Which ethical theory is most natural

The second prominent concept, deontological ethics, is associated with the father of modern deontology, Immanuel Kant. These challenges are definitely ones that should be considered when relying on this as an ethical system. However, despite these concerns, many have found that deontology provides the strongest model for applied public relations ethics. That ideological consistency gives the theory posed here a solid theoretical foundation with the practice of public relations as well as a normative theory function.

They need ethical principles derived from the fundamental values that define their work as a public relations professional. Finally, a third and growing area of philosophical reasoning with ethics is known as virtue ethics, one that has gained more attention in public relations scholarship in recent years. This philosophy stems from Aristotle and is based on the virtues of the person making a decision. For example, if the virtue of honesty is the of utmost importance to a good public relations professional, then all decisions should be made ethically to ensure honesty is preserved.

Other theories, though, emphasize a short list of virtues that include courage, temperance, justice, prudence, fortitude, liberality, and truthfulness. Virtue theory places special emphasis on moral education since virtuous character traits are developed in one's youth. This means that adults and society at large have a special responsibility to instill virtues in the young.

The failure to properly develop virtuous character traits will result in the person acquiring vices, or bad character traits instead. Common vices are cowardice, insensibility, injustice, and vanity. One of the most influential accounts of virtue theory is that by the Greek philosopher Aristotle — BCE , who proposed what is called the doctrine of the virtuous mean. He argues that moral virtues regulate our desires and urges by standing midway between two extreme character traits that are vices.

Suppose, for example, that you are a soldier about to go onto the battlefield, and are naturally fearful of the dangers before you. If you don't restrain your fear at all, you will be too petrified to even defend yourself.

This is a vice of deficiency that we call cowardice. At the other extreme, if you restrain your fear too much and behave like you are invincible, you'll just get yourself killed. This would be a vice of excess that we call rashness.

The virtue of courage, then, lies at the mean between the deficient extreme of cowardice and the excessive extreme of rashness. According to Aristotle, most moral virtues, and not just courage, fall at the mean between two accompanying vices. He presents a catalog of twelve such virtues and here is a chart of some especially interesting ones:. Fear of danger Cowardice Courage Rashness. Anger Spiritlessness Good Temper Ill-temper.

Pleasure Insensibility Temperance Intemperance. Give money Stinginess Generosity Extravagance. Self-worth Self-loathing Self-respect Arrogance. Aristotle warns that the virtuous mean is not a strict mathematical mean between two extremes. For example, if eating apples a day is too many, and eating zero apples is too little, this does not imply that we should eat 50 apples, which is the mathematical mean.

Instead, the mean is rationally determined, based on the relative merits of the situation. I have sufficiently stated that moral virtue is a mean and in what sense it is so. It is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions.

It is no easy task to be good, since in everything it is no easy task to find the middle. For example, not everyone can find the middle of a circle, but only those who know how.

Similarly, anyone can get angry, which is easy, or give or spend money. But is not for everyone, nor is it easy to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way. For this reason, goodness is rare, praiseworthy and noble. Thus, according to Aristotle, it is often difficult to live the virtuous life primarily because it is difficult to find the proper mean between the extremes.

A second approach to moral principles is duty theory , the view that moral standards are grounded in intuitive obligations, or "duties", that we have. A duty is a moral obligation that someone has towards another person, such as my duty not to lie to you.

Duty theories of ethics emphasize the need to follow moral rules that we know instinctively and discover through human reasoning.

Duty theories of ethics are also called deontological theories, from the Greek word deon meaning "duty". There have been many versions of duty theory, but we will look at two representative ones. The most influential duty theory in recent centuries is that by German philosopher Immanuel Kant Kant argues that there is a single, foundational principle of moral duty that encompasses all of our specific moral obligations, and this principle is revealed to everyone through rational intuition.

The obligatory force of each of these depends entirely on whether you have a particular desire that you are trying to fulfill. None of these are genuine moral rules and are more like words of advice.

