Professional Ethics

Consistency—the absence of contradictions—has sometimes been called the hallmark of ethics. Ethics is supposed to provide us with a guide for moral living, and to do so it must be rational, and to be rational it must be free of contradictions. If a person said, “Open the window but don’t open the window,” we would be at loss as to what to do; the command is contradictory and thus irrational. In the same way, if our ethical principles and practices lack consistency, we, as rational people, will find ourselves at a loss as to what we ought to do and divided about how we ought to live. Ethics requires consistency in the sense that our moral standards, actions, and values should not be contradictory. Examining our lives to uncover inconsistencies and then modifying our moral standards and behaviors so that they are consistent is an important part of moral development. Where are we likely to uncover inconsistency? First, our moral standards may be inconsistent with ach other

The Descriptive VS the Normative Normative: A normative statement, or question, or theory, concerns how things should be, how they ought to be, rather than how they actually are (a.k.a. evaluative prescriptive) The opposite of “normative” is: Descriptive: A descriptive statement, or question, or theory, concerns how things actually are, not how they ought to be (a.k.a.factual) Ethical Sentence or Normative Statement: We need to define an ethical sentence, also called a normative statement. An ethical sentence is one that is used to make either a positive or a negative (moral) evaluation of something. Ethical sentences use words such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘moral’, ‘immoral’, and so on. Here are some examples: ‘Rashad is a good person.’ ‘People should not steal.’ ‘The Simpson verdict was unjust.’ ‘Honesty is a virtue.’ ‘One ought not to break the law.’ In contrast, a non-ethical sentence would be a senten

General Moral Principles General moral principle make some general statement about what is morally right or wrong or good or bad or what we should or ought or should not or ought not to. Examples: You should not take what does not belong to you without permission of the owner. If you make a promise, you ought to keep it. Particular Moral Judgments Not all moral judgments are general principles. Some are about specifics. Examples: John was wrong to tell you that. Hitler was an evil person. Other (non-moral) Normative Judgment and Principles Some judgments are normative, and say what ought or ought not to be done, but are not moral. Examples of these include prudential, legal and aesthetic judgments. They may be general or specific. Examples: You should quit smoking. That’s the wrong hat for that outfit. The Role of General Moral Principles in Moral Argument General moral principles can serve as the major