Introduction:
Legal requirements vs professional ethics vs professional etiquette
Different Values and Worldview:
Nihilism – negation of the existence of absolute values or any established values.
Relativism – contingency of moral values; they are historically and culturally determined.
Hedonism – maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain.
Standpoint theory – to be able to appreciate moral values from another person’s perspective.
Meta-ethics – critical reflection on the possibility, value, and origin of morality.
The questions asked by meta-ethics:
Is morality possible?
What constitutes moral judgment?
What is a moral way of thinking?
Moral laws could be ascertained as legal laws.
The question to ask
Who creates a law?
Is there an agent that creates the law? – The theory that asserts that moral laws are created by agents is called Voluntarism.
One form of voluntarism is subjectivism.
Subjectivism: According to subjectivism, everything is a matter of opinion: when I say ‘x’ is good, I approve ‘x’. My feeling defines what good is. It’s a matter of taste.
Advantages of subjectivism:
Since it’s just an opinion, everything is just a matter of taste.
There is no mystery in the explanation of morality or its origin. Evolutionary theory can explain it.
Subjectivism can explain why people choose different confrontational standpoints.
Subjectivism eliminates the gap between the motive for action, the evaluation of action, and what one ought to do.
Objections to subjectivism:
Subjectivism doesn’t fit our moral experience.
Subjectivism makes one’s moral position infallible.
Subjectivism can’t explain moral disagreements – why there is any moral value to fight (die) for.
Relativism – moral evaluation is based on moral codes determined by society. Society tells an agent how to distinguish right from wrong.
How do I know that I’m right? – It is because society says so.
Advantages of relativism:
Empirically explainable and relatable (It solves the problem of subjectivism).
It can explain the origin of subjective views and how they can be wrong.
It can explain how one makes mistakes.
It can explain disagreement – why there is any moral value to fight (die) for.
Descriptive cultural relativism may foster tolerance.
Objections to relativism:
It does not solve the problem of subjectivism. It shifts it to a different level.
It incites disagreements.
Fallibility. It depends on what people think.
Tolerance – it is not right to coerce others to be ‘good’ (i.e., not to be cannibalistic).
It promotes multiculturalism and all contradictions implied in multiculturalism.