If an action is morally right, you are obligated to perform that action, regardless of what your private desires are. This principle rests on a common distinction in moral theory between intrinsic value and instrumental value. These things are good only as a means to some further end.

By contrast, things that have intrinsic value are good in and of themselves, irrespective of any function that they perform. For Kant, human dignity is the best example of something that is intrinsically valuable: its value is independent of any function that it performs. The point of the categorical imperative is this: we should always treat people with dignity as ends in themselves , and never use them as mere instruments.

For Kant, we treat people as an end whenever our actions toward someone reflect the inherent value of that person. Donating to charity, for example, is morally correct since this acknowledges the inherent value of the recipient.

By contrast, we treat someone as a means to an end whenever we treat that person as a tool to achieve something else. It is wrong, for example, for me to steal my neighbor's car since I would be treating her as a means to my own happiness. Kant explains here how theft violates the categorical imperative:. He who transgresses the [property] rights of men intends to use the person of others merely as a means, without considering that as rational beings they ought always to be esteemed also as ends, that is, as beings who must be capable of containing in themselves the end of the very same action.

The categorical imperative also regulates the morality of actions that affect us individually. Suicide, for example, would be wrong since I would be treating my life as a means to the alleviation of my misery. Kant believes that the morality of all actions can be determined by appealing to this single principle of duty. However, a second example of duty theory, put forward by British philosopher William D. Ross — , sets forth a collection of several moral rules that we must follow, rather than just a single one.

For Ross, there are seven such fundamental moral duties, which he thinks are intuitively obvious:. Fidelity: the duty to keep promises. Reparation: the duty to compensate others when we harm them. Gratitude: the duty to thank those who help us. Justice: the duty to recognize merit. Beneficence: the duty to improve the conditions of others. Self-improvement: the duty to improve our virtue and intelligence.

Non-harm: the duty to not injure others. Ross recognizes that there may be others to add to this list, but these are ones that we all know self-evidently. Suppose, for example, that my Aunt Martha asks me what I think about her new hat.

My personal opinion is that her hat is ugly, even though I recognize that other people her age might feel differently. This creates a conflict between my two duties of fidelity and non-harm.

Which should I follow? In this situation, my greater obligation is to avoid hurting her feelings. Thus, by themselves, my duties of fidelity and non-harm are equally valid prima facie duties, but in this situation it is only the duty of non-harm that emerges as my actual duty. According to Ross, there is no way to rank order the priority of our duties beforehand, and so we cannot know ahead of time which will be the stronger duty.

We must wait until a conflict arises in a particular situation, and we must use our own insight in that situation to determine which of our two conflicting duties is our actual duty. The third approach to moral standards is consequentialism , the view that an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable. It is common for us to determine our moral responsibility by weighing the consequences of our actions. Donating to charity is the right thing to do because of all the good that it does.

Stealing is morally wrong because of the harm that it causes. According to consequentialism, correct moral conduct is determined solely by this type of cost-benefit analysis. Consequentialism requires that we first tally both the good and bad consequences of an action.

Second, we then determine whether the total good consequences outweigh the total bad consequences. If the good consequences are greater, then the action is morally proper.

But if the bad consequences are greater, then the action is morally improper. Consequentialist theories are sometimes called teleological theories, from the Greek word telos , which means end or goal. Consequentialist theories became popular in the 18th century by philosophers who wanted a quick way to morally assess an action by appealing to experience, rather than by appealing to gut intuitions or long lists of questionable duties.

In fact, the most attractive feature of consequentialism is that it appeals to publicly observable consequences of actions. There are three main types of consequentialist theories:. Ethical Egoism : an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable only to the agent performing the action. Ethical Altruism : an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent.

Utilitarianism : an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone. All three of these approaches focus on the consequences of actions for different groups of people, and often they will produce different moral conclusions.

