Conscience describes two things – what a person believes is right and how a person decides what is right. More than just ‘gut instinct’, our conscience is a ‘moral muscle’.By informing us of our values and principles, it becomes the standard we use to judge whether or not our actions are ethical. Show
We can call these two roles ethical awareness and ethical decision making. Ethical AwarenessThis is our ability to recognise ethical values and principles. The medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas believed our conscience emerged from synderesis: the ‘spark of conscience’. He literally meant the human mind’s ability to understand the world in moral terms. Conscience was the process by which a person brought the principles of synderesis into a practical situation through our decisions. Ethical Decision MakingThis is our ability to make practical decisions informed by ethical values and principles. In his writings, Aristotle described phronesis: the goodness of practical reason. This was the ability to evaluate a situation clearly so we would know how to act virtuously under the circumstances. A conscience which is both well formed (shaped by education and experience) and well informed (aware of facts, evidence and so on) enables us to know ourselves and our world and act accordingly. Seeing conscience in this way is important because it teaches us ethics is not innate. By continuously working to understand our surroundings, we strengthen our moral muscle. Conscientious ObjectionIn politics, much of the debate around conscience concerns the “right to conscientious objection”.
For a long time, Western nations, informed by the Catholic intellectual tradition, believed in the “primacy of conscience” – the idea that a person should never be forced to do something they believe is against their most deeply held values and principles. In recent times, particularly in medicine, this has come to be questioned. Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu believes doctors working in the public system should be banned from objecting to procedures because it compromises patient care. This debate sees a clash between two worldviews – one where people’s foremost responsibility is to their own personal beliefs about what is good and right and another where this duty is balanced against the needs of the common good. Philosopher Michael Walzer believes there are situations where you have a duty to “get your hands dirty” – even if the price is your own sense of goodness. In response, Aristotle might have said, “no person wishes to possess the world if they must first become someone else”. That is, we can’t change who we are or what we believe in for any price. Recommended viewingTop Questions What is ethics?How is ethics different from morality?Why does ethics matter?Is ethics a social science?Summary Read a brief summary of this topicethics, also called moral philosophy, the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? If we choose happiness, will it be our own or the happiness of all? And what of the more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest in a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Is it wrong to clone a human being or to destroy human embryos in medical research? What are our obligations, if any, to the generations of humans who will come after us and to the nonhuman animals with whom we share the planet? Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. The terms ethics and morality are closely related. It is now common to refer to ethical judgments or to ethical principles where it once would have been more accurate to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. In earlier usage, the term referred not to morality itself but to the field of study, or branch of inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy. Although ethics has always been viewed as a branch of philosophy, its all-embracing practical nature links it with many other areas of study, including anthropology, biology, economics, history, politics, sociology, and theology. Yet, ethics remains distinct from such disciplines because it is not a matter of factual knowledge in the way that the sciences and other branches of inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with determining the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of principles to practical moral problems. This article, then, will deal with ethics as a field of philosophy, especially as it has developed in the West. For coverage of religious conceptions of ethics and the ethical systems associated with world religions, see Buddhism; Christianity; Confucianism; Hinduism; Jainism; Judaism; Sikhism. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now The origins of ethicsMythical accountsIntroduction of moral codesWhen did ethics begin and how did it originate? If one has in mind ethics proper—i.e., the systematic study of what is morally right and wrong—it is clear that ethics could have come into existence only when human beings started to reflect on the best way to live. This reflective stage emerged long after human societies had developed some kind of morality, usually in the form of customary standards of right and wrong conduct. The process of reflection tended to arise from such customs, even if in the end it may have found them wanting. Accordingly, ethics began with the introduction of the first moral codes. Virtually every human society has some form of myth to explain the origin of morality. In the Louvre in Paris there is a black Babylonian column with a relief showing the sun god Shamash presenting the code of laws to Hammurabi (died c. 1750 bce), known as the Code of Hammurabi. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) account of God’s giving the Ten Commandments to Moses (flourished 14th–13th century bce) on Mount Sinai might be considered another example. In the dialogue Protagoras by Plato (428/427–348/347 bce), there is an avowedly mythical account of how Zeus took pity on the hapless humans, who were physically no match for the other beasts. To make up for these deficiencies, Zeus gave humans a moral sense and the capacity for law and justice, so that they could live in larger communities and cooperate with one another. That morality should be invested with all the mystery and power of divine origin is not surprising. Nothing else could provide such strong reasons for accepting the moral law. By attributing a divine origin to morality, the priesthood became its interpreter and guardian and thereby secured for itself a power that it would not readily relinquish. This link between morality and religion has been so firmly forged that it is still sometimes asserted that there can be no morality without religion. According to this view, ethics is not an independent field of study but rather a branch of theology (see moral theology). There is some difficulty, already known to Plato, with the view that morality was created by a divine power. In his dialogue Euthyphro, Plato considered the suggestion that it is divine approval that makes an action good. Plato pointed out that, if this were the case, one could not say that the gods approve of such actions because they are good. Why then do they approve of them? Is their approval entirely arbitrary? Plato considered this impossible and so held that there must be some standards of right or wrong that are independent of the likes and dislikes of the gods. Modern philosophers have generally accepted Plato’s argument, because the alternative implies that if, for example, the gods had happened to approve of torturing children and to disapprove of helping one’s neighbours, then torture would have been good and neighbourliness bad. What is conduct in accordance with what a person determines is right versus wrong?Ethics are the standard of what is right and wrong, and they are based on our values. Being ethical requires making a moral judgment, and that's not always easy. Ethical behavior takes courage and has to be practiced.
Is ethics the process of determining right and wrong?Technically, morality refers to the actual content of right and wrong, and ethics refers to the process of determining right and wrong. In other words, morality deals with moral knowledge and ethics with moral reasoning. Thus, ethics is both an art and a science.
How does a person determine what is ethical?Ethical decision-making is based on core character values like trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and good citizenship. Ethical decisions generate ethical behaviors and provide a foundation for good business practices. See a model for making ethical decisions.
Are the standards of conduct for judging right from wrong?Ethics are the standards of conduct by which one's actions are judged as: Ethics are the standards of conduct by which one's actions are judged as: a. right or wrong.
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What is defined as conduct in accordance with what a person determines is right versus wrong?
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