grounds we ought to observe them.

• Ethics focuses on voluntary actions—actions a person could have done differently by choice.

• Words like good and bad are used ambiguously in ordinary speech; a broader science called axiology studies values in all senses.

• To keep clarity, ethics is confined to human conduct, while axiology studies other uses of good and bad.

• Conduct excludes involuntary activities (e.g., circulation of blood) but includes all willed and controllable actions.

• Voluntary actions include consciously willed acts and also habitual or reflex actions if the person could have prevented or changed them by choice.

• Wrong actions are not excused simply because they were not deliberately willed; ethics considers whether they could have been prevented by thinking about them.

• The degree of rightness or wrongness can be affected by deliberateness.

• Conduct includes inward activities like motives and desires as well as outward actions like speech or bodily movements.

• Inward activities can be judged good or bad even apart from the outward movements they produce.

• The definition of ethics limits conduct in two ways: it deals only with human actions, not with the actions of lower animals.

• While traits like a dog’s loyalty may resemble human goodness, psychologists disagree on whether animal actions are truly voluntary, so animal activities are excluded.

• Ethics is also confined to the conduct of human beings living in societies; some moralists restrict it further to conduct affecting other members of society.

• Including society in the definition emphasizes that without a social background, a human would not be capable of right or wrong actions.

• Aristotle stated: “He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”

• Robinson Crusoe’s actions in isolation can still be judged good or bad, but their meaning comes from his previous social environment and the hope of return to society.

• For some purposes, one science could judge all human activities, even those with no apparent social effects, but common usage connects ethics more with social activities (e.g., speaking the truth) than with purely private ones (e.g., stamp-collecting) or religious activities (e.g., fasting).

• Private activities can have indirect social effects (e.g., a fasting man cannot share food), and in such cases they fall under ethical judgment.

• While this social limitation may be abandoned later, it is useful at the start to focus on conduct within social institutions and relationships.

• Common ethical terms include good, bad, right, wrong, moral, immoral, ought, should, and duty.

• Of these, good and bad are most common but also the most ambiguous in everyday use.

• In common speech, good may simply express approval (e.g., “good fight”, “good haul” by a burglar) without moral meaning.

• In such loose usage, good means an attitude of mind in favour of something, so almost anything can be called good if someone approves of it even slightly.

• The ordinary person distinguishes this loose meaning from a moral sense of good, though even moral usage is ambiguous.

• Morally good conduct is not just what people favour; it is conduct worthy of such a favourable attitude, or that ought to arouse it.

• This is expressed as judging conduct from the standpoint of value, though value itself has the same broad meaning as goodness in axiology.

• In ethics, it is convenient to use good or bad for actions when considering their consequences, which may be good or bad in various senses (e.g., satisfying desires).

• This consequence-based limitation of good is not fully in line with common usage.

• The full range of meanings of good must be studied in ethical theories that base goodness or rightness on the ability to produce good results.

• The words right and wrong do not inherently refer to consequences but to actions fitting to their circumstances, e.g., saying or doing the right thing in an interview.

• The fittingness of a right action often comes from conformity to a rule, leading to the view that moral life is about obeying rules.

• Right is also used in aesthetic judgments, meaning fittingness in an aesthetic sense, e.g., “the right hat for this dress,” or “this word is just right in the poem.”

• Sometimes right suggests obligatoriness, meaning the doer or others feel he ought to do it; however, this is not always the case.

• Example: It is right to feel regret when a mother-in-law leaves, but one cannot say he ought to if feelings are not under control.

• Ought and duty imply a definite obligation, influencing the doer’s choice.

• Goodness is distinct from duty—e.g., eating ice cream on a hot day is good, but no one would say we ought to do it unless desired.

• An action we ought to do is not only right but also opposed by motives or inclinations in the doer’s mind that hinder doing it, e.g., a malaria patient ought to take quinine despite disliking its taste.

• More than one action can be right at the same time, e.g., drinking coffee or tea, studying economics or history; in such cases, ought or duty does not apply.

• If it is my duty to study history now, no other action is right at this moment—doing economics instead would be wrong.

• In more elaborate phrasing, one may have a duty to do either of two actions, but that excludes other unrelated actions.

• The terms ought and duty apply only to right actions but suggest:
  (a) They are obligatory for a specific person.
  (b) The doer has tendencies making him disinclined to do them.
  (c) Only one action is right at a given moment.

• Different people may use ethical terms with varying emphasis or meaning—e.g., Kant felt awe at the statement of duty, while others may not.

• The aim of ethics is to reach meanings generally accepted by educated people and make them unambiguous and consistent.

• In practice, this is difficult because ethical terms, unlike scientific technical terms, are in common use and constantly change in emphasis and meaning.