Here is an example. An American woman was traveling through a developing country when she witnessed a car in front of her run off the road and roll over several times. She asked the hired driver to pull over to assist, but, to her surprise, the driver accelerated nervously past the scene. A few miles down the road the driver explained that in his country if someone assists an accident victim, then the police often hold the assisting person responsible for the accident itself. If the victim dies, then the assisting person could be held responsible for the death.

The driver continued explaining that road accident victims are therefore usually left unattended and often die from exposure to the country's harsh desert conditions. On the principle of ethical egoism, the woman in this illustration would only be concerned with the consequences of her attempted assistance as she herself would be affected. The decision to drive on would be the morally proper choice. On the principle of ethical altruism, she would be concerned only with the consequences of her action as others are affected, particularly the accident victim.

Tallying only those consequences reveals that assisting the victim would be the morally correct choice, irrespective of the negative consequences that result for her. On the principle of utilitarianism, she must consider the consequences for both herself and the victim.

The outcome here is less clear, and the woman would need to precisely calculate the overall benefit and disbenefit of her action to herself, her family, the victim, and the victim's family. According to Bentham, we should determine whether an action is right or wrong by calculating the total amount of pleasure and pain resulting from the action as everyone is affected.

Two features of his theory are important. First, he proposed that we tally only the pleasure and pain which results from our actions since, he argued, pleasure and pain are the guiding forces of human nature:. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.

They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.

For example, we value acts of loyalty and friendship, yet they are not always pleasing. Rather than focusing on pleasure and pain, they argued, we should instead tally more generally the good and bad that results, or the benefit and disbenefit.

Is it right for me specifically to cheat on my calculus exam this afternoon? This aspect of Bentham's theory is known as act-utilitiarianism because of its focus on the consequences of the specific actions that we perform. One criticism is that, based on act-utilitarianism, it would be morally wrong for me to waste my time on leisure activities such as watching television, since my time could be spent in ways that produced a greater social benefit, such as charity work.

However, according to the critic, prohibiting leisure activities does not seem reasonable, and virtually no other moral theory condemns us for at least occasionally being leisurely. Also, the critic argues, based on act-utilitarianism, we could morally justify actions that we ordinarily find reprehensible, such as torturing a specific captured enemy to get information from him, or enslaving a small group of people to help make life easier for a larger group of people.

It just depends on whether the total pleasure outweighs the total pain as we tally the consequences of the specific action. However, according to the critic, we commonly believe that all acts of torture are morally wrong, regardless of the benefit that may result. Thus, act-utilitarianism has some serious flaws as a moral theory. A revised version of utilitarianism called rule-utilitarianism addresses the above problems with act-utilitarianism.

Rather than focusing on the consequences of each particular action that we perform, we should instead examine the consequences of more general behavioral rules that we adopt.

Thus, according to rule-utilitarianism, a behavioral rule is morally right if the consequences of adopting that rule are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone. In turn, the rule against stealing is morally binding because adopting this rule produces favorable consequences for everyone.

The moral issues that we have looked at so far focus primarily on the moral obligations that one person has to another person, such as the moral obligation that I have to not steal from you. Another aspect of ethical theory concerns the moral obligations that societies and governments have to its citizens. Where do governments get their governing authority to begin with? What is their primary responsibility to their citizens? Are there moral limits to the demands that governments can make upon their citizens?

There is a moral underpinning to the role that governments play, which is often crucial in determining the moral values that society endorses.

We will look at three issues: social contract theory, natural rights theory, and principles of governmental coercion. Social contract theory was championed by Thomas Hobbes, and his theory has two parts: the state of war that naturally exists between people, and the social contract that enables us to rise out of that state of war. As to the state of war, Hobbes argues that in our natural condition, prior to the creation of any government, each person attempts to survive by any means possible.

We are fundamentally selfish creatures that look out for our own best interests, and there is a scarcity of natural resources that we need to survive. The result is a war of all against all, and even when we are not actually combating with each other, we are prepared to do so at the slightest provocation. As long as we are in this warring condition, civilized society is not possible and even basic efforts to till the soil and build homes will be futile.

Hobbes writes,. Thus, life is so bad in the state of nature that we will accomplish very little during the miserable and short lives that we have. According to Hobbes, just as human selfishness creates this mess to begin with, it is also human selfishness that offers us a way out: life in the state of nature is so miserable that we are willing to make compromise to bring about a state of peace.

That compromise is the social contract. We agree to set aside our hostilities towards each other in exchange for the peace that a civilized society offers. What we need is a governing power to monitor our conduct and punish us when we break the rules of peace. While none of us likes the government breathing down our backs, it is one more critical sacrifice that we need to make to secure a state of peace. The social contract that we arrive at must include the creating of a ruling government since, Hobbes argues, strong governmental authority is the only way to ensure that we follow the rules of law.

After Hobbes proposed his theory, critics challenged several of its major assumptions. Are humans in the natural condition really as selfish and nasty as Hobbes claims? If not, then the rationale for making a social contract falls apart.

Also, very few societies were historically founded on any kind of social contract: most were done through military force with no agreement from its citizens. Further, even if a government was founded through a contractual agreement, why would that contract be binding on future generations of citizens? Defenders of social contract theory have responded to these and other criticisms, and the theory continues to be an important moral justification for governmental authority.

Debates today about social contract theory focus on whether governments are justified in going beyond their basic job as protectors of peace. Examples of how a theory may relate to and assist law enforcement are included. Normative theories tell us not only what we ought to do, but also why we do things that in some instances may appear counterintuitive to what we think an ethical decision would be. Such theories are often called ethical systems because they provide a system that allows people to determine ethical actions that individuals should take Pollock, Evans and Macmillan , p.

These systems are used by individuals to make decisions when confronted with ethical dilemmas. Meta-ethics does not address how we ought to behave; rather, meta-ethics is related more to the study of ethical theory itself.

And there are, unsurprisingly, disagreements in catalogs of basic goods. The goods that Aquinas mentions in his account include life, procreation, social life, knowledge, and rational conduct. Grisez includes self-integration, practical reasonableness, authenticity, justice and friendship, religion, life and health, knowledge of truth, appreciation of beauty, and playful activities pp.

Finnis includes life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion pp. Chappell includes friendship, aesthetic value, pleasure and the avoidance of pain, physical and mental health and harmony, reason, rationality, and reasonableness, truth and the knowledge of it, the natural world, people, fairness, and achievements p.

Murphy includes life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in work and play, excellence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness p. Gomez-Lobo includes life, the family, friendship, work and play, experience of beauty, theoretical knowledge, and integrity pp. Crowe includes life, health, pleasure, friendship, play, appreciation, understanding, meaning, and reasonableness p.

The reasons for rejecting pleasure and the absence of pain from the list of goods are various: some writers argue, following Aristotle, that pleasure is not a good in abstraction from the activity in which pleasure is taken; some that the absence of pain is not a completion or a fulfillment of human nature, and thus cannot be among the basic goods; some that the avoidance of pain is simply an instance of some other basic good, such as inner peace.

What this debate illustrates is the extent to which the formulation of a catalog of goods is not a straightforward matter. Everyone agrees that one who avoids touching a hot stove in part to avoid the awful pain has some reason to avoid touching the stove. The difficulty is to bring together our various sources of knowledge about the good to formulate an account that explains well precisely why it is that such an act is reasonable. These sorts of debates reappear with respect to goods like life is life intrinsically or instrumentally good?

Suppose that we were to have in hand satisfactory accounts of natural goodness and our knowledge of it, along with a rationally defensible account of the basic goods that are the fundamental reasons for action.

What we would not have yet is a full account of right action. For we are frequently in situations in which there are various different courses of action that we might pursue, each of which promises to realize some good; are there no guidelines to which we might appeal in order to show some of these choices superior to others? After all, some of even the most obviously morally wrong actions can be seen to promise some good — a robber might kill in order to get the money he needs to pursue genuine goods — and the natural law theorist wants to be able to say why these obviously morally wrong actions are morally wrong.

As we have seen, the paradigmatic natural law view holds that there are some general rules of right that govern our pursuit of the various goods, and that these rules of right exclude those actions that are in some way defective responses to the various basic goods.

How, though, are we to determine what counts as a defective response to the goods? There are at least three possibilities. One might appeal to a master rule of right that can be used to generate further rules; call this the master rule approach.

One might appeal to a methodological principle by which particular rules can be generated; call this the method approach. Or one might appeal to some standard for distinguishing correct and incorrect moral rules that is not understandable as a method; call this for reasons we shall see shortly the virtue approach. On the master rule approach, the task of the natural law theorist is to identify some master rule which bears on the basic goods and, perhaps in conjunction with further factual premises, is able to produce a stock of general rules about what sorts of responses to the basic goods are or are not reasonable.

While it is far from clear whether there was a single way that Aquinas proceeded in establishing moral norms from the primary precepts of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae , John Finnis has argued Finnis , p. This rule bids us to respond to the good lovingly wherever it can be realized, and from it we can see that certain ways of responding to the good are ruled out as essentially unloving.

The central difficulty with this employment of the master rule approach is that of explaining how we are to grasp this first principle of morality as correct. What is the relationship between our knowledge of the basic goods and our knowledge of the master rule?

As a single principle, it will give unity and direction to a morally good life. On the method approach, by contrast, there is no need for a master principle that will serve as the basis for deriving some particular moral rules. The idea here is the natural law theorist needs not a master rule but a test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones. We know from our earlier consideration of the paradigmatic natural law view that the test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones must be something like the following: if a moral rule rules out certain choices as defective that are in fact defective, and rules out no choices as defective that are not in fact defective, then it is a correct moral rule.

What would distinguish different employments of the method approach is their accounts of what features of a choice we appeal to in order to determine whether it is defective. The knowledge that we have to go on here is our knowledge of the basic goods. If a certain choice presupposes something false about the basic goods, then it responds defectively to them. So a moral rule can be justified by showing that it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the basic goods.

This is very abstract. Here is an example of an employment of this approach. He argues, for example, that it is always wrong to intend the destruction of an instance of a basic good Finnis , pp. So, no lying, for lying is an intentional attack on knowledge; no murder, for murder is an intentional attack on life, and so forth. Why is it always wrong to do so? It would be unreasonable simply to try to destroy an instance of a basic good, for no further purpose: for that would treat an instance of a basic good as something that it is not — that is, as valueless.

So the rule forbidding intentional destruction of an instance of a basic good is justified because it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the nature of the basic goods. For a working out of the method approach, see Murphy , ch.

The method approach presupposes less of substance about morality than the master rule approach presupposes. But it requires us to draw upon an interesting and rich knowledge of the features of the basic goods. Whether this information is available is a matter for debate. But the method approach has the advantage of firmly rooting natural law arguments for moral principles in the goods the pursuit of which those moral principles are supposed to regulate.

Neither the master rule nor the method approach implies that the natural law theorist must hold that all right action can be captured in general rules. The natural law view is only that there are some such rules. It is consistent with the natural law position that there are a number of choice situations in which there is a right answer, yet in which that right answer is not dictated by any natural law rule or set of rules, but rather is grasped only by a virtuous, practically wise person. It is, however, open to the natural law theorist to use this appeal to the judgment of the practically wise person more widely, holding that the general rules concerning the appropriate response to the goods cannot be properly determined by any master rule or philosophical method, but can be determined only by appeal to the insight of the person of practical wisdom.

If it really is wrong in all cases to tell lies, as Aquinas and Grisez and Finnis have argued, our grasp of this moral truth is dependent on our possessing, or our being able to recognize the possessor of, practical wisdom